Latest revision as of 01:19, 4 August 2025

CURRICULUM OF
THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM-LENINISM
PART 1

THE WORLDVIEW AND PHILOSOPHICAL METHODOLOGY OF MARXISM-LENINISM

For University and College Students

Not Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION

Translated and Annotated by Luna Nguyen

Foreword by Dr. Vijay Prashad

Introduction by Dr. Taimur Rahman

Edited, Annotated, and Illustrated by Emerican Johnson

Proofread by David Peat

Additional Contributions and Editorial Support by Iskra Books

Published in association with The International Magazine

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-2.png

1 License
2 Support for This Work
3 Dedication and Gratitude
4 Foreword
5 Preface to the First English Edition
6 Introduction
7 Editor’s Note
8 A Message From The International Magazine
9 Notes on Translation
10 Guide to Annotations
11 Original Vietnamese Publisher’s Note
12 Original Vietnamese Preface
13 Table of Contents
14 Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism
- 14.1 I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism
  - 14.1.1 1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts
    - 14.1.1.1 Annotation 1
  - 14.1.2 2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism
- 14.2 II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism
15 Chapter 1: Dialectical Materialism
- 15.1 I. Materialism and Dialectical Materialism
  - 15.1.1 1. The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues
  - 15.1.2 2. Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism
    - 15.1.2.1 Annotation 55
    - 15.1.2.2 Annotation 56
- 15.2 II. Dialectical Materialist Opinions About Matter, Consciousness, and the Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness
16 Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics
- 16.1 I. Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics
  - 16.1.1 1. Dialectics and Basic Forms of Dialectics
  - 16.1.2 2. Materialist Dialectics
- 16.2 II. Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics
- 16.3 III. Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics
- 16.4 IV. Basic Laws of Materialist Dialectics
17 Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism
- 17.1 Annotation 210
- 17.2 1. Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness
- 17.3 2. Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth
  - 17.3.1 a. Opinions of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin about the Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth
  - 17.3.2 b. Truth, and the Relationship Between Truth and Reality
18 Afterword
- 18.1 Part 2: Historical Materialism
- 18.2 Part 3: Political Economy
- 18.3 Part 4: Scientific Socialism
- 18.4 Moving Forward
- 18.5 Advice on Further Study
- 18.6 Creative Application of Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics
- 18.7 In Closing
- 18.8 In Solidarity,
19 [Appendices]
- 19.1 Appendix A: Basic Pairs of Categories Used in Materialist Dialectics
- 19.2 Appendix B: the Two Basic Principles of Dialectical Materialism
- 19.3 Appendix C: the Three Universal Laws of Materialist Dialectics
- 19.4 Appendix D: Forms of Consciousness and Knowledge
- 19.5 Appendix E: Properties of Truth
- 19.6 Appendix F: Common Deviations From Dialectical Materialism
20 [Back Matter]
- 20.1 Glossary & Index

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“Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.”
- Ho Chi Minh

Support for This Work

Translating, annotating, and typesetting this book has taken three years, which would not have been possible without the support of our supporters on GoFundMe. GoFundMe is also the reason we are able to make the digital version of this entire text available for free online. We would therefore like to recognize all of our supporters:

Zach L.	Jake B.	Katia S.	Jimi C.
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There is still plenty of work to be done to complete the translation of this entire curriculum. If you would like to financially support our efforts, you can support us at:

BanyanHouse.org

Dedication and Gratitude

This book is dedicated to all the backers of the GoFundMe campaign that raised the funds to allow me to translate this text. What I initially believed would be a straightforward three-month process of translating ended up taking over three years of not just translation but also research, study, review, annotation, editing, proofreading, peer review, and more — with the incredible support of a full team of talented comrades — in order to make sure that everything would be digestible and intelligible for audiences outside of Vietnam. So, sincerely, thank you to everyone who backed this project for your patience, support, and encouragement.

Thank you to my husband and comrade, Emerican Johnson, who helped me throughout the translation process, and who did such a fantastic job editing, annotating, and illustrating this text. He was my constant dialectical companion as we grappled together with the spirit and meaning of the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Engels that are the bedrock of this text.

Thank you, also, to Iskra Books for the absolutely vital work they have done in helping us to edit this book and hold it to a high standard. We literally could not have done it without you. In particular, thank you to Ben Stahnke for organizing and cheerleading us through to the end, and to David Peat, for the painstaking, meticulous, and no-doubt frustrating work of proofreading our very, very, very imperfect writing!

Thanks also to The International Magazine, who have provided guidance and suggestions throughout the process of developing this translation. I have had the opportunity to work with The International Magazine on various projects and I can recommend no better monthly periodical for internationalist communists to learn about socialist movements around the world.

We owe a great deal of gratitude to Dr. Vijay Prashad and Dr. Taimur Rahman for taking the time to read through our translation and, in addition to providing their feedback and encouragement, also taking the time to write the foreword and introduction to the text. I know that you are both extremely busy with your own important literary, academic, and political work, so this assistance is so very much appreciated.

Finally, I would like to thank the Vietnamese intellectuals and experts who have done such an amazing job at taking hundreds of texts and distilling them down into the original volume which I have translated here. The elegance and precision with which they have been able to capture the essence of Marxism-Leninism is a monumental contribution to the workers of the world, and I only hope my translation does their work justice.

March, 2023
Luna Nguyen

Foreword

In December 1998, Fidel Castro addressed the Young Communist League’s 7^th Congress in Havana, Cuba. The Soviet Union and the Communist state system in Eastern Europe had collapsed, which greatly weakened the cause of socialism. Not only was Cuba hit hard by the loss of its major trading partners and political ally, but socialists in general were penalised by the lethal argument made by the imperialist sections that “socialism had been defeated.” After 1991, Fidel revived the phrase “Battle of Ideas,” which was had been used in The German Ideology by Marx and Engels. To the Young Communists, Fidel said:

We must meet, in the heat of the battle, with the leading cadres to discuss, analyse, expand on, and draft plans and strategies to take up issues and elaborate ideas, as when an army’s general staff meets. We must use solid arguments to talk to members and non-members, to speak to those who may be confused or even to discuss and debate with those holding positions contrary to those of the Revolution or who are influenced by imperialist ideology in this great battle of ideas we have been waging for years now, precisely in order to carry out the heroic deed of resisting against the most politically, militarily, economically, technologically and culturally powerful empire that has ever existed. Young cadres must be well prepared for this task.

Bourgeois ideology had tried to sweep aside its most fundamental critique – namely Marxism – by saying that “socialism had been defeated” and that Marxism was now obsolete. Marxist criticisms of the “casino of capitalism” – as Fidel called it – were being set aside both inside and outside the academy, with neoliberal policy confident enough to ignore each and every criticism. Fidel argued that young communists must learn the fundamentals of Marxism – including both dialectical and historical materialism – and must learn this in a way that was not religious thinking but would allow them to become “new intellectuals” of the movement, not those who repeat dogma but who learn to understand the conjuncture and become “permanent persuaders” for socialism (the two phrases in quotations are from Gramsci’s prison notebooks). The general ideological confidence of the cadre was not clear, and that confidence and their clarity needed to be developed in a project that Fidel called the Battle of Ideas.

During this period, communists around the world conceded that the demise of the Soviet Union had created a serious dilemma for the left. Not only were we penalised by the argument that “socialism has been defeated,” but our own arguments to explain the turbo-charged drive toward globalisation and neoliberalism and to make the case for a socialist alternative were not strong enough. One indication of that weakness was the 2001 World Social Forum meeting held in Brazil, which promoted the slogan – Another World is Possible, a weak slogan in comparison to a more precise slogan, such as – Socialism is Necessary. Young people drifted into our ranks in this decade, angered by the wretched social conditions created by the permanent austerity of neoliberalism, but bewildered about how to transform the political environment. The lack of Marxist political education was felt by socialist forces across the world, which is why many parties around the world began to revive a conversation about internal political education for cadre and active engagement with other social forces regarding the pressing issues of our time. Fidel called these two processes – internal education for the Party and external engagement on the dilemmas of humanity – the Battle of Ideas.

In line with this broad direction, the government of Vietnam worked with the national publishing house Sự Thật (The Truth) to develop a curriculum for universities and colleges in the country. They developed this order of study along five subject areas: Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, Scientific Socialism, Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Ho Chi Minh Thought. This project worked to educate an entire population that would be able to understand the world in a rational and factual manner, outside the illusions of bourgeois ideology. Four years later, Communist Party of Vietnam adopted a resolution to take this work forward, and – under the leadership of Professor Nguyễn Viết Thông – produced this textbook that brought together the many themes of Marxism into focus for the introductory student and cadre. A book such as this is never easy to create, since it must introduce a form of thought that is critical of the foundations of bourgeois ideology – so it is a critique – but at the same time it provides a worldview to understand the actual world in which we live – so it is a science. The text must, therefore, show how bourgeois thought is partial and at the same time how socialist thought, creatively applied, will allow one to have a firmer grip of reality and be able to participate in fighting to transcend the obstinate facts of human indignity that are reproduced by capitalism. No manual such as this is without its flaws and without its limitations, but no education can start without a manual such as this one. The Vietnamese comrades have done a great service to the left movement by producing a text such as this, which can be used for study and then used as a model to develop similar texts in different parts of the world.

Ho Chi Minh, whose interpretation of Marxism and whose ideas about the Vietnamese Revolution, are all over this text once said: “Study and practice must always go together. Study without practice is useless. Practice without study leads to folly.” There can be no better injunction to get to work, to study and develop one’s theoretical armour and to use that theory as the guide to one’s work in the Battle of Ideas and in the battle for the streets, because this unity between theory and action is indeed praxis (thực tiễn), not just practice, but conscious human activity. That is what Fidel encouraged in his lectures on the Battle of Ideas.

Dr. Vijay Prashad.
5 March 2023
Caracas, Venezuela.

Preface to the First English Edition

The text of this book constitutes part one of a four-part curriculum on Marxism-Leninism developed and published by the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam. This curriculum is intended for students who are not specializing in the study of Marxism-Leninism, and is intended to give every Vietnamese student a firm grounding in the political philosophy of scientific socialism.

The entire curriculum consists of:

Part 1: Dialectical Materialism (this text)

Part 2: Historical Materialism

Part 3: Political Economy

Part 4: Scientific Socialism

In Vietnam, each part of the curriculum encompasses one full semester of mandatory study for all college students. Each part builds upon the previous, meaning that this text is the foundation for all political theory education for most college students in Vietnam.

However, it is important to note that this is not the first encounter with dialectical materialism which Vietnamese students wil have had with these ideas, because Vietnamese students also study dialectical materialism, historical materialism, political economy, and scientific socialism from primary school all the way through high school.

As such, the text of this book — in and of itself — would probably seem overwhelmingly condensed to most foreign readers who are new to studying dialectical materialism. Therefore, we have decided to extensively annotate and illustrate this text with the information which would have been previously obtained in a basic Vietnamese high school education and/or provided by college lecturers in the classroom.

It is our desire that these annotations will be helpful for students who hope to learn these principles for application in political activity, but we should also make it clear to academic researchers and the like that our annotations and illustrations are not present in the original Vietnamese work.

We hope that this book will be useful in at least three ways:

As a comprehensive introductory textbook on dialectical materialism and for selfstudy, group study, classroom use, cadre training, etc.
As a quick and easy to reference handbook for reviewing the basic concepts of dialectical materialism for students of theory who are already familiar with dialectical materialism.
As a companion book for further reading of theory and political texts rooted in dialectical materialist philosophy.

Also, please note: because this book is intended to be used as a quick reference and handbook for further study, there are many instances where we duplicate references, quotations, and other such information. We hope that this repetition may be an aid for study by reinforcing important concepts and quotations.

This book — Part 1 of the curriculum, which focuses on the universal philosophical system of dialectical materialism — serves as the foundation of all political theory and practice in the Vietnamese educational system as well as in the Communist Party of Vietnam and other organizations such as the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, the Women’s Union, the Farmer’s Union, the Worker’s Union, etc. Dialectical materialism is the framework for theory and practice as well as the common lens through which Vietnamese socialists relate, communicate, and work together.

This book focuses almost exclusively on the written works of three historical figures:

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels... who initially developed the universal philosophy of dialectical materialism by synthesizing various pre-existing philosophical, political, economic, and historical tendencies including the idealist dialectical system of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the political economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the materialist positions of Ludwig Feuerbach, and countless others.

...and Vladimir Illyich Lenin, who further developed and defended dialectical materialism, expanded the analysis of imperialism, demonstrated how to apply dialectical materialism to local material conditions specific to Russia at the turn of the 20^th century, and made many other important contributions to dialectical materialist theory and practice.

Obviously, there are countless other writers, revolutionaries, philosophers, and scientists who have contributed to dialectical materialism and scientific socialism. This book focuses primarily on Marx, Engels, and Lenin, because these figures laid the foundations and formulated the basic principles of the philosophy of dialectical materialism and the methodology of materialist dialectics which are most universally applicable in all endeavors.

It is our desire that translating this important work into English will lead to further study, understanding, and appreciation of dialectical materialism as an applied philosophy which socialists can find value in returning to periodically. At the end of the book, we offer a glossary of terms which doubles as an index, appendices with summaries of important concepts and principles, and an afterword, in which we offer advice for further study and application of dialectical materialism.

At the time of publication, we are already in the process of translating and annotating Part 2 of this curriculum, which focuses on historical materialism, with the hopes of eventually releasing the full curriculum. Once it is complete, it will also be made available at BanyanHouse.org — where we also invite questions, constructive feedback, and suggestions.

Introduction

Just a generation ago, Vietnam was the site of the most brutal war of the 20^th century. More tonnage of bombs were dropped on the Vietnamese people than were dropped by all sides combined throughout the Second World War. In addition, countless acts of cruelty were used to scorch the very soil of the nation. By the end of Vietnam’s Resistance War Against Imperialist USA (known to the world as “the Vietnam War”), Agent Orange, napalm, and unexploded munitions had left a land deeply scarred and a people traumatised by decades of death and murder. The impression one had was that although Vietnam had won the war, it was so badly devastated that it could not hope to win the peace. But, miraculously, Vietnam is winning this war today, as the Vietnamese economy has become one of the fastest growing in the world and quality of life for the people is improving at a pace which could scarcely have been predicted in 1975.

No one could have imagined that Vietnam would turn around so dynamically and rapidly. How did they achieve this economic miracle? How could this nation — so recently devastated by imperialism and war — possibly be able to reconstruct, revive, rejuvenate, and rebuild? That story is now unfolding before our eyes.

Vietnam’s development has not come without hardship, struggle, setbacks, and mistakes. The people of Vietnam have had to learn hard lessons through struggle and practice to develop and strengthen ideological and theoretical positions. In this manner, the philosophical development of Vietnam deserves study and attention from socialists around the world. To outsiders, Vietnam can appear to be rife with contradictions. As depicted by Western journalists, Vietnam is simultaneously a success story driven by capitalist markets and a failing socialist state. Every victory is chalked up to private enterprise, while every setback is attributed to socialism. In this sense, the media has failed to understand the essential character of the core contradictions which drive the development of Vietnam politically, socially, and economically.

Luna Nguyen has used social media and played an incredibly important role in helping the English speaking world understand the complexities of such contradictions that beguile so many academics and experts. She has helped to give an insider’s perspective on her own country’s path of development towards socialism.

Nguyen’s translation of Part 1 of this influential work, Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism, a textbook studied by university and college students across Vietnam, is yet another big step in the direction of making Vietnam’s understanding of their own country’s development available to the English reading world.

For me, as an outsider, it is fascinating not only to see how deeply Vietnamese society takes an interest in European philosophical development (referencing Hume, Hegel, Descartes, Marx, Engels, and so many other Europeans, almost as if they are figures seated in some ancient monastery in Fansipan), but, even more importantly, how they have assimilated that knowledge into the wider context of their own history, society, and culture. The textbook truly comes alive in all the parts where these ideas are shown to be relevant to Vietnam itself. For instance, the textbook stands out with discussions of Ho Chi Minh’s concept of “proletarian piety,” which artfully blends elements of Vietnamese culture with Marxist concepts of class consciousness, or the story of Chi Pheo, who stands as a sympathetic stand-in for the interpretation of the unique characteristics of the Vietnamese Lumpenproletariat. The book itself is an instance of the dialectic of the universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete.

Just as importantly, it shows that, in Vietnam, Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought are not mere perfunctory rituals that are repeated like a learnt formula for this or that exam; but that although the Vietnamese political economy in its current form certainly contains contradictions which must be negated in the process of building the lower stage of socialism, the government remains seriously committed to the goals, theory, and practice of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.

Hence, I highly recommend this book, not merely because it is a well-illustrated and easy-to-read book on the principles of dialectical materialism, but more importantly because it offers an insight into how the Vietnamese government collects and synthesises the philosophical developments that are, on the one hand, the collective legacy of all of humanity, and, on the other hand, the concrete manifestations of a revolutionary theory of (and for the oppressed yearning for) freedom in every corner of the world.

March, 2023

Dr. Taimur Rahman

Editor’s Note

Working on this project has been one of the most illuminating experiences of my life. In translating this work, Luna has opened a door for English speakers into the wide world of Vietnamese scholarship and pedagogy as it relates to socialist theory and philosophy.

Luna and I have done our best to capture the original meaning and spirit of the text. Furthermore, as we have mentioned elsewhere, our annotations and illustrations are intended only to contextualize and expand on the core information of the original text similarly to the class/lecture setting for which the curriculum is intended.

In their lives, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were never able to finish clarifying and systematically describing the philosophy of dialectical materialism which their work was built upon. Engels attempted to structurally define the philosophy in Dialectics of Nature, but unfortunately that work was never completed since he decided to prioritize publishing the unfinished works of Marx after his untimely death.

I believe that this text is a great step forward in that work of systematically describing the philosophical system of dialectical materialism and the methodological system of materialist dialectics. I also believe it’s worth noting how the Vietnamese scholars who crafted this curriculum have embedded the urgent necessity of action — of creative application of these ideas — throughout the text in a way that I find refreshing and reflective of the works of Marx and Engels themselves.

As the text will explain, dialectical materialism is a universal system of philosophy which can be utilized to grapple with any and every conceivable problem which we humans might encounter in this universe. In Vietnam, dialectical materialism has been used to delve into matters of art, ethics, military science, and countless other fields of inquiry and endeavor. It is my hope that this book will, likewise, lead to a wider and fuller understanding and (more importantly) application of dialectical materialism in the Western world.

March, 2023

Emerican Johnson

A Message From The International Magazine

The International Magazine began in 2020 to connect international socialist movements and to strengthen the voice of oppressed people across the globe. We have been following the work of Vietnamese communists in their unique path towards peace, prosperity, and the construction of socialist values with a keen eye and much interest. It is with this spirit of international solidarity and a deep desire to learn from and share wisdom from our comrades around the world that we celebrate the release of this First English Edition of The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism Part 1: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism.

Ho Chi Minh once said: “In order to build socialism, first and foremost, we need to have socialist people who understand socialist ideology and have socialist values.”

To this end, Vietnamese communists have expended tremendous resources building a curriculum on Marxist-Leninist philosophy and analysis which includes dialectical materialism, materialist dialectics, scientific socialism, historical materialism, and political economy. These topics are taught in primary and secondary schools and are mandatory subjects for all students attending public universities in Vietnam. Beyond that, Vietnam offers free degrees to students who wish to study Marxist theory and philosophy and Ho Chi Minh Thought (defined as the application of Marxist philosophy to the unique material conditions of Vietnam). In this manner, Vietnam has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to developing “socialist people” “with socialist values.”

We are, therefore, extremely excited to have worked with Luna Nguyen on the translation and annotation of Part 1 of the Vietnamese university curriculum on the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism into English, which will make this unique perspective of socialist theory available to comrades around the world for the first time.

After having read through this volume, which outlines the fundamentals of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics, we find the most important lesson to be the relationship between theory and practice. According to the Vietnamese scholars who authored the original text, Marxist-Leninist philosophy must be considered a living, breathing philosophy which requires application in the real world — through practice — in order to be made fully manifest.

We hope that readers of this volume will carry forward this guidance through practice which suits your material conditions, wherever you are in the world.

If you would like to learn the perspective of socialists from other nations around the world, we invite you to visit our website at InternationalMagz.com — the home of The International Magazine online. There, you will find articles written by comrades from a wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities with a clear bias towards anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, and anti-imperialism!

In solidarity,

The Editorial Team of The International Magazine

Notes on Translation

Vietnamese is a very different language from English, which has presented many challenges in translating this book. Whenever possible, I have tried to let the “spirit” of the language guide me, without altering the structure, tone, and formatting of the book.

One thing you will likely notice right away: this book is highly condensed! This is because most Vietnamese students are already familiar with these concepts. We have added annotations to try to make the book more digestible for those of you who are new to Marxism-Leninism, and these annotations are explained on the next page.

I have worked hard to try to make the language in this book consistent with the language used in popular translations of works from Marx, Lenin, etc., that would be familiar to English-language students of Marxism-Leninism. That said, different translators have been translating these texts into English for over a century, such that different word choices have been used to relate the same concepts, and even Marx, Engels, and Lenin used different terms to describe the same concepts in many instances (not to mention the fact that Marx and Engels wrote primarily in German, whereas Lenin wrote primarily in Russian).

As such, I have made it my first priority to keep the language of this translation internally consistent to avoid confusion and, again, to match the spirit of the original text as much as possible. As a result, you may find differences between the translation choices made in this text and other translations, but it is my hope that the underlying meaning of each translation is properly conveyed.

March, 2023

Luna Nguyen

Guide to Annotations

This book was written as a textbook for Vietnamese students who are not specializing in Marxism-Leninism, and so it is meant to be a simple and condensed survey of the most fundamental principles of dialectical materialism to be used in a classroom environment with the guide of an experienced lecturer. That said, a typical Vietnamese college student will already have been exposed to many of the concepts presented herein throughout twelve years of primary and secondary education. As such, in translating and preparing this book for a foreign audience who are likely to be reading it without the benefit of a lecturer’s in-person instruction, we realized that we would need to add a significant amount of annotations to the text.

These annotations will take the following forms:

Short annotations which we insert into the text itself [will be included in square brackets like these].

Longer annotations which add further context and background information will be included in boxes like this.

We have also added diagrams to our annotations, as well as a detailed glossary/index and appendices, which are located in the back of the book. We hope these will resources will also be of use in studying other texts which are rooted in dialectical materialist philosophy.

Original Vietnamese Publisher’s Note

In 2004, under the direction of the Central Government, the Ministry of Education and Training, in collaboration with Sự Thật [Vietnamese for “The Truth,” the name of a National Political Publishing House], published a [political science and philosophy] curriculum for universities and colleges in Vietnam. This curriculum includes 5 subjects: Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, Scientific Socialism, Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Ho Chi Minh Thought. This curriculum has been an important contribution towards educating our students — the young intellectuals of the country — in political reasoning, so that the next generation will be able to successfully conduct national innovation.

With the new practice of education and training, in order to thoroughly grasp the reform of the Party’s ideological work and theory, and to advocate for reform in both teaching and learning at universities and colleges in general, on September 18^th, 2008, the Minister of Education and Training, in collaboration with Sự Thật, have issued a new program and published a textbook of political theory subjects for university and college students who are not specialized in Marxism — Leninism with Associate Professor and Doctor of Philosophy Nguyen Viet Thong as chief editor. There are three subjects:

Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

Curriculum of Ho Chi Minh Thought

Curriculum of the Revolutionary Path of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism was compiled by a collective of scientists and experienced lecturers from a number of universities, with Pham Van Sinh, Ph.D and Pham Quang Phan, Ph.D as co-editors. This curriculum has been designed to meet the practical educational requirements of students.

We hope this book will be of use to you.

April, 2016

NATIONAL POLITICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE — SỰ THẬT

Original Vietnamese Preface

To implement the resolutions of the Communist Party of Vietnam, especially the 5^th

Central Resolution on ideological work, theory, and press, on September 18^th, 2008, The Ministry of Education and Training has issued Decision Number 52/2008/QD-BGDDT, issuing the subject program: The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism for Students Non-Specialised in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. In collaboration with Truth — the National Political Publishing House — we published the Curriculum of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism for Students Non-Specialised in MarxismLeninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.

The authors of this text have drawn from the contents of the Central Council’s previous programs (Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, and Scientific Socialism) and compiled them into national textbooks for Marxist-Leninist science subjects and Ho Chi Minh Thought, as well as other curriculums for the Ministry of Education and Training. The authors have received comments from many collectives, such as the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and Administration, the Central Propaganda Department, as well as individual scientists and lecturers at universities and colleges throughout the country. Notably:

Associate Professor To Huy Rua, Ph.D, Professor Phung Huu Phu, Ph.D, Professor Nguyen Duc Binh, Professor Le Huu Nghia, Ph.D, Professor Le Huu Tang, Ph.D,

Professor Vo Dai Luoc, Ph.D, Professor Tran Phuc Thang, Ph.D, Professor Hoang

Chi Bao, Ph.D, Professor Tran Ngoc Hien, Ph.D, Professor Ho Van Thong, Associate

Professor Duong Van Thinh, Ph.D, Associate Professor Nguyen Van Oanh, Ph.D,

Associate Professor Nguyen Van Hao, Ph.D, Associate Professor Nguyen Duc Bach, PhD. Pham Van Chin, Phung Thanh Thuy, M.A., and Nghiem Thi Chau Giang, M.A.

After a period of implementation, the contents of the textbooks have been supplemented and corrected on the basis of receiving appropriate suggestions from universities, colleges, the contingent of lecturers of political theory, and scientists. However, due to objective and subjective limitations, there are still contents that need to be added and modified, and we would love to receive more comments to make the next edition of the curriculum more complete.

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism

1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts

Marxism-Leninism is a system of scientific opinions and theories which were built by Karl Marx^[1] and Friedrich Engels^[2], and defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin^[3]. Marxism-Leninism was formed and developed by interpreting reality as well as building on preceding ideas. It provides the fundamental worldview* and methodology of scientific awareness and revolutionary practice. It is a science that concerns the work of liberating the proletariat from all exploitative regimes with the ambition of liberating all of humanity from all forms of oppression.

Marxism-Leninism is made up of three basic theories which have strong relationships with each other. They are: Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist Political Economics, and Scientific Socialism.

Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism studies the basic principles of the movement and development of nature, society and human thought. It provides the fundamental worldview and methodology of scientific awareness and revolutionary practice.

Based on this philosophical worldview and methodology, Marxist-Leninist Political Economics studies the economic rules of society, especially the economic rules of the birth, development, and decay of the capitalist mode of production, as well as the birth and development of a new mode of production: the communist mode of production.

Scientific Socialism** is the inevitable result of applying the philosophical worldview and methodology of Marxism-Leninism, as well as Marxist-Leninist Political Economics, to reveal the objective rules of the socialist revolution process: the historical step from capitalism into socialism, and then communism.

Annotation 1

* A worldview encompasses the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about ourselves as human beings, and about life and the position of human beings in the world.

** The word “science,” and, by extension, “scientific” in Marxism-Leninism has specific meaning. Friedrich Engels was the first to describe the philosophy which he developed with Marx as “Scientific Socialism” in his book Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

However, it should be noted that the English phrase “scientific socialism” comes from

Engels’ use of the German phrase “wissenschaftlich sozialismus.”

“Wissenschaft” is a word which can be directly translated as “knowledge craft” in German, and this word encompasses a much more broad and general concept than the word “science” as it’s usually used in English.

In common usage, the word “science” in English has a relatively narrow definition, referring to systematically acquired, objective knowledge pertaining to a particular subject. But “wissenschaft” refers to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding. “Wissenschaft” is used in any study that involves systematic investigation. And so, “scientific socialism” is only an approximate translation of “wissenschaftlich sozialismus.” So, “scientific socialism” can be understood as a body of theory which analyzes and interprets the natural world to develop a body of knowledge, which must be constantly tested against reality, with the pursuit of changing the world to bring about socialism through the leadership of the proletariat.

Even though these three basic theories of Marxism-Leninism deal with different subjects, they are all parts of a unified scientific theory system: the science of liberating the proletariat from exploitative regimes and moving toward human liberation.

2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism

There have been two main stages of the birth and development of Marxism-Leninism:

1. Stage of formation and development of Marxism, as developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

2. Stage of defense and developing Marxism into Marxism-Leninism, as developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

a. Conditions and Premises of the Birth of Marxism

Annotation 2

The following sections will explain the conditions which led to the birth of Marxism. First, we will examine the Social-Economic conditions which lead to the birth of Marxism, and then we will examine the theoretical premises upon which Marxism was built. Later, we will also discuss the impact which 18^th and 19^th century advances in natural science had on the development of Marxism.

- Social-Economical Conditions

Marxism was born in the 1840s. This was a time when the capitalist mode of production was developing strongly in Western Europe on the foundation of the industrial revolution which succeeded first in England at the end of the 18^th century. Not only did this industrial revolution mark an important step forward in changing from handicraft cottage industry capitalism into a more greatly mechanized and industrialized capitalism, it also deeply changed society, and, above all, it caused the birth and development of the proletariat.

Annotation 3

Marx saw human society under capitalism divided into classes based on their relation to the means of production.

Means of production are physical inputs and systems used in the production of goods and services, including machinery, factory buildings, tools, and anything else used in producing goods and services. Capitalism is a political economy defined by private ownership of the means of production.

Within the framework of Dialectical Materialism, all classes are defined by internal and external relationships [see The Principle of General Relationships, p. 107]; chiefly, classes are defined by their relations to the means of production and to one another.

The proletariat are the working class — the people who provide labor under capitalism, but who do not own their own means of production, and must therefore sell their labor to those who do own means of production: the bourgeoisie. As the owners of the means of production, the bourgeoisie are the ruling class under capitalism.

According to Marx and Engels, there are other classes within the capitalist political economy. Specifically, Marx named the petty bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat. Marx defined the petty bourgeoisie as including semi-autonomous merchants, farmers, and so on who are self-employed, own small and limited means of production, or otherwise fall in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx described the petty bourgeoisie as:

... fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society... The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.

Vietnam’s Textbook of History for High School Students gives this definition of the petty bourgeoisie in the specific context of Vietnamese history:

The petty bourgeois class includes: intellectuals, scientists, and small business owners, handicraftsmen, doctors, lawyers, and civil servants. The vast majority of contemporary intellectuals before the August Revolution of 1945, including students, belonged to the petty bourgeoisie. In general, they were also oppressed by imperialism and feudalism, often unemployed and uneducated.
The petty bourgeoisie were intellectually and politically sensitive. They did not directly exploit labor. Therefore, they easily absorbed revolutionary education and went along with the workers and peasants.
However, the intelligentsia and students often suffer from great weaknesses, such as: theory not being coupled with practice, contempt for labor, vague ideas, unstable stances, and erratic behavior in political action.
Some other petty bourgeoisie (scientists and small businessmen, freelancers, etc.) were also exploited by imperialism and feudalism. Their economic circumstances were precarious, and they often found themselves unemployed and bankrupt. Therefore, the majority also participated in and supported the resistance war and revolution. They are also important allies of the working class.
In general, these members of the petty bourgeoisie had a number of weaknesses: self-interest, fragmentation, and a lack of determination. Therefore, the working class has a duty to agitate and spread propaganda to such members of the petty bourgeoisie, organize them, and help them to develop their strong points while correcting their weaknesses. It is necessary to skillfully lead them, make them determined to serve the people, reform their ideology, and unite with the workers and peasants in order to become one cohesive movement. Then, they will become a great asset for the public in resistance war and revolution.

Marx defined the “lumpenproletariat” as another class which includes the segments of society with the least privilege — most exploited by capitalism — such as thieves, houseless people, etc.

In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx defined the lumpenproletariat as: “The ‘dangerous class’ (lumpenproletariat), the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society.” Marx did not have much hope for the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat, writing that they “may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”

Political Theories, an official journal of the Ho Chi Minh National Institute of Politics, discussed the lumpenproletariat in the specific context of Vietnamese revolutionary history:

It should be noted that Marxism-Leninism has never held that the historical mission of the working class is rooted in poverty and impoverishment. Poverty and low standards of living make workers hate the regime of capitalism, and causes disaster for workers, but the basic driving force behind the revolutionary struggle of the working class lies in the very nature of capitalist production and from the irreconcilable contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie.
Moreover, it should not be conceived that a class is capable of leading the revolution because it is the poorest class. In the old societies, there were classes that were extremely poor and had to go through many struggles against the ruling class, but they could never win and keep power, and did not become the ruling class of society.
History has proven that the class that represents newly emerging productive forces which are able to build a more advanced mode of production than the old ones can lead the revolution and organize society into the regime they represent. Fetishizing poverty and misery is a corruption of Marxism-Leninism...
The very existence of the lumpenproletariat is strong evidence of the inhumane nature of capitalist society, which regularly recreates a large class of outcasts at the bottom of society.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, millions of Vietnamese people were forced to leave their homes in rural farmlands to work for plantations and factories which were owned by French colonialists. These workers were functionally enslaved, being regularly physically abused by colonial masters, barred from any education whatsoever, and receiving only the bare minimum to survive. As a result, under French colonial rule, about 90% of Vietnamese were illiterate and the French aimed to indoctrinate Vietnamese people into believing that they were inferior to the French.

The French colonialists also worked with Vietnamese landlords to exploit peasants in rural areas. Those peasants received barely enough to survive and, like the plantation slaves, were prohibited from receiving education. Because Vietnamese peasants and colonial slaves composed the majority of workers while being so severely oppressed and living in conditions of such abject poverty, it was difficult to fully distinguish between the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat in Vietnam during the colonial era.

During this time, Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists developed the philosophy of “Proletarian Piety.” The word “piety,” here, is a translation of the Vietnamese word hiếu, which originally comes from the Confucianist philosophy of “filial piety.” Filial piety demanded children to deeply respect, honor, and obey their parents. Through the concept of Proletarian Piety, Ho Chi Minh adapted this concept to proletarian revolution, calling for communists to deeply love, respect, and tirelessly serve the oppressed masses. This philosophical concept sought to unite the proletariat, lumpenproletariat, and petty bourgeoisie into one united revolutionary class. Even some feudal landlords and capitalists — who were, themselves, oppressed by the colonizing French — were willing to fight for communist revolution and were welcomed into the revolutionary movement if they were willing to adhere to the principle of proletarian piety. The working class and peasantry would lead the revolution, the more privileged classes would follow, and all communist revolutionists would serve the oppressed masses through sacrifice and struggle.

During this period, many novels were written and circulated widely which featured main characters who were members of the lumpenproletariat or enslaved by the French, such as Bỉ Vỏ, a story about a beautiful peasant girl who was forced to become a thief in the city, and Chí Phèo, the story of a peasant who worked as a servant in a feudal landlord’s house who was sent to prison and became a destitute alcoholic after being released. The purpose of these stories was to show the cruelty of the colonialist-capitalist society of Vietnam in the 1930’s and to inspire proletarian piety, including empathy and respect for the extreme suffering and oppression of the lumpenproletariat, peasantry, and colonial slaves. These stories also presented sympathetic views of intellectuals and members of the petty bourgeoisie: for instance, in the novel Lão Hạc, the son of a peasant leaves to work for a French plantation and the father never sees him again. The aged peasant becomes extremely poor and sick without the support of his son, and the only person in the village who helps him is a teacher, representing the intellectual segment of the petty bourgeoisie.

The writers of these novels were communists who wanted to promote the principles of proletarian piety. Rather than looking down on the most oppressed members of society, and rather than sewing distrust and contempt for the petty bourgeoisie, Vietnamese communists inspired solidarity and collaboration between all of the oppressed peoples of Vietnam to overthrow French colonialism, feudalism, and capitalism. Proletarian piety was crucial for uniting the divided and conquered masses of Vietnam and successfully overthrowing colonialism. Note that these strategies were developed specifically for colonial Vietnam. Every revolutionary struggle will take place in unique material conditions^[4], and the composition and characteristics of each class will vary over time and from one place to another. It is important for revolutionists to carefully apply the principles of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to accurately analyze class conditions in order to develop strategies and plans which will most suitably and efficiently lead to successful revolution.

The deep contradictions* between the socialized production force** and the capitalist relations of production*** were first revealed by the economic depression of 1825 and the series of struggles between workers and the capitalist class which followed.

Annotation 4

* See: Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction, p. 175.

** In Marxism, “socialization” is simply the idea that human society transforms labor and production from a solitary, individual act into a collective, social act. In other words, as human society progresses, people “socialize” labor into increasingly complex networks of social relations: from individuals making their own tools, to agricultural societies engaged in collective farming, to modern industrial societies with factories, logistical networks, etc.

The production force is the combination of the means of production and workers within any society. The “Socialized Production Force,” therefore, is a production force which has been socialized — that is to say, a production force which has been organized into collective social activity. Under capitalism, the “Socialized Production Force” consists of the proletariat, or the working class, as well as means of production which are owned by capitalists.

*** Marx and Engels defined “relations of production” as the social relationships that human beings must accept in order to survive. Relations of production are, by definition, not voluntary, because human beings must enter into them in order to receive material needs in order to survive within a given society. Under capitalism, the relations of production require the working class to rent their labor to capitalists to receive wages which they need to procure material needs like food and shelter. This is an inherent contradiction because a small minority of society (the capitalist class) own the means of production while the vast majority of society (the working class) must submit to exploitation through wage servitude in order to survive.

Examples of such early struggles include: the resistance of workers in Lyon, France in 1831 and 1834; the Chartist movement in Britain from 1835 to 1848; the workers’ movement in Silesia (Germany) in 1844, etc. These events prove as historical evidence that the proletariat had become an independent political force which pioneered the fight for a democratic, equal, and progressive society.

Annotation 5

Here are some brief descriptions of the early working class movements mentioned above:

Resistance of Workers in Lyon, France:

In 1831 in France, due to heavy exploitation and hardship, textile workers in Lyon revolted to demand higher wages and shorter working hours. The rebels took control of the city for ten days. Their determination to fight is reflected in the slogan: “Live working or die fighting!”

This resistance was brutally crushed by the government, which supported the factory owners. In 1834, silk mill workers in Lyon revolted again to demand the establishment of a republic. The fierce struggle went on for four days, but was extinguished in a bloody battle against the French army. About 10,000 insurgents were imprisoned or deported.

The Chartist Movement in Britain:

Chartism was a working class movement in the United Kingdom which rose up in response to anti-worker laws such as the Poor Law Amendment of 1834, which drove poor people into workhouses and removed other social programs for the working poor. Legislative failure to address the demands of the working poor led to a broadly popular mass movement which would go on to organize around the People’s Charter of 1838, which was a list of six demands which included extension of the vote and granting the working class the right to hold office in the House of Commons.

In 1845, Karl Marx visited Britain for the first time, along with Friedrich Engels, to meet with the leaders of the Chartist movement (with whom Engels had already established a close relationship). After various conflicts and struggles, Chartism ultimately began to decline in 1848 as more socialist-oriented movements rose up in prominence.

Workers’ Movement in Silesia, Germany:

In June, 1844, disturbances and riots occurred in the Prussian province of Silesia, a major center of textile manufacturing. In response, the Prussian army was called upon to restore order in the region. In a confrontation between the weavers and troops, shots were fired into the crowd, killing 11 protesters and wounding many others. The leaders of the disturbances were arrested, flogged, and imprisoned. This event has gained enormous significance in the history of the German labor movement.

In particular, Karl Marx regarded the uprising as evidence of the birth of a German workers’ movement. The weavers’ rebellion served as an important symbol for later generations concerned with poverty and oppression of the working class in German society.

It quickly became apparent that the revolutionary practice of the proletariat needed the guidance of scientific theories. The birth of Marxism was to meet that objective requirement; in the meantime, the revolutionary practice itself became the practical premise for Marxism to continuously develop.

- Theoretical Premises

The birth of Marxism not only resulted from the objective requirement of history, it was also the result of inheriting the quintessence* of various previously established frameworks of human philosophical theory such as German classical philosophy, British classical political economics, and utopianism in France and Britain.

Annotation 6

* In the original Vietnamese, the word tinh hoa is used, which we roughly translate to the word quintessence throughout this book. Literally, it means “the best, highest, most beautiful, defining characteristics” of a concept, and, unlike the English word quintessence, it has an exclusively positive connotation. Quintessence should not be confused with the universal category of Essence, which is discussed on p. 156.

German classical philosophy, especially the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel^[5] and Ludwig Feuerbach^[6], had deeply influenced the formation of the Marxist worldview and philosophical methodology.

Annotation 7

German classical philosophy was a movement of idealist philosophers of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Idealism is a philosophical position that holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within the human consciousness. Idealists believe that human reason is the best way to seek truth, and that consciousness is thus the only reliable source of knowledge and information.

One of Hegel’s important achievements was his critique of the metaphysical method.

Annotation 8

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the fundamental nature of reality by classifying things, phenomena, and ideas into various categories. Metaphysical philosophy has taken many forms through the centuries, but one common shortcoming of metaphysical thought is a tendency to view things and ideas in a static, abstract manner. Metaphysical positions view nature as a collection of objects and phenomena which are isolated from one another and fundamentally unchanging. Engels explained the problems of metaphysics in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — hese were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years.

But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.

Francis Bacon (1561 — 1626) is considered the father of empiricism, which is the belief that knowledge can only be derived from human sensory experience [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. Bacon argued that scientific knowledge could only be derived through inductive reasoning in which specific observations are used to form general conclusions. John Locke (1632 — 1704) was another early empiricist, who was heavily influenced by Francis Bacon. Locke, too, was an empiricist, and is considered to be the “father of liberalism.”

Engels was highly critical of the application of metaphysical philosophy to natural science. As Engels continues in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes — ideas — are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses... For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other.
At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees.

Dialectical Materialism stands in contrast to metaphysics in many ways. Rather than splitting the world into distinct, isolated categories, Dialectical Materialist philosophy seeks to view the world in terms of relationships, motion, and change. Dialectical Materialism also refutes the hard empiricism of Bacon and Locke by describing a dialectical relationship between the material world and consciousness [see: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].

For the first time in the history of human philosophy, Hegel expressed the content of dialectics in strict arguments with a system of rules and categories.

Annotation 9

Dialectics is a philosophical methodology which searches for truth by examining contradictions and relationships between things, objects, and ideas. Ancient dialecticians such as Aristotle and Socrates explored dialectics primarily through rhetorical discourse between two or more different points of view about a subject with the intention of finding truth.

In this classical form of dialectics, a thesis is presented. This thesis is an opening argument about the subject at hand. An antithesis, or counter-argument, is then presented. Finally, the thesis and antithesis are combined into a synthesis, which is an improvement on both the thesis and antithesis which brings us closer to truth.

Hegel resurrected dialectics to the forefront of philosophical inquiry for the German Idealists. As Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

Hegel’s work’s greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics as the highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought.

Hegel’s great contribution to dialectics was to develop dialectics from a simple method of examining truth based on discourse into an organized, systematic model of nature and of history. Unfortunately, Hegel’s dialectics were idealist in nature. Hegel believed that the ideal served as the primary basis of reality. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels strongly rejected Hegel’s idealism, as well as the strong influences of Christian theology on Hegel’s work, but they also saw great potential in his system of dialectics, as Marx explained in Capital (Volume 1):

The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.

Starting with a critique of the mysterious idealism of Hegel’s philosophy, Marx and Engels inherited the “rational kernel” of Hegelian dialectics and successfully built materialist dialectics.

Annotation 10

In order to understand the ways in which the critique of Hegel’s philosophy by Marx and Engels led to the development of dialectical materialism, some background information on materialism — and the conflicts between idealist and materialist philosophy in the era of Marx and Engels — is needed.

Materialism is a philosophical position that holds that the material world exists outside of the mind, and that human ideas and thoughts stem from observation and sensory experience of this external world. Materialism rejects the idealist notion that truth can only be sought through reasoning and human consciousness. The history and development of both idealism and materialism are discussed more in the section The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues on page 48.

In the era of Marx and Engels, the leading philosophical school of materialism was known as empiricism. Empiricism holds that we can only obtain knowledge through human sense perception. Marx and Engels were materialists, but they rejected empiricism (see Engels’ critique of empiricism in Annotation 8, p. 8).

One reason Marx and Engels opposed the strict empiricist view was that it made materialism vulnerable to attack from idealists, because it ignored objective relations and knowledge that went beyond sense data. The empiricist point of view also provided the basis for the subjective idealism of George Berkeley [see Annotation 32, p. 27] and the skepticism of David Hume. Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism is empiricist in that it supports the idea that humans can only discover knowledge through direct sense experience. Therefore, Berkeley argues, individuals are unable to obtain any real knowledge about abstract concepts such as “matter.”

Similarly, David Hume’s radical skepticism, which Engels called “agnosticism,” denied the possibility of possessing any concrete knowledge. As Hume wrote in A Treatise on Human Nature: “I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.” Hume’s radical skepticism lay in his empiricist belief that the only source of knowledge is sense experience; but Hume went a step further, doubting that even sense experience could be reliable, adding: “The essence and composition of external bodies are so obscure, that we mustnecessarily, in our reasonings, or rather conjectures concerning them, involveourselves in contradictions and absurdities.”

Later, in the appendix of the same text, Hume argues that conscious reasoning suffers from the same unreliability: “I had entertained some hopes (that) the intellectual world ... would be free from those contradictions, and absurdities, whichseem to attend every explication, that human reason can give of the material world.”

Engels dismissed radical skepticism as “scientifically a regression and practically merely a shamefaced way of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world.” Engels directly refutes radical skepticism in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

... how do we know that our senses give us correct representations of the objects we perceive through them? ... whenever we speak of objects, or their qualities, of which (we) cannot know anything for certain, but merely the impressions which they have produced on (our) senses. Now, this line of reasoning seems undoubtedly hard to beat by mere argumentation. But before there was argumentation, there was action... And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perception.

This concept of determining the truth of knowledge and perception through practical experience is fundamental to dialectical materialist philosophy and the methodology of materialist dialectics, and is discussed in further detail in Chapter 3, p. 204.

Another weakness of empiricism is that it denies the objectiveness of social relations, which cannot be fully and properly analyzed through sensory experience and observation alone. Marx saw that social relations are, indeed, objective in nature and can be understood despite their lack of sensory observability, and that doing so is vital in comprehending subjects such as political economy, as he observes in Capital Volume I:

(The true) reality of the value of commodities contrasts with the gross material reality of these same commodities (the reality of which is perceived by our bodily senses) in that not an atom of matter enters into the reality of value. We may twist and turn a commodity this way and that — as a thing of value it still remains unappreciable by our bodily senses.

In other words, Marx pointed out that no amount of sense data about a commodity will fully explain its value. One can know the size, weight, hardness, etc., of a commodity, but without analyzing the social relations and other aspects of the commodity which can’t be directly observed with the senses, one can never know or understand the true value of the commodity. The materialism of Marx and Engels acknowledges the physical, material world as the first basis for reality, but Marx and Engels also understood that it was vital to account for other aspects of rational knowledge (such as social relations). Marx and Engels believed that empiricist materialism had roughly the same flaw as idealism: a lack of a connection between the material and consciousness. While the idealists completely dismissed sense data and relied exclusively on reasoning and consciousness, the empiricists dismissed conscious thought to focus solely on what could be sensed.

It is important to note that, while Marx and Engels rejected empiricism, they did not reject empirical knowledge nor empirical data which is collected from scientific observation [see Annotation 216, p. 210]. On the contrary, empirical data was key to the works of Marx and Engels in developing dialectical materialism. As Lenin explained: “(Marx) took one of the economic formations of society – the system of commodity production – and on the basis of a vast mass of data which he studied for not less than twenty-five years gave a most detailed analysis of the laws governing this formation and its development.” And so, the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels served to bridge the gap between idealism and materialism. They believed that our conscious thoughts are derived from material processes, but that consciousness can also influence the material world. This is discussed in more detail in the section “Materialism and Dialectical Materialism” on page 48.

Marx and Engels also criticized many limitations of Feuerbach’s methodology and viewpoint* — especially Feuerbach’s prescriptions for how to deal with social problems — but they also highly appreciated the role of Feuerbach’s thought in the fight against idealism and religion to assert that nature comes first, and that nature is permanent and independent from human willpower.

Annotation 11

* Viewpoint, point of view, or perspective, is the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking from which problems are considered. Marx and Engels were critical of Feurbach’s hyper-focused humanist viewpoint.

Feuerbach’s atheism and materialism offered an important foundation for Marx and Engels to develop from an idealist worldview into a materialist worldview, which led them directly to developing the philosophical foundation of communism.

Annotation 12

Ludwig Feuerbach was one of the “Young Hegelians” who adapted and developed the ideals of Hegel and other German Idealists. Feuerbach was a humanist materialist: he focused on humans and human nature and the role of humans in the material world. Like Marx and Engels, Feuerbach dismissed the religious mysticism of Hegel. Importantly, Feuerbach broke from Hegel’s religious-mystical belief that humans descended from supernatural origins, instead describing humans as originating from the natural, material world.

Feuerbach also distinguished between the objectivity of the material external world and the subjectivity of human conscious thought, and he drew a distinction between external reality as it really exists and external reality as humans perceive it. Feuerbach believed that human nature was rooted in specific, intrinsic human attributes and activities. As Feuerbach explains in The Essence of Christianity: “What, then, is the nature of man, of which he is conscious, or what constitutes the specific distinction, the proper humanity of man? Reason, Will, Affection.”

Feuerbach explained that the actions of “thinking, willing, and loving,” which correspond to the essential characteristics of “reason, will, and love,” are what define humanity, continuing: “Reason, Will, Love, are not powers which man possesses, for he is nothing without them, he is what he is only by them; they are the constituent elements of his nature, which he neither has nor makes, the animating, determining, governing powers — divine, absolute powers — to which he can oppose no resistance.”

In his Collected Works, Feuerbach further explains that materialism is supported by the fact that nature predates human consciousness:

Natural science, at least in its present state, necessarily leads us back to a point when the conditions for human existence were still absent, when nature, i.e., the earth, was not yet an object of the human eye and mind, when, consequently, nature was an absolutely non-human entity (absolut unmenschliches Wesen). Idealism may retort: but nature also is something thought of by you (von dir gedachte). Certainly, but from this it does not follow that this nature did not at one time actually exist, just as from the fact that Socrates and Plato do not exist for me if I do not think of them, it does not follow that Socrates and Plato did not actually at one time exist without me.

Marx and Engels were heavily influenced by Feuerbach’s materialism, but they took issue with Feuerbach’s sharp focus on human attributes and activities in isolation from the external material world. As Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach: “The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that... reality... is conceived only in the form of the object... but not as sensuous human activity.”

“Sensuous human activity” has a very specific meaning to Marx; it grew from two conflicting schools of thought:

The idealists believed the external world can only be understood through the active subjective thought processes of human beings, while the empiricist materialists believed that human beings are passive subjects of the material world. Marx synthesized these contradicting ideas into what he called “sensuous activity,” which balanced idealist and materialist philosophical concepts.

According to Marx, humans are simultaneously active in the world in the sense that our conscious activity can transform the world, and passive in the sense that all human thoughts fundamentally derive from observation and sense experience of the material world (see Chapter 2, p. 53). So, Marx and Engels believed that Feuerbach was misguided in defining human nature by our traits alone, portraying “the essence of man” as isolated from the material world and from social relations. In addition, Feuerbach’s humanism was based on an abstract, ideal version of human beings, whereas the humanism of Marx and Engels is firmly rooted in the reality of “real men living real lives.” As Engels wrote in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy:

He (Feuerbach) clings fiercely to nature and man; but nature and man remain mere words with him. He is incapable of telling us anything definite either about real nature or real men. But from the abstract man of Feuerbach, one arrives at real living men only when one considers them as participants in history... The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel of Feuerbach’s new religion, had to be replaced by the science of real men and of their historical development. This further development of Feuerbach’s standpoint beyond Feuerbach was inaugurated by Marx in 1845 in The Holy Family.^[7]

Marx and Engels believed that human nature could only be understood by examining the reality of actual humans in the real world through our relationships with each other, with nature, and with the external material world. Importantly, it was Marx’s critique of Feuerbach which led him to define political action as the key pursuit of philosophy with these immortal words from Theses on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

The British classical political economics, represented by such economists as Adam Smith^[8] and David Ricardo^[9], also contributed to the formation of Marxism’s historical materialist conception [see p. 23].

Smith and Ricardo were some of the first to form theories about labor value in the study of political economics. They made important conclusions about value and the origin of profit, and about the importance of material production and rules that govern economies. However, because there were still many limitations in the study methodology of Smith and Ricardo, these British classical political economists failed to recognise the historical characteristic of value*; the internal contradictions of commodity production**; and the duality of commodity production labor***.

Annotation 13

* Historical Characteristic of Value

Marx generally admired the work of Smith and Ricardo, but saw major flaws which undermined the utility of their classical economic theories. Perhaps chief among these flaws, according to Marx, was a tendency for Smith and Ricardo to uphold an ahistoric view of society and capitalism. In other words, classical economists see capitalism as existing in harmony with the eternal and universal laws of nature, rather than seeing capitalism as a result of historical processes of development [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. Marx did not believe that the economic principles of capitalism resulted from nature, but rather, from historical conflict between different classes. He believed that the principles of political economies changed over time, and would continue to change into the future, whereas Smith and Ricardo saw economic principles as fixed, static concepts that were not subject to change over time. As Marx explains in The Poverty of Philosophy:

Economists express the relations of bourgeois production, the division of labour, credit, money, etc. as fixed, immutable, eternal categories... Economists explain how production takes place in the above mentioned relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement that gave them birth... these categories are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.

** Internal Contradictions of Commodity Production

In Marxist terms, a commodity is specifically something that has both a use value and a value-form (see Annotation 14, p. 16), but in simpler terms, a commodity is anything that can be bought or sold. Importantly, capitalism transforms human labor into a commodity, as workers must sell their labor to capitalists in exchange for wages. Marx pointed out that contradictions arise when commodities are produced under capitalism: because capitalists, who own the means of production, decide what to produce based solely on what they believe to be most profitable, the commodities that are being produced do not always meet the actual needs of society. Certain commodities are under-produced while others are over-produced, which leads to crisis and instability.

*** Duality of Commodity Production Labor

In Capital, Marx describes commodity production labor as existing in a duality — that is to say, it exists with two distinct aspects:

First, there is abstract labor, which Marx describes as “labor-power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure.” This is simply the expenditure of human energy in the form of labor, without any regard to production or value of the labor output. Second, there is concrete labor, which is the aspect of labor that refers to the production of a specific commodity with a specific value through labor.

Marx argues that human labor, therefore, is simultaneously, an activity which will produce some specific kind of product, and also an activity that generates value in the abstract. Marx and Engels were the first economists to discuss the duality of labor, and their observations on the duality of labor were closely tied to their theories of the different aspects of value (use value, exchange value, etc.), which was key to their analysis of capitalism.

Smith and Ricardo also failed to distinguish between simple commodity production and capitalist commodity production*, and could not accurately analyse the form of value** in capitalist commodity production.

Annotation 14

* Commodity Production

Simple commodity production (also known as petty commodity production) is the production of commodities under the conditions which Marx called the “Simple Exchange” of commodities. Simple exchange occurs when individual producers trade the products they have made directly, themselves, for other commodities. Under simple exchange, workers directly own their own means of production and sell products which they have made with their own labor.

Simple commodity production and simple exchange use what Marx referred to as “C→M→C mode of circulation” [see Annotation 60, p. 59]. Circulation is simply the way in which commodities and money are exchanged for one another.

C→M→C stands for:

Commodity → Money → Commodity

So, with simple commodity production and simple exchange, workers produce commodities, which they then sell for money, which they use to buy other commodities which they need. For example, a brewer might make beer, which they sell for money, which they use to buy food, housing, and other commodities which they need to live.

In the C→M→C mode of circulation, the producers and consumers of commodities have a direct relationship to the commodities which are being bought and sold. The sellers have produced the commodities sold with their own labor, and they directly consume the commodities which they purchase with the money thus obtained.

Capitalist commodity production and capitalist exchange, on the other hand, are based on the M→C→M’ mode of circulation.

M→C→M’ stands for:

Money → Commodity → More Money

Under this mode of circulation, capitalists spend money to buy commodities (including the commodified labor of workers), with the intention of selling commodities for MORE MONEY than they began with. The capitalist has no direct relationship to the commodity being produced and sold, and the capitalist is solely interested in obtaining more money.

Capitalist commodity production, therefore, uses the M→C→M’ mode of circulation, in which capitalists own the means of production and pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor, which is used to produce commodities. The capitalists then sell these commodities for profits which are not shared with the workers who provided the labor which produced the commodities.

** Value-Form

This is one of the most important, and potentially most confusing, concepts in all of Marx’s analysis of capitalism. Marx explains these principles at length in Appendix of the 1^st German Edition of Capital, Volume 1, but here are some of the fundamentals:

One of Marx’s key breakthroughs was understanding that commodities have many different properties which have different effects in political economies.

Just as Commodity Production Labor exists in a duality of Concrete Labor and Abstract Labor (see Annotation 13, p. 15), commodities themselves also exist in duality according to Marx:

Commodities have both “use-value” and “value.”

Use-Value (which corresponds to Concrete Labor) is the commodity’s tangible form of existence; it is what we can physically sense when we observe a commodity. By extension, use-value encompasses how a commodity can be used in the material world.

Value, or the Value-Form, is the social form of a commodity, which is to say, it represents the stable relationships intrinsic to the commodity [see Content and Form, p. 147].

Note that this relates to the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideal [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].

Value-forms represent relational equivalencies of commodities, i.e.: 20 yards of linen = 10 pounds of tea

These relational equivalencies are tied to the equivalent labor value (see Annotation 15 below, and Annotation 26, p. 23) used to produce these commodities. The value-form of a commodity is the social form because it embodies relational equivalencies:

1. The value-form represents the relationship between the commodity and the labor which was used to produce the commodity.

2. The value-form represents the relationship between a commodity and one or more other commodities.

As Marx explains in Appendix to the 1^st German Edition of Capital: “Hence by virtue of its value-form the (commodity) now stands also in a social relation no longer to only a single other type of commodity, but to the world of commodities. As a commodity it is a citizen of this world.”

Understanding the social form of commodities — the value-form — was crucial for Marx to develop a deeper understanding of money and capitalism. Marx argued that classical economists like Ricardo and Smith conflated economic categories such as “exchange value,” “value,” “price,” “money,” etc., which meant that they could not possibly fully understand or analyze capitalist economies.

British classical political economists like Ricardo and Smith outlined the scientific factors of the theories of labor value* and contributed many progressive thoughts which Marx adapted and further developed.

Annotation 15

* Adam Smith and David Ricardo revolutionized the labor theory of value, which held that the value of a good or service is determined by the amount of human labor required to produce it.

Thus, Marx was able to solve the contradictions that these economists could not solve and he was able to establish the theory of surplus value*, scientific evidence for the exploitative nature of capitalism, and the economic factors which will lead to the eventual fall of capitalism and the birth of socialism.

Annotation 16

* David Ricardo developed the concept of surplus value. Surplus value is the difference between the amount of income made from selling a product and the amount it costs to produce it. Marx would go on to expand on the concept of surplus value considerably.

Utopianism' had been developing for a long time and reached its peak in the late 18^th century with famous thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon^[10], François Marie Charles Fourier^[11] and Robert Owen^[12]. Utopianism sought to elevate the humanitarian spirit and strongly criticised capitalism by calling attention to the misery of the working class under capitalism. It also offered many far-ranging opinions and analyses of the development of human history and laid out some basic foundational factors and principles for a new society. However, Utopianism could not scientifically address the nature of capitalism. It failed to detect the Law of Development of Capitalism^[13] and also failed to recognise the roles and missions of the working class as a social force that can eliminate capitalism to build an equal, non-exploitative society.

Annotation 17

The early industrial working class existed in miserable conditions, and the political movement of utopianism was developed by people who believed that a better world could be built. The utopianists believed they could create “a New Moral World” of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity through education, science, technology, and communal living. For instance, Robert Owen was a wealthy textile manufacturer who tried to build a better society for workers in New Harmony, Indiana, in the USA. Owen purchased the entire town of New Harmony in 1825 as a place to build an ideal society. Owen’s vision failed after two years for a variety of reasons, and many other wealthy capitalists in the early 19^th century drew up similar plans which also failed.

Utopianism was one of the first political and industrial movements that criticized the conditions of capitalism by exposing the miserable situations of poor workers and offering a vision of a better society, and was one of the first movements to attempt to mitigate the faults of capitalism in practice.

Unfortunately, the utopianists were not ideologically prepared to replace capitalism, and all of their attempts to build a better alternative to capitalism failed. Marx and Engels admired the efforts of the utopianist movement, and studied their attempts and failures closely in developing their own political theories, concluding that the utopianists failed in large part because they did not understand how capitalism developed, nor the role of the working class in the revolution against capitalism.

As Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

(The) historical situation also dominated the founders of Socialism. To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions correspond crude theories. The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.

Engels is explaining, here, that — in a sense — the utopian socialists were victims of arriving too early. Capitalism had not yet developed enough for its opponents to formulate plans based on actual material conditions, since capitalism was only just emerging into a stable form. Without a significant objective, material basis, the utopians were forced to rely upon reasoning alone to confront capitalism.

In this sense, the early historical utopianists fell into philosophical utopianism in its broader sense — defined by the mistaken assertion that the ideal can determine the material [see Annotation 95, p. 94]. In believing that they could build a perfect society based on ideals and “pure fantasy” alone without a material basis for development, the utopians were, in essence, idealists. As Engels explained: “from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism.” Engels concluded that in order to successfully overthrow capitalism, revolution would need to be grounded in materialism: “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.”

The humanitarian spirit and compassionate analysis which the utopians embodied in their efforts to lay out concrete features of a better future society became important theory premises for the birth of the scientific theory of socialism in Marxism.

- Natural Science Premise:

Along with social-economic conditions and theory premises, the achievements of the natural sciences were also foundational to the development of arguments and evidence which assert the correctness of Marxism’s viewpoints and methodology.

Annotation 18

Natural science is science which deals with the natural world, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, etc.

Three major scientific breakthroughs which were important to the development of Marxism include:

• The law of conservation and transformation of energy scientifically proved the inseparable relationships and the mutual transformation and conservation of all the forms of motion of matter in nature.

• The theory of evolution offered a scientific basis for the development of diverse forms of life through natural selection.

• Cell theory was a scientific basis proving unity in terms of origins, physical forms and material structures of living creatures. It also explained the development of life through those relationships.

These scientific discoveries led to the rejection of theological and metaphysical viewpoints which centered the role of the “creator” in the pursuit of truth.

Annotation 19

For centuries in Europe, natural science and philosophy had been heavily dominated by theological viewpoints which centered God in the pursuit of truth. Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, and many other metaphysical philosophers who developed the earliest theories of modern natural science centered their religious beliefs in their philosophies. These theological viewpoints varied in many ways, but all shared a characteristic of centering a “creator” in the pursuit of philosophical and scientific inquiry.

Together, the law of conservation and transformation of energy, the theory of evolution, and cell theory provided an alternative viewpoint which allowed scientists to remove the “creator” from the scientific equation. For the first time, natural scientists and philosophers had concrete theoretical explanations for the origin and development of the universe, life, and reality which did not rely on a supernatural creator.

Marx and Engels closely observed and studied the groundbreaking scientific progress of their era. They believed strongly in materialist scientific methods and the data which they produced, and based their analysis and philosophical doctrines on such observations. They recognized the importance and validity of the scientific achievements of their era, and they developed the philosophy of Dialectical Materialism into a system which would help humans study and understand the whole material world.

In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels explained that ancient Greek dialecticians had correctly realized that the world is “an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away.”

Engels goes on to explain that it was understandable for early natural scientists to break their inquiries and analysis down into specialized fields and categories of science to focus on precise, specific, narrow subject matters so that they could build up a body of empirical data. However, as data accumulated, it became clear that all of these isolated, individual fields of study must somehow be unified back together coherently and cohesively in order to obtain a deeper and more useful understanding of reality.

As Engels wrote in On Dialectics:

Empirical natural science has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for knowledge that the necessity of classifying it in each separate field of investigation systematically and in accordance with its inner inter-connection has become absolutely imperative. It is becoming equally imperative to bring the individual spheres of knowledge into the correct connection with one another. In doing so, however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical thinking can be of assistance.

As science grows increasingly complex, a necessity develops for a philosophical and cognitive framework which can be used to make sense of the influx of information from disparate fields. In Dialectics of Nature, Engels explains how dialectical materialism is the perfect philosophical foundation for unifying scientific fields into one cohesive framework:

Dialectics divested of mysticism becomes an absolute necessity for natural science, which has forsaken the field where rigid categories sufficed, which represent as it were the lower mathematics of logic, its everyday weapons.

So, Marx and Engels developed Dialectical Materialism not in opposition to science, but as a way to make better use of scientific data, and to analyze the complex, dynamic, constantly changing systems of the world in motion. While distinct scientific discoveries and empirical data are invaluable, each data point only provides a small amount of information within a single narrow, specific field of science. Dialectical Materialism allows humans to view reality — as a whole — in motion, and to examine the interconnections and mutual developments between different fields and categories of human knowledge.

These scientific principles confirmed the correctness of the dialectical materialist view of the material world, with such features as: endlessness, self-existence, self-motivation, and self-transformation. They also confirmed the scientific nature of the dialectical materialist viewpoint in both material processes and thought processes.

Annotation 20

Endlessness refers to the infinite span of space and time in our universe. Self-existence means that our universe exists irrespective of human consciousness; it existed before human consciousness evolved and it will continue to exist after human consciousness becomes extinct. Self-motivation and Self-transformation refer to the fact that motion and transformation exist within the universe independent of human consciousness.

Engels wrote of the scientific nature of the dialectical materialist viewpoint in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus has shown that... Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically; that she does not move in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes through a real historical evolution.

In conclusion, the birth of Marxism is a phenomenon which is compatible with scientific principles; it is the product of the social-economic conditions of its time of origin, of the human knowledge expressed in science at that time, and it is also the result of its founders’ creative thinking and humanitarian spirit.

b. The Birth and Development Stage of Marxism

Marx and Engels initiated the birth and development stage of Marxism from around 1842~1843 through around 1847~1848. Later, from 1849 to 1895, Marxism was developed to be more thorough and comprehensive, but in this early period of birth and development, Marx and Engels engaged in practical activities [Marx and Engels were not just theorists, but also actively supported and participated with various revolutionary and working class organizations including the Chartists, the League of the Just, the Communist League, the International Workingmen’s Association, etc.] and studied a wide range of human thought from ancient times on through to their contemporaries in order to methodically reinforce, complement and improve their ideas.

Many famous works such as The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Marx, 1844), The Holy Family (Marx and Engels, 1845), Thesis on Feuerbach (Marx, 1845), The German Ideology (Marx and Engels, 1845–1846), and so on, clearly showed that Marx and Engels inherited the quintessence [see Annotation 6, p. 8] of the dialectical and materialist methods which they received from many predecessors. This philosophical heritage led to the development of the dialectical materialist viewpoint and materialist dialectics.

Annotation 21

There is a subtle, but important, distinction between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics. This will be explained further in chapters I (p. 48) and II (p. 98).

With works such as The Poverty of Philosophy (Marx, 1847) and The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx and Engels, 1848), Marxism was presented as a complete system of fundamental views with three theoretical component parts.

Annotation 22

According to Lenin, the three component parts of Marxism (and, by extension, of Marxism-Leninism) are:

1. The Philosophy of Marxism: Including Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism
2. The Political Economy of Marxism: A system of knowledge and laws that define the production process and commodity exchange in human society.
3. Scientific Socialism: The system of thought pertaining to the establishment of the communist social economy form.

These are discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, p. 38.

In the book The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx proposed the basic principles of Dialectical Materialism and Scientific Socialism,* and gave some initial thoughts about surplus value. The Manifesto of the Communist Party laid the first doctrinal foundation of communism. In this book, the philosophical basis was expressed through the organic unity between the economical viewpoint and socio-political viewpoint.

Annotation 23

* Scientific Socialism is a series of socio-political-economic theories intended to build socialism on a foundation of science within society’s current material conditions [see Annotation 79, p. 81]. Scientific Socialism is the topic of Part 3 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party outlined the laws of movement in history,* as well as the basic theory of socio-economic forms.

Annotation 24

* The laws of movement in history are the core principles of historical materialism, which is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.

The basic theory of socio-economic forms dictates that material production plays a decisive role in the existence and development of a society, and that the material production methods decide both the political and social consciousness of a society.

Annotation 25

Social consciousness refers to the collective experience of consciousness shared by members of a society, including ideological, cultural, spiritual, and legal beliefs and ideas which are shared within that society. This is related to the concept of base and superstructure, which is discussed later in this chapter.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party also showed that for as long as classes have existed, the history of the development of human society is the history of class struggle. Through class struggle, the proletariat can liberate ourselves only if we simultaneously and forever liberate the whole of humanity. With these basic opinions, Marx and Engels founded Historical Materialism.

By applying Historical Materialism to the comprehensive study of the capitalist production method, Marx made an important discovery: separating workers from the ownership of the means of production through violence was the starting point of the establishment of the capitalist production method. Workers do not own the means of production to perform their labor activities for themselves, so, in order to make income and survive, workers have to sell their labor to capitalists. Labor thus becomes a special commodity, and the sellers of labor become workers for labor-buyers [the proletariat and capitalist class respectively]. The value that workers create through their labor is higher than their wage. And this is how surplus value* is formed. Importantly, this means that the surplus value belongs to people who own the means of production — the capitalists — instead of the workers who provide the labor.

Annotation 26

* Surplus value is equal to labor value (the amount of value workers produce through labor) minus wages paid to workers. Under capitalism, this surplus value is appropriated as profit by capitalists after the products which workers created are sold.

So, in discovering the origin of surplus value, Marx pointed out the exploitative nature of capitalism [because capitalists essentially steal surplus labor value from workers which is then transformed into profits], though this exploitative nature is concealed by the money-commodity relationship.

Annotation 27

Under capitalism, a worker’s labor is a commodity which capitalists pay for with money in the form of wages. Workers never know how much of their labor value is being withheld by employers, which conceals the nature of capitalist wage-theft.

The theory of surplus value was deeply and comprehensively researched and presented in Capital^[14] by Marx and Engels. This work not only paves the way to form a new political-economic theory system based on the working class’s viewpoint, it also firmly consolidates and develops the historical-materialist viewpoint through the theory of socio-economic forms.

Annotation 28

Karl Marx explained that the goal of writing Capital was “to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society.” By “laws of motion,” Marx refers to the origins and motivations for change within human society. Historical materialism holds that human society develops based on internal and external relationships within and between aspects of society. Historical materialism is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.

According to the theory of socio-economic forms [which is the basis of historical materialism], the movements and developments of human society are natural-historical processes based on dialectical interactions between forces of production and relations of production; between infrastructure basis [commonly referred to as “base” in English] and superstructure.

Annotation 29

The forces of production consist of the combination of means of production and workers within society. Under capitalism, the production force consists of the proletariat (working class) and means of production which are owned by the bourgeoisie (capitalist class).

Marx viewed society as composed of an economic base and a social superstructure. The base of society includes the material relationships between humans and the means of productions and the material processes which humans undertake to survive and transform our environment. The superstructure of society includes all components of society not directly relating to production, such as media institutions, music, and art, as well as other cultural elements like religion, customs, moral standards, and everything else which manifests primarily through conscious activity and social relations.

In the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explained:

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

RELIGION GOVERNMENT EDUCATION

POLITICAL ECONOMY NATURE

The base of society includes material-based elements and relations including political economy, means of production, class relations, etc. The superstructure includes human-consciousness-based elements and relations including government, culture, religion, etc.

In other words, Marx argued that superstructure (which includes social consciousness) is shaped by the infrastructural basis, or base, of society. This reflects the more general dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness, in which the material, as the first basis of reality, determines consciousness, while consciousness mutually impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88]. So, the base of society — being material in nature — determines the superstructure, while the superstructure impacts the base. It couldn’t possibly be the other way around, according to the dialectical materialist worldview, because the primary driving forces of conscious activity are rooted in material needs.

The theory of socio-economic forms proves that the materialist viewpoint of history is not just a hypothesis, but a scientifically-proven principle.

Annotation 30

As Lenin explains in What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats:

Now — since the appearance of Capital — the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of some formation of society — formation of society, mind you, and not the way of life of some country or people, or even class, etc. — another attempt just as capable of introducing order into the “pertinent facts” as materialism is, that is just as capable of presenting a living picture of a definite formation, while giving it a strictly scientific explanation -until then the materialist conception of history will be a synonym for social science. Materialism is not ‘primarily a scientific conception of history’... but the only scientific conception of it.

Capital is Marx’s main work which presents Marxism as a social science by illuminating the inevitable processes of birth, development, and decay of capitalism; the replacement of capitalism with socialism; and the historical mission of the working class — the social force that can implement this replacement. Marx’s materialist conception of history and proletarian revolution continued to be developed in Critique of Gotha Programme (Marx, 1875). This book discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, the transitional period from capitalism to socialism, and phases of the communism building process, and several other premises. Together, these premises formed the scientific basis for Marx’s theoretical guidance for the future revolutionary activity of the proletariat.

Annotation 31

When Marx refers to a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” he does not mean “dictatorship” to mean “totalitarian” or “authoritarian.” Rather, here “dictatorship” simply refers to a situation in which political power is held by the working class (which constitutes the vast majority of society). “Dictatorship,” here, refers to full control of the means of production and government. This stands in contrast to capitalism, which is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in which capitalists (a small minority of society) have full control of the means of production and government.

c. The Defending and Developing Stage of Marxism

- Historical Background and the Need for Defending and Developing Marxism

In the late 19^th century and early 20^th century, capitalism developed into a new stage, called imperialism. The dominant and exploitative nature of capitalism became increasingly obvious. Contradictions in capitalist societies became increasingly serious — especially the class struggles between the proletariat and capitalists. In many colonised countries, the resistance against imperialism created a unity between national liberation and proletarian revolution, uniting people in colonised countries with the working class in colonial countries. The core of such revolutionary struggles at this time was in Russia. The Russian proletariat and working class under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party became the leader of the whole international revolutionary movement.

During this time, both capitalist industry and natural sciences developed rapidly. Some natural scientists, especially physicists, lacked a grounding in materialist philosophical methodology and therefore fell into a viewpoint crisis. Idealist philosophers used this crisis to directly influence the perspective and activities of many revolutionary movements.

Annotation 32

Imperialism

Lenin defined imperialism as “the monopoly stage of capitalism,” listing its essential characteristics as “finance capital (serving) a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists” and “a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.”

Subjective and Empiricist Idealism

In the late 19^th century, natural scientists were exploring various philosophical bases for scientific inquiry. One Austrian physicist, Ernst Mach, attempted to build a philosophy of natural science based on the works of German-Swiss philosopher Richard Avenarius known as “Empirio-Criticism.” Empirio-Criticism, which also came to be known as Machism, has many parallels with the philosophy of George Berkeley. Berkeley (1685 — 1753) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose main philosophical achievement was the formulation of a doctrine which he called “immaterialism,” and which later came to be known as “Subjective Idealism.” This doctrine was summed up by Berkeley’s maxim: “Esse est percipi” — “To be is to be perceived.” Subjective Idealism holds that individuals can only directly perceive and know about physical objects through direct sense experience. Therefore, individuals are unable to obtain any real knowledge about abstract concepts such as “matter”.

The philosophy of Empirio-Criticism, which was developed by Avenarius and Mach, also holds that the only reliable human knowledge we can hold comes from our sensations and experiences. Mach argued that the only source of knowledge is sense data and “experience,” but that we can’t develop any actual knowledge of the actual external world. In other words, Mach’s conception of empirio-criticism holds all knowledge as essentially subjective in nature, and limited to (and by) human sense experience. Mach’s development of Empirio-Criticism (which can also be referred to as empirical idealism or Machism)' was therefore a continuation of Berkeley’s subjective idealism. Both Berkeley’s Immaterialism and Empirio-Criticism are considered to be subjective idealism because these philosophies deny that the external world exists — or otherwise assert that it is unknowable — and, as such, hold that all knowledge stems from experiences which are essentially subjective in nature.

Mach argued that reality can only be defined by our sensual experiences of reality, and that we can never concretely know anything about the objective external world due to the limitations of sense experience. This stands in direct contradiction to dialectical materialism, which holds that we can develop accurate knowledge of the material world through observation and practice. Whereas Berkeley developed subjective idealist theological arguments to defend the Christian faith, Mach employed subjective idealism for purely secular purposes as a basis for scientific inquiry.

Note: all quotations below come from Lenin’s book: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

Vladimir Lenin strongly opposed Empirio-Criticism and, by extension, Machism, which was becoming popular among communist revolutionists in the late 19^th century, because it pushed forward idealist principles which directly opposed the core tenets of dialectical materialism.

Lenin believed that revolutionaries should be guided not by idealism, but by dialectical materialism. He believed that Empirio-Criticism and Machism consisted of mysticism which would mislead political revolutionaries.

Lenin outlined Machian arguments against materialism:

The materialists, we are told, recognise something unthinkable and unknowable — ’things-in-themselves’ — matter ‘outside of experience’ and outside of our knowledge [see: Annotation 72, p. 68]. They lapse into genuine mysticism by admitting the existence of something beyond, something transcending the bounds of ‘experience’... When they say that matter, by acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensations, the materialists take as their basis the ‘unknown,’ nothingness; for do they not themselves declare our sensations to be the only source of knowledge?

Lenin argued that this new form of Machist subjective idealism was, in fact, simply a rehashing of “old errors of idealism,” disguised and dressed up with new terminology. As such, Lenin simply reiterated the longstanding, bedrock dialectical materialist arguments against idealism [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. He was especially upset that contemporary Marxists of his era were being swayed by Machist Empirio-Criticism because he found it to be in direct conflict with dialectical materialism, writing: “(These) would-be Marxists… try in every way to assure their readers that Machism is compatible with the historical materialism of Marx and Engels.”

Lenin goes on to describe the work of philosophers such as Franz Blei, who critiqued Marxism with Machist arguments, as “quasi-scientific tomfoolery decked out in the terminology of Avenarius.” He saw Empirio-Criticism as completely incompatible with communist revolution, since idealism had historically been used by the ruling class to deceive and control the lower classes. In particular, he believed that Machist idealism was being used by the capitalist class to preach bourgeois economics, writing that “the professors of economics are nothing but learned salesmen of the capitalist class.”

Lenin was deeply concerned that prominent Russian socialist philosophers were adopting Machist ideas and claiming them to be compatible with Marxism, writing:

The task of Marxists in both cases is to be able to master and adapt the achievements of these ‘salesmen’... and to be able to lop off their reactionary tendency, to pursue your own line and to combat the whole alignment of forces and classes hostile to us. And this is just what our Machians were unable to do, they slavishly follow the lead of the reactionary professorial philosophy.

Lenin further explains how Empirio-Criticism serves the interests of the capitalist class:

The empirio-criticists as a whole... claim to be non-partisan both in philosophy and in social science. They are neither for socialism nor for liberalism. They make no differentiation between the fundamental and irreconcilable trends of materialism and idealism in philosophy, but endeavor to rise above them. We have traced this tendency of Machism through a long series of problems of epistemology, and we ought not to be surprised when we encounter it in sociology.

In the conclusion of the same text, Lenin explains why communists should reject Empirio-Criticism and Machism with four “standpoints,” summarized here:

1. The theoretical foundations of Empirio-Criticism can’t withstand comparison with those of dialectical materialism. Empirio-Criticism differs little from older forms of idealism, and the tired old errors of idealism clash directly with Marxist dialectical materialism. As Lenin puts it: “only utter ignorance of the nature of philosophical materialism generally and of the nature of Marx’s and Engels’ dialectical method can lead one to speak of ‘combining’ empirio-criticism and Marxism.”

2. The philosophical foundations of Empirio-Criticism are flawed. “Both Mach and Avenarius started with Kant (see: Annotation 72, p. 68) and, leaving him, proceeded not towards materialism, but in the opposite direction, towards Hume and Berkeley (see: Annotation 10, p. 10)... The whole school of Mach and Avenarius is moving more and more definitely towards idealism.”

3. Machism is little more than a relatively obscure trend which has not been adopted by most scientists; a “reactionary (and) transitory infatuation.” As Lenin puts it: “the vast majority of scientists, both generally and in this special branch of science... are invariably on the side of materialism.”

4. Empirio-Criticism and Machism reflect the “tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society.” Idealism represents the interests of the ruling class in modern society, and is used to subjugate the majority of society. Idealist philosophy “stands fully armed, commands vast organizations and steadily continues to exercise influence on the masses, turning the slightest vacillation in philosophical thought to its own advantage.” In other words, idealism is used by the ruling class to manipulate our understanding of the world, as opposed to materialism (and especially dialectical materialism) which illuminates the true nature of reality which would lead to the liberation of the working class.

At this time, Marxism was widely disseminating throughout Russia, which challenged the social positions and benefits of capitalists. In reaction to Marxism, many ideological movements such as empiricism, utilitarianism, revisionism, etc. [see: Appendix F, p. 252] rose up and claimed to renew Marxism, while in fact they misrepresented and denied Marxism.

In this context, new achievements of natural science needed to be analyzed and summarized in order to continue the authentic development of Marxist viewpoints and methodologies. Theoretical principles to fight against the misrepresentation of Marxism needed to be developed in order to bring Marxism into the new era. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin would fulfill this historical requirement with his theoretical developments.

- The Role of Lenin in Defending and Developing Marxism.

Lenin’s process of defending and developing Marxism can be separated into three periods: first, from 1893 to 1907; next, from 1907 to 1917; and finally from the success of the October socialist revolution in 1917 until Lenin’s death in 1924.

From 1893 to 1907, Lenin focused on fighting against populists^[15]. His book What the Friends of the People are and How They Fight Against the Social Democrats (1894) criticized the serious mistakes of this faction in regards to socio-historical issues and also exposed their scheme of distorting Marxism by erasing the boundaries between Marxism’s materialist dialectics and Hegel’s idealist dialectics. In the same book, Lenin also shared many thoughts about the important roles of theory, reality, and the relationship between the two.

Annotation 33

The populist philosophy was born in Russia in the 19^th century with roots going back to the Narodnik agrarian socialist movement of the 1860s and 70s, composed of peasants who rose up in a failed campaign against the Czar. In the late 19^th century, a new political movement emerged rooted in Narodnik ideas and a new party called the Socialist Revolutionary Party was formed. The political philosophy of this movement, now commonly translated into English as “populism,” focused on an agrarian peasant revolution led by intellectuals with the ambition of going directly from a feudal society to a socialist society built from rural communes. This movement overtly opposed Marxism and dialectical materialism and was based on subjective idealist utopianism (see Annotation 95, p. 94).

With the book What is to be Done? (1902), Lenin developed Marxist viewpoints on the methods for the proletariat to take power. He discussed economic, political, and ideological struggles. In particular, he emphasized the ideological formation process of the proletariat.

Annotation 34

In What is to be Done?, Lenin argues that the working class will not spontaneously attain class consciousness and push for political revolution simply due to economic conflict with employers and spontaneous actions like demonstrations and workers’ strikes. He instead insists that a political party of dedicated revolutionaries is needed to educate workers in Marxist principles and to organize and push forward revolutionary activity. He also pushed back strongly against the ideas of what he called “economism,” as typified by the ideas of Eduard Bernstein, a German political theorist who rejected many of Marx’s theories.

Bernstein opposed a working class revolution and instead focused on reform and compromise. He believed that socialism could be achieved within the capitalist economy and the system of bourgeois democracy. Lenin argued that Bernstein and his economist philosophy was opportunistic, and accused economists of seeking positions within bourgeois democracies to further their own personal interests and to quell revolutionary tendencies. As Lenin explained in A Talk With Defenders of Economism:

The Economists limited the tasks of the working class to an economic struggle for higher wages and better working conditions, etc., asserting that the political struggle was the business of the liberal bourgeoisie. They denied the leading role of the party of the working class, considering that the party should merely observe the spontaneous process of the movement and register events. In their deference to spontaneity in the working-class movement, the Economists belittled the significance of revolutionary theory and class-consciousness, asserted that socialist ideology could emerge from the spontaneous movement, denied the need for a Marxist party to instill socialist consciousness into the working-class movement, and thereby cleared the way for bourgeois ideology. The Economists, who opposed the need to create a centralized working-class party, stood for the sporadic and amateurish character of individual circles. Economism threatened to divert the working class from the class revolutionary path and turn it into a political appendage of the bourgeoisie.

The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Vietnam, published by the National Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, defines opportunism, in this context, as “a system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, no coherent viewpoint, leaning on whatever is beneficial for the opportunist in the short term.”

Lenin critiques opportunist socialism — referring to it as a “critical” trend in socialism — in What is to be Done?:

He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the new “critical” trend in socialism is nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism. And if we judge people... by their actions and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that “freedom of criticism” means “freedom for an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism.”

The first revolution of the Russian working class, from 1905 to 1907, failed. Lenin summarized the reality of this revolution in the book Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905). In this book, Lenin explains that the capitalist class in Russia was actively engaged in its own revolution against Czarist feudalism. In this context of this ongoing bourgeois revolution, Lenin deeply developed Marxist concepts related to revolutionary methodologies, objective and subjective factors that will affect the working class revolution, the role of the people, the role of political parties etc.

Annotation 35

From 1905 to 1907, Russia was beset by political unrest and radical activity including workers’ strikes, military mutinies, and peasant uprisings. Russia had just suffered a humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese war which cost tens of thousands of Russian lives without any benefits to the Russian people. In addition, the economic and political systems of Czarist Russia placed a severe burden on industrial workers and peasant farmers.

In response, the Russian proletariat rose up in various uprisings, demonstrations, and clashes against government forces, landlords, and factory owners. In the end, this revolutionary activity failed to overthrow the Czar’s government, and the Czar remained firmly in power until the communist revolution of 1917.

Lenin wrote Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution in 1905 in

Geneva, Switzerland. In it, he argues forcefully against the political faction within the Russian socialist movement that came to be known as the “Mensheviks.” The Mensheviks, as well as the Bolsheviks (Lenin’s contemporary faction) emerged from a dispute within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which took place in 1903.

In the same text, Lenin argued that the Mensheviks misunderstood the forces that were driving revolutionary activity in Russia. While the Mensheviks believed that the situation in Russia would develop along similar lines to previous revolutionary activity in Western Europe, Lenin argued that Russia’s situation was unique and that Russian Marxists should therefore adopt different strategies and activities which reflected Russia’s unique circumstances and material conditions.

Specifically, the Mensheviks believed that the working class should ally with the bourgeoisie to overthrow the Czar’s feudalist regime, and then allow the bourgeoisie to build a fully functioning capitalist economy before workers should attempt their own revolution.

Lenin, on the other hand, presented a completely different analysis of class forces in Russia. He believed the bourgeoisie would seek a compromise with the Czar, as both feudal and bourgeois classes in Russia feared a proletarian revolution.

It’s important to note that Russia’s industrial workforce was very small at this time, and most Russians were peasant farmers. The Mensheviks believed Russian peasants would not be useful in a proletarian revolution, which is why they argued for allowing capitalism to be fully established in Russia before pushing for a working class revolution. They believed it was prudent to wait until the working class became larger and more dominant in Russia before attempting to overthrow capitalism. They believed that the peasant class would not be useful in any such revolution.

In contrast, Lenin believed that the peasants and industrial workers would have to work together to have any hope of a successful revolution. He further argued that an uprising of armed peasants and workers, fighting side by side, would be necessary for overthrowing the Czar.

From 1907 to 1917, there was a viewpoint crisis among many physicists. This strongly affected the birth of many idealist ideologies following Mach’s Positivism that attempted to negate Marxism [See: Annotation 32, p. 27]. Lenin summarized the achievements of natural science as well as historical events of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century in his book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909). By giving the classical definitions of matter, proving the relationships between matter and consciousness and between social existence and social consciousness, and pointing out the basic rules of consciousness, etc., Lenin defended Marxism and carried it forward to a new level. Lenin clearly expressed his thoughts on the history, nature, and structure of Marxism in the book The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913). He also talked about dialectics in Philosophical Notebooks (1914–1916) and expressed his thoughts about the proletarian dictatorship, the role of the Communist Party, and the path to socialism in his book The State and Revolution (1919).

The success of the October revolution in Russia in 1917 brought about a new era: the transitional period from capitalism to socialism on an international scale. This event presented new theoretical requirements that had not existed in the time of Marx and Engels’ time.

In a series of works including: “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920),

Once Again on the Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin (1921), The Tax in Kind (1921), etc., Lenin summarized the revolutionary practice of the people, continued defending Marxist dialectics, and uncompromisingly fought against eclecticism and sophistry.

Annotation 36

In Anti-Dühring, Engels identifies the historical missions of the working class as:

1. Becoming the ruling class by establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat.

2. Seizing the means of production from the ruling class to end class society.

Eclecticism is an incoherent approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject, applying different theories in different situations without any consistency in analysis and thought. Eclectic arguments are typically composed of various pieces of evidence that are cherry picked and pieced together to form a perspective that lacks clarity. By definition, because they draw from different systems of thought without seeking a clear and cohesive understanding of the totality of the subject and its internal and external relations and its development over time, eclectic arguments run counter to the comprehensive and historical viewpoints [see p. 116]. Eclecticism bears superficial resemblance to dialectical materialism in that it attempts to consider a subject from many different perspectives, and analyzes relationships pertaining to a subject, but the major flaw of eclecticism is a lack of clear and coherent systems and principles, which leads to a chaotic viewpoint and an inability to grasp the true nature of the subject at hand.

Sophistry is the use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.

Simultaneously, Lenin also developed his Marxist viewpoint of the factors deciding the victory of a social regime, about class, about the two basic missions of the proletariat, about the strategies and tactics of proletarian parties in new historical conditions, about the transitional period, and about the plans of building socialism following the New Economic Policy (NEP), etc.

Annotation 37

The early 1920s were a period of great internal conflict in revolutionary Russia, with various figures and factions wanting to take the revolution in different directions. As such, Lenin wrote extensively on the direction he believed the revolution should be carried forth to ensure lasting victory against both feudalism and capitalism. He believed that the October, 1917 revolution represented the complete defeat of the Czar, however he believed the proletarian victory over the bourgeoisie would take more time. Russia was a poor, agrarian society. The vast majority of Russians under the Czar were poor peasants. Industry — and thus, the proletariat — was highly undeveloped compared to Western Europe. According to Lenin, a full and lasting proletarian victory over the bourgeoisie could only be won after the means of production were properly developed. In Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Lenin wrote:

This first victory [the October, 1917 revolution] is not yet the final victory, and it was achieved by our October Revolution at the price of incredible difficulties and hardships... We have made the start... The important thing is that the ice has been broken; the road is open, the way has been shown.

So, Lenin knew that the victory over the Czar and feudalism was only a partial victory, and that more work needed to be done to defeat the bourgeoisie entirely. He believed the key to this victory over the capitalist class would be economic development, since Russia was still a largely agrarian society with very little industrial or economic development compared to Western Europe:

Our last, but most important and most difficult task, the one we have done least about, is economic development, the laying of economic foundations for the new, socialist edifice on the site of the demolished feudal edifice and the semi-demolished capitalist edifice.

Lenin’s plan for rapidly developing the means of production was his New Economic Policy, or the NEP. The New Economic Policy was proposed to be a temporary economic system that would allow a market economy and capitalism to exist within Russia, alongside state-owned business ventures, all firmly under the control of the working-class-dominated state. As Lenin explains in Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution:

At this very moment we are, by our New Economic Policy, correcting a number of our mistakes. We are learning how to continue erecting the socialist edifice in a small-peasant country.

He continues later in the text:

The proletarian state must become a cautious, assiduous and shrewd “businessman,” a punctilious wholesale merchant — otherwise it will never succeed in putting this small-peasant country economically on its feet. Under existing conditions, living as we are side by side with the capitalist (for the time being capitalist) West, there is no other way of progressing to communism. A wholesale merchant seems to be an economic type as remote from communism as heaven from earth. But that is one of the contradictions which, in actual life, lead from a small-peasant economy via state capitalism to socialism. Personal incentive will step up production; we must increase production first and foremost and at all costs. Wholesale trade economically unites millions of small peasants: it gives them a personal incentive, links them up and leads them to the next step, namely, to various forms of association and alliance in the process of production itself. We have already started the necessary changes in our economic policy and already have some successes to our credit; true, they are small and partial, but nonetheless they are successes. In this new field of “tuition” we are already finishing our preparatory class. By persistent and assiduous study, by making practical experience the test of every step we take, by not fearing to alter over and over again what we have already begun, by correcting our mistakes and most carefully analyzing their significance, we shall pass to the higher classes. We shall go through the whole “course,” although the present state of world economics and world politics has made that course much longer and much more difficult than we would have liked. No matter at what cost, no matter how severe the hardships of the transition period may be — despite disaster, famine and ruin — we shall not flinch; we shall triumphantly carry our cause to its goal.

With these great works dedicated to the three component parts of Marxism [see Annotation 42, p. 38], the name Vladimir Ilyich Lenin became an important part of Marxism. It marked a comprehensive developing step from Marxism to Marxism-Leninism.

d. Marxism-Leninism and the Reality of the International Revolutionary Movement

The birth of Marxism greatly affected both the international worker movements and communist movements. The revolution in March 1871 in France could be considered as a great experiment of Marxism in the real world. For the first time in human history, a new kind of state — the dictatorship of the proletariat state (Paris Commune) was established.

Annotation 38

The Paris Commune was an important but short-lived revolutionary victory of the working class which saw a revolutionary socialist government controlling Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871.

During the brief existence of the Paris Commune, many important policies were set forth, including a separation of church and state, abolishment of rent, an end to child labor, and the right of employees to take over any business which had been abandoned by its owner. Unfortunately, the Paris Commune was brutally toppled by the French army, which killed between 6,000 and 7,000 revolutionaries in battle and by execution. The events of the Paris Commune heavily influenced many revolutionary thinkers and leaders, including Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and was referenced frequently in their works.

In August 1903, the very first Marxist proletariat party was established — the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. It was a true Marxist party that led the revolution in Russia in 1905. In October 1917, the victory of the socialist revolution of the proletariat in Russia opened a new era for human history.

In 1919, the Communist International* was held; in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic was established. It marked the alliance of the proletariat of many countries. With the power of this alliance, the fight against Fascism not only protected the achievements of the proletariat’s revolution, but also spread socialism beyond the borders of Russia. Following the lead of the Soviet Union, a community of socialist countries was built, with revolutions leading to the establishment of socialism in the following countries [and years of establishment]: Mongolia [1921], Vietnam [1945], the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [1945], Yugoslavia [1945], Albania [1946], Romania [1947], Czechoslovakia [1948], East Germany [1949], China [1949], Hungary [1949], Poland [1956], and Cuba [1959].

Annotation 39

* The First International, also known as the International Workingmen’s Association, was founded in London and lasted from 1864–1876. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were key figures in the foundation and operation of this organization, which sought better conditions and the establishment of rights for workers.

The Second International was founded in Paris in 1889 to continue the work of the First International. It fell apart in 1916 because the members from different nations could not maintain solidarity through the outbreak of World War I.

The Third International, also known as the Communist International (or the ComIntern for short), was founded in Moscow in 1919 (though many nations didn’t join until later in the 1920s). Its goals were to overthrow capitalism, build socialism, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was dissolved in 1943 in the midst of the German invasion of Russia in World War II.

These great historical events strongly enhanced the revolutionary movement of the working class all around the whole world. The people awakened and encouraged the liberation resistance of many colonised countries. The guiding role of Marxism-Leninism brought many great results for a world of peace, independence, democracy, and social progress.

However, because of many internal and external factors, in the late 1980s, the socialist alliance faced a crisis and fell into a recession period. Even though the socialist system fell into crisis and was weakened, the socialist ideology still survived internationally. The determination of successfully building socialism was still very strong in many countries and the desire to follow the socialist path still spread widely in South America.

Nowadays, the main feature of our modern society is fast and varied change in many social aspects caused by technology and scientific revolution. But, no matter how quickly and diversely our society changes, the nature of the capitalist production method never changes. So, in order to protect the socialist achievements earned by the flesh and blood of many previous generations; and in order to have a tremendous development step in the career of liberating human beings, it is very urgent to protect, inherit and develop Marxism-Leninism and also innovate the work of building socialism in both theory and practice.

The Communist Party of Vietnam declared: “Nowadays, capitalism still has potential for development, but in nature, it’s still an unjust, exploitative, and oppressive regime. The basic and inherent contradictions of capitalism, especially the contradictions between the increasing socialization of the production force and the capitalist private ownership regime, will never be solved and will even become increasingly serious. The feature of the current period of our modern society is: countries with different social regimes and different development levels co-exist, co-operate, struggle and compete fiercely for the interests of their own nations. The struggles for peace, independence, democracy, development, and social progress of many countries will still have to cope with hardship and challenges but we will achieve new progress. According to the principles of historical development, human beings will almost certainly go forward to socialism.”^[16]

Annotation 40

Historical materialism is the application of dialectical materialist philosophy and materialist dialectical methodology to the analysis of human history, society, and development. The principles of historical materialism, as developed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, indicate that human society is moving towards socialism and will almost certainly — in time — develop into socialism, and then proceed towards a stateless, classless form of society (communism). These principles of historical materialism were initially formulated and discussed in several books by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, including:

• The German Ideology, by Marx and Engels

• Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, by Marx and Engels

• Karl Marx, by Lenin

The Communist Party of Vietnam has also declared:

“In the opinion of the Vietnam Communist Party, using Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought as the foundation for our ideology, the guideline for our actions is an important developmental step in cognition and logical thinking^[17]. Achievements that the Vietnamese people have gained in the war to gain our independence, in peace, and in the renovation era, are all rooted in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. Therefore, we have to ‘creatively apply and develop Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought in the Party’s activities. We have to regularly summarise reality, complement and develop theory, and soundly solve the problems of our society.’”^[18]

Annotation 41

Ho Chi Minh Thought refers to a system of ideas developed by Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists which relate to the application of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and methodology to the specific material conditions of Vietnam during the revolutionary period.

There is no universal road map for applying the principles of Marxism-Leninism. How the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism should be applied will vary widely from one time and place to another. This is why Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists had to develop Ho Chi Minh Thought: so that scientific socialism could be developed within the unique context of Vietnam’s particular historical development and material conditions.

It is the duty of every revolutionary to study Marxism-Leninism as well as specific applied forms of Marxism-Leninism developed by revolutionaries for their own specific times and places, such as: Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), Mao Zedong (China), Fidel Castro and Che Guevera (Cuba), etc. However, it must be recognized that the ideas, strategies, methodologies, and philosophies developed in such particular circumstances can’t be applied in exactly the same way in other times and places, such as our own contemporary material conditions.

The Renovation Era refers to the period of time in Vietnam from the 1980s until the early 2000s during which the Đổi Mới (renovation) policies were implemented. These policies restructured the Vietnamese economy to end the previous subsidizing model (which was defined by state ownership of the entire economy). The goals of the Renovation Era were to open Vietnam economically and politically and to normalize relations with the rest of the world. The Đổi Mới policies were generally successful and paved the way to the Path to Socialism Era which Vietnam exists in today. The goals of the Path to Socialism Era are to develop Vietnam into a modern, developed country with a strong economy and wealthy people, which will allow us to transition towards the lower stage of communism, which Lenin called “socialism.”

And, finally: “We have to be consistent with Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. We have to creatively apply and develop the ideology correspondingly with the reality in Vietnam. We have to firmly aim for national independence and socialism.”

II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

1. Objects and Purposes of Study

The objects of study of this book, The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism, are the fundamental viewpoints of Marxism-Leninism in its three component parts.

Annotation 42

Remember that a viewpoint is the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking and the perspective from which problems are considered. Also remember that Marxism-Leninism has three component parts:

1. The Philosophy of Marxism:

Including Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism

2. The Political Economy of Marxism:

A system of knowledge and laws that define the production process and commodity exchange in human society.

3. Scientific Socialism

The system of thought pertaining to the establishment of the communist social economy form.

These objects of study stand as the viewpoints — the starting points of analysis — of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and the three component parts of which it’s composed.

In the scope of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy [the first component part of Marxism-Leninism], these objects of study are:

Dialectical Materialism — the fundamental and most universal worldview and methodologies which form the theoretical core of a scientific worldview*. [See Part 1, p. 44]
Materialist Dialectics — the science of development, of common relationships, and of the most common rules of motion and development of nature, society and human thought. [See Chapter 2, p. 98]
Historical Materialism — the application and development of Materialism and Dialectics in studying social aspects. [Historical materialism is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.]

Annotation 43

* Remember that Scientific in Marxism-Leninism refers to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding [see Annotation 1, p. 1]. Note, also, that Worldview refers to the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in the world. This is discussed in more detail on page 44.

Thus, a scientific worldview is a worldview that is expressed by a systematic pursuit of knowledge of definitions and categories that generally and correctly reflect the relationships of things, phenomena, and processes in the objective material world, including relationships between humans, as well as relationships between humans and the world.

In the scope of Marxist-Leninist Political Economics [the second component part of Marxism-Leninism], the objects of study are:

The theory of value and the theory of surplus value.
Economic theory about monopolist capitalism and state monopolist capitalism.
General economic rules about capitalist production methods, from the stage of formation, to the stage of development, to the stage of perishing, which will be followed by the birth of a new production method: the communist production method.

Annotation 44

Marxist-Leninist political economics is the topic of Part 3 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.

In the scope of Scientific Socialism [the third component part of Marxism-Leninism], the objects of study are:

The historical mission of the working class and the progression of a socialist revolution.
Matters related to the future formation and development periods of the communist socio-economic form.
Guidelines for the working class in implementing our historical mission.

The purposes of studying The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism are:' to master Marxist-Leninist viewpoints of science, revolution, and humanism*; to thoroughly understand the most important theoretical foundation of Ho Chi Minh Thought, the revolutionary path, and the ideological foundation of the Vietnam Communist Party. Based on that basis, we can build a scientific worldview and methodology and a revolutionary worldview; build our trust in our revolutionary ideals; creatively apply them in our cognitive and practical activities and in practicing and cultivating morality to meet the requirements of Vietnamese people in the cause of building a socialist Vietnam.

Annotation 45

* The humanism of Marxism-Leninism differs greatly from the humanism of Feuerbach discussed in Annotation 12, p. 13. Marxist-Leninist humanism concerns itself with the liberation of all humans. As Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

2. Some Basic Requirements of the Studying Method

There are some basic requirements for studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism:

First, Marxist-Leninist theses were conceptualized under many different circumstances in order to solve different problems, so the expressions of thought of Marxist-Leninists can vary. Therefore, students studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism must correctly understand its spirit and essence and avoid theoretical purism and dogmatism.

Annotation 46

Marxism-Leninism should be understood as an applied science, and application of this science will vary based on material conditions. As Engels wrote in a personal letter in 1887, remarking on the socialist movement in the USA: “Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learned by heart and to be repeated mechanically. The less it is drilled into the Americans from outside and the more they test it with their own experience... the deeper will it pass into their flesh and blood.”

As an example, Lenin tailored his actions and ideas specifically to suit the material conditions of Russia under the Czar and in the early revolutionary period. Russia’s material conditions were somewhat unique during the time of Lenin’s revolutionary activity, since Russia was an agrarian monarchy with a large peasant population and a relatively undeveloped industrial sector. As such, Lenin had to develop strategies, tactics, and ideas which suited those specific material conditions, such as determining that the industrial working class and agricultural peasants should work together. As Lenin explained in The Proletariat and the Peasantry:

Thus the red banner of the class-conscious workers means, first, that we support with all our might, the peasants’ struggle for full freedom and all the land; secondly, it means that we do not stop at this, but go on further. We are waging, besides the struggle for freedom and land, a fight for socialism.

Obviously, this statement would not be specifically applicable to a society with highly developed industry and virtually no rural peasants (such as, for instance, the modern-day USA), just as Lenin’s remarks about the Czar would not be specifically applicable to any society that does not have an institution of monarchy.

As another example, take the works of Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh Thought is defined by the Communist Party of Vietnam as “a complete system of thought about the fundamental issues of the Vietnam revolution.” In other words, Ho Chi Minh Thought is a specific application of the principles of Marxism-Leninism to the material conditions of Vietnam.

One unique aspect of Vietnam’s revolution which Ho Chi Minh focused on was colonization. As a colonized country, Ho Chi Minh realized that Vietnam had unique challenges and circumstances that would need to be properly addressed through revolutionary struggle. Another unique aspect of Vietnam’s material conditions was the fact that the colonial administration of Vietnam changed hands throughout the revolution: from France, to Japan, back to France, then to the USA. Ho Chi Minh was able to dynamically and creatively apply Marxism-Leninism to these shifting material conditions. For instance, in Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party, written in 1930, Ho Chi Minh explains some of the unique problems faced by the colonized people of Indochina (modern day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and proposes solutions specific to these unique material conditions:

On the one hand, they (the French) use the feudalists and comprador bourgeoisie (of Vietnam) to oppress and exploit our people. On the other, they terrorize, arrest, jail, deport, and kill a great number of Vietnamese revolutionaries. If the French imperialists think that they can suppress the Vietnamese revolution by means of terror, they are grossly mistaken. For one thing, the Vietnamese revolution is not isolated but enjoys the assistance of the world proletariat in general and that of the French working class in particular. Secondly, it is precisely at the very time when the French imperialists are frenziedly carrying out terrorist acts that the Vietnamese Communists, formerly working separately, have united into a single party, the Indochinese Communist Party, to lead the revolutionary struggle of our entire people.

During this period, the nations of Indochina were predominantly agricultural, prompting Ho Chi Minh to suggest in the same text that it would be necessary “to establish a worker-peasant-soldier government” and “to confiscate all the plantations and property belonging to the imperialists and the Vietnamese reactionary bourgeoisie and distribute them to the poor peasants.” Obviously all of these considerations are specific to the material conditions of Indochina under French colonial rule in 1930.

By 1939, the situation was changing rapidly. Ho Chi Minh was operating from China, which was being invaded by fascist Japan. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the Japanese imperial army would come to threaten Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. As such, Ho Chi Minh wrote a letter to the Indochinese Communist Party outlining recommendations, strategies, and goals pertaining to the precipitating material conditions. At that time, France had not yet been invaded by Germany, but Ho Chi Minh was very aware of the looming threat of fascism both in Europe and in Asia. He realized that rising up in revolutionary civil war against the French colonial administration would give fascist Japan the opportunity to quickly conquer all of Indochina, which is why he made the following recommendations in a letter to the Communist Party of Indochina in 1939:

Our party should not strive for demands which are too high, such as total independence, or establishing a house of representatives. If we do that, we will fall into the trap of fascist Japan. For now, we should only ask for democracy, freedom to organize, freedom to hold meetings, freedom of speech, and for the release of political prisoners. We should also fight for our party to be organized and to operate legally.

Once France fell to Germany in 1940, Indochina was immediately handed over to Japanese colonial rule. The Japanese army was brutal in its occupation of Vietnam, and the French colonial administrators surrendered entirely to the Japanese empire and helped the Japanese to administer all of Indochina. Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam in January of 1941 and participated directly with the resistance struggle against Japan until 1945, when the situation once again changed dramatically due to the Japanese military’s surrender to allied forces and withdrawal from Vietnam. He immediately took advantage of this situation and held a successful revolution against both the Japanese and French administrators. In the Declaration of Independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh wrote:

After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French. The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the homeland.

As France began to make their intentions clear that they would be resuming their colonialist claim to Indochina, Ho Chi Minh began preparing the country for a new chapter in revolutionary struggle. In his 1946 letter to the people of Vietnam, entitled A Nationwide Call for Resistance, Ho Chi Minh wrote:

We call everyone, man and woman, old and young, from every ethnic minority, from every religion, to stand up and fight to save our country. If you have guns, use guns. If you have swords, use swords. If you have nothing, use sticks. Everyone must stand up and fight.

As these historical developments illustrate, Ho Chi Minh was able to creatively and dynamically apply the principles of Marxism-Leninism to suit the shifting material conditions of Vietnam, just as Lenin had to creatively and dynamically apply these principles to the emerging situation in Russia in the early 20^th century. So is the task of every student of Marxism-Leninism: to learn to apply these principles creatively and dynamically to the material conditions at hand.

Second, the birth and development of Marixst-Leninist theses is a process. In that process, all Marixst-Leninist theses have strong relationships with each other. They complement and support each other. Thus, students studying each Marxist-Leninist thesis need to put it in proper relation and context with other theses found within each different component part of Marxism-Leninism in order to understand the unity in diversity [see: Annotation 107, p. 110], the consistency of every thesis in particular, and the whole of Marxism-Leninism in general.

Third, an important goal of studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism is to understand clearly the most important theoretical basis of Ho Chi Minh Thought, of the Vietnam Communist Party and its revolutionary path. Therefore, we must attach Marxist-Leninist theses to Vietnam’s revolutionary practice and the world’s practice in order to see the creative application of Marxism-Leninism that President Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnam Communist Party implemented in each period of history.

Fourth, we must study the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism to meet the requirements for a new Vietnamese people in a new era. So, the process of studying is also the process of self-educating and practicing to improve ourselves step-by-step in both individual and social life.

Fifth, Marxism-Leninism is not a closed and immutable theoretical system. On the contrary, it is a theoretical system that continuously develops based on the development of reality. Therefore, the process of studying Marxism-Leninism is also a process of reflection: summarizing and reviewing your own practical experiences and sharing what you’ve learned from these experiences in order to contribute to the scientific and humanist development of Marxism-Leninism. In addition, when studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, we need to consider these principles in the proper context of the history of the ideological development of humanity. Such context is important because Marxism-Leninism is quintessentially^[19] the product of that history.

These requirements have strong relationships with each other. They imbue the studying process with the quintessence of Marxism-Leninism. And more importantly, they help students apply that quintessence into cognitive and practical activities.

Part I: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism — Leninism

Worldview refers to the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in that world. Our worldview directs and orientates our life, including our cognitive and practical activities, as well as our self-awareness. Our worldview defines our ideals, our value system, and our lifestyle. So, a proper and scientific worldview serves as a foundation to establish a constructive approach to life. One of the basic criteria to evaluate the growth and maturity of an individual or a whole society is the degree to which worldview has been developed.

Methodology is a system of reasoning: the ideas and rules that guide humans to research, build, select, and apply the most suitable methods in both perception and practice. Methodologies can range from very specific to broadly general, with philosophical methodology being the most general scope of methodology.

Annotation 47

Tran Thien Tu, the vice-dean of the Department of Marxist-Leninist Theoretical Studies at the Le Duan Political Science University in Quang Tri, Vietnam, defines three degrees of scopes of Methodology. They are, from most specific to most general:

1. Field Methodology

The most specific scope of methodology; a field methodology will apply only to a single specific scientific field.

2. General Methodology

A more general scope of methodology; a general methodology will be shared by various scientific fields.

3. Philosophical Methodology

The most general scope of methodology, encompassing the whole of the material world and human thought.

Worldview and philosophical methodology are the fundamental knowledge-systems* of Marxism-Leninism.

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* In the original Vietnamese, the word lý luận is used, which we roughly translate to the phrase “knowledge-system” throughout this book. Literally, lý luận is a combination of the words lý lẽ, which means “argument,” and bàn luận, which means “to infer.”

The full meaning of lý luận is: a system of ideas that reflect reality expressed in a system of knowledge that allows for a complete view of the fundamental laws and relationships of objective reality.

The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism

Marxist-Leninist worldview and philosophical methodology emerge from the quintessence [see Annotation 6, p. 8] of dialectical materialism, which itself developed from other forms of dialectics, which in turn developed throughout the history of the ideological development of humanity.

Materialism is foundational to Marxism-Leninism in two important ways:

Dialectical Materialism is the ideological core of a scientific worldview.

Historical Materialism is a system of dialectical materialist opinions about the origin of, motivation of, and the most common rules that dominate the movement and development of human society.

Dialectics are also foundational to Marxism-Leninism, specifically in the form of Materialist Dialectics, which Lenin defined as “the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge.”^[20] Lenin also defined Materialist Dialectics as “what is now called theory of knowledge or epistemology.”^[21] [Note: Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge; for more information see Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.]

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For beginning students of Marxism-Leninism, distinguishing between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics may at first be confusing. Here is an explanation of each concept and how they relate to one another:

Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics.

Dialectical Materialism is a scientific understanding of matter, consciousness and the relationship between the two. Dialectical Materialism is used to understand the world by studying such relationships.

Materialist Dialectics is a science studying the general laws of the movement, change, and development of nature, society and human thought.

Relationship between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics.

And so, we use Dialectical Materialism to understand the fundamental nature of reality. This understanding is used as a basis for changing the world, using Materialist Dialectics to guide our activities. We can then reflect on the results of our activities, using Dialectical Materialism, to further develop our understanding of the world.

As Marxist-Leninists, we utilize this continuous cycle between studying and understanding the world through Dialectical Materialism and affecting change in the world through Materialist Dialectics with the goal of bringing about socialism and freeing humanity.

It is also important to understand the nature of dialectical relationships.

A dialectical relationship is a relationship in which two things mutually impact one another. Dialectical materialism perceives all things in motion [see Mode and Forms of Existence of Matter, p. 59] and in a constant state of change, and this motion and change originates from relationships in which all things mutually move and change each other through interaction, leading to development over time.

Thoroughly understanding the basic content of the worldview and methodology of Marxism-Leninism is the most important requirement in order to properly study the whole theory system of Marxism-Leninism and to creatively apply it into cognitive and practical activities in order to solve the problems that our society must cope with.

3. Excerpt From Modifying the Working Style By Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh training cadres in 1959.

Training is a must. There is a proverb: “without a teacher, you can never do well;” and the expression: “learn to eat, learn to speak, learn to pack, learn to unpack.”

Even many simple subjects require study, let alone revolutionary work and resistance work. How can you perform such tasks without any training?

But training materials must be aimed at the needs of the masses. We must ask: after people receive their training, can they apply their knowledge immediately? Is it possible to practice right away?

If training is not immediately practical, then years of training would be useless.

Unfortunately, many of our trainers do not understand this simple logic. That’s why there are cadres who train rural people in the uplands in the field of “economics!”

In short, our way of working, organizing, talking, propagandizing, setting slogans, writing newspapers, etc., must all take this sentence as a model:

“From within the masses, back into the masses.”

No matter how big or small our tasks are, we must clearly examine and modify them to match the culture, living habits, level of education, struggling experiences, desire, will, and material conditions of the masses. On that basis we will form our ways of working and organizing. Only then can we have the masses on our side.

Otherwise, if you just do as you want, following your own thoughts, your subjectivity, and then force your personal thoughts upon the masses, it is just like “cutting your feet to fit your shoes.” Feet are the masses. Shoes are our ways of organizing and working.

Shoes are made to fit people’s feet, not the other way around.

Chapter 1: Dialectical Materialism

Dialectical Materialism, one of the materialist foundations of Marxism-Leninism, uses the materialist worldview and dialectical methods to study fundamental philosophical issues. Dialectical Materialism is the most advanced form of Materialism, and serves as the theoretical core of a scientific worldview. Therefore, thoroughly understanding the basic content of Dialectical Materialism is the essential prerequisite to study both the component principles of Marxism-Leninism in particular, and the whole of Marxism-Leninism in general.

I. Materialism and Dialectical Materialism

1. The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues

Philosophy is a system of the most general human theories and knowledge about our world, about ourselves, and our position in our world.

Philosophy has existed for thousands of years. Philosophy has different objects of study depending on different periods of time. Summarizing the whole history of philosophy, Engels said: “The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being^[22].”

So, philosophy studies the relations between consciousness and matter, and between humans and nature.

In philosophy, there are two main questions:

Question 1: The question of consciousness and matter: which came first; or, to put it another way, which one determines which one?

In attempting to answer this first question, philosophy has separated into two main schools: Materialism, and Idealism.

Question 2: Do humans have the capacity to perceive the world as it truly exists?

In answer to this second question, two schools: Intelligibility — which admits the human cognitive capacity to truly perceive the world — and unintelligibility — which denies that capacity.

Materialism is the belief that the nature of the world is matter; that matter comes first; and that matter determines consciousness. People who uphold this belief are called materialists. Throughout human history, many different factions of materialists with various schools of materialist thought have evolved.

Idealism is the belief that the nature of the world is consciousness; consciousness precedes matter; consciousness decides matter. People who uphold this belief are called idealists. Like materialism, various factions of idealists with varying schools of idealist thought have also evolved throughout history.

Idealism has cognitive origins and social origins.

Annotation 50

Cognitive origin refers to origination from the human consciousness of individuals.

Social origin refers to origination from social relations between human beings.

So, idealism originates from both the conscious activity of individual humans as well as social activity between human beings.

These origins are unilateral consideration and absolutization of only one aspect or one characteristic of the whole cognitive process.

Annotation 51

Unilateral consideration is the consideration of a subject from one side only.

Absolutization occurs when one conceptualizes some belief or supposition as always true in all situations without exception.

Both unilateral consideration and absolutization fail to consider the dynamic, constantly changing, and interconnected relations of all things, phenomena, and ideas in our reality.

Idealism originates from unilateral consideration because idealists ignore the material world and consider reality only from the perspective of the human mind. It also originates from absolutism because idealists absolutize human reasoning as the only source of truth and knowledge about our world without exception.

As Lenin wrote in On the Question of Dialectics: “Philosophical idealism is a unilateral development, an overt development, of one out of many attributes, or one out of many aspects, of consciousness.”

Historically, idealism has typically benefitted the oppressive, exploitative class of society. Idealism and religions usually have a close relation with each other, and support each other to co-exist and co-develop.

Annotation 52

Idealists, in absolutizing human consciousness, have a tendency to only give credence to the work of the mind and ignore the value of physical labor. This has been used to justify class structures in which religious and intellectual laborers are given authority and privilege over manual laborers.

This situation has also led to the idea that mental factors play a decisive role in the development of human society in particular and the whole world in general. This idealist view was supported by the ruling class and used to justify its own power and privilege in society. The dominant class has historically used such idealist philosophy as the justifying foundation for their political-social beliefs in order to maintain their ruling positions.

Marx discusses this tendency for rulers to idealistically justify their own rule in The German Ideology:

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an ‘eternal law.’

Marx goes on to explain how the idealist positions of the ruling class tend to get embedded in historical narratives:

Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word and believe that everything it says and imagines about itself is true. This historical method which reigned in Germany, and especially the reason why, must be understood from its connection with the illusion of ideologists in general, e.g. the illusions of the jurist, politicians (of the practical statesmen among them, too), from the dogmatic dreamings and distortions of these fellows; this is explained perfectly easily from their practical position in life, their job, and the division of labour.

In history, there are two main forms of idealism: subjective and objective.

Subjective idealism asserts that consciousness is the primary existence. It asserts that all things and phenomena can only be experienced as subjective sensory perceptions while denying the objective existence of material reality altogether.

Objective idealism also asserts the ideal and consciousness as the primary existence, but also posits that the ideal and consciousness are objective, and that they exist independently of nature and humans. This concept is given many names, such as “absolute concept”, “absolute spirit,” “rationality of the world,” etc.

Annotation 53

Primary existence is existence which precedes and determines other existences.

Idealists believe that consciousness has primary existence over matter, that the nature of the world is ideal, and that the ideal defines existence.

Materialists believe the opposite: that matter has primary existence over the ideal, and that matter precedes and determines consciousness.

Dialectical Materialism holds that matter and consciousness have a dialectical relationship, in which matter has primary existence over the ideal, though consciousness can impact the material world through willful conscious activity.

The primary existence of matter within Dialectical Materialism is discussed further in The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.

Willful activity (willpower) is discussed in Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.

The key difference between subjective and objective idealists is this:

Subjective idealists believe that there is no external material world whatsoever — that what we imagine as the material world is merely illusory — and that all reality is created by consciousness, whereas objective idealists believe that there is a material world outside of human consciousness, but it exists independently of human consciousness; therefore (according to objective idealists), since humans can only observe the world through conscious experience, the material world can never be truly known or observed by our consciousness.

In opposition to Idealism, Materialism originated through practical experience and the development of science. Through practical experience and systematic development of human knowledge, Materialism has come to serve as a universally applicable theoretical system which benefits progressive social forces and which also orients the activities of those forces in both perception and practice.

Annotation 54

Materialism benefits progressive social forces by showing reality as it is, by dispelling the idealist positions of the ruling class, and by revealing that society and the world can be changed through willful activity.

Materialism guides progressive social forces by grounding thought and activity in material reality, enabling strategies and outcomes that line up with the realities of the material world. For instance, we must avoid utopianism [see Annotation 17, p. 18] in which emphasis is placed on working out ideal forms of society through debate, conjecture, and conscious activity alone. Revolution against capitalism must, instead, focus on affecting material relations and processes of development through willful activity.

As Engels pointed out in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: “The final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.”

2. Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism

In human history, as human society and scientific understanding have developed, materialism has also developed through three forms: Primitive Materialism, Metaphysical Materialism, and Dialectical Materialism.

Primitive Materialism is the primitive form of materialism. Primitive materialism recognizes that matter comes first, and holds that the world is composed of certain elements, and that these were the first objects, the origin, of the world, and that these elements are the essence of reality. These Primitive Materialist concepts can be found in many ancient materialist theories in such places as China, India, and Greece. [These Primitive Materialist elemental philosophies are discussed more in Matter, p. 53] Although it has many shortcomings, Primitive Materialism is partially correct at the most fundamental level, because it uses the material of nature itself to explain nature.

Metaphysical Materialism is the second basic form of Materialism. This form of materialism was widely discussed and developed in Western Europe in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. During this time, the metaphysical method of perceiving the world was applied to materialist philosophy. Although Metaphysical Materialism does not accurately reflect the world in terms of universal relations [see p. 108] and development, it was an important step forward in the fight against idealist and religious worldviews, especially during the transformational period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in many Western European countries.

Annotation 55

Metaphysical materialism was strongly influenced by mechanical philosophy, a scientific and philosophical movement popular in the 17^th century which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices. Mechanical philosophy led to a belief that all things — including living organisms — were built as (and could theoretically be built by humans as) mechanical devices. Influenced by this philosophy, metaphysical materialists came to see the world as a giant mechanical machine composed of parts, each of which exists in an essentially isolated and static state.

Metaphysical materialists believed that all change can exist only as an increase or decrease in quantity, brought about by external causes Metaphysical materialism contributed significantly to the struggle against idealistic and religious worldviews, especially during the historical transition period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in Western European countries. Metaphysical materialism also had severe limitations; especially in failing to understand many key aspects of reality, such as the nature of development through change/motion and relationships.

Dialectical Materialism is the third basic form of materialism. It was founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as many of his successors. By inheriting the quintessence of previous theories and thoroughly integrating contemporary scientific achievements, Dialectical Materialism immediately solved the shortcomings of the Primitive Materialism of ancient times as well as the Metaphysical Materialism of modern Western Europe. It reaches the highest development level of materialism so far in history.

By accurately reflecting objective reality with universal relations and development*, Dialectical Materialism offers humanity a great tool for scientific cognitive activities and revolutionary practice. The Dialectical Materialist system of thought was built on the basis of scientific explanations about matter, consciousness, and the relationship between the two.

Annotation 56

* Materialist Dialectical methodology explains the world in terms of relationships and development. This is discussed in Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics, p. 106.

II. Dialectical Materialist Opinions About Matter, Consciousness, and the Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness

1. Matter

a. Category of “Matter”

Matter is a philosophical subject which has been examined for more than 2,500 years. Since ancient times, there has been a relentless struggle between materialism and idealism around this subject. Idealism asserts that the world’s nature, the first basis of all existence, is consciousness, and that matter is only a product of that consciousness. Conversely, materialism asserts that nature, the entirety of the world, is composed of matter, that this material world exists indefinitely, and that all things and phenomena are composed of matter.

Before dialectical materialism was born, materialist philosophers generally believed that matter was composed of some self-contained element or elements; that is to say some underlying substance from which everything in the universe is ultimately derived. In ancient times, the five elements theory of Chinese philosophy held that those self-contained substances were metal — wood — water — fire — earth; in India, the Samkhya school believed that they were Pradhana or Prakriti^[23]; in Greece, the Milesian school believed they were water (Thales’s^[24] conception) or air (Anaximene’s^[25] conception); Heraclitus^[26] believed the ultimate element was fire; Democritus^[27] asserted that it was something called an “atom,”' etc. Even as recently as the 17^th-18^th centuries, conceptions about matter belonging to modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon^[28], Renes Descartes^[29], Thomas Hobbes^[30], Denis Diderot^[31], etc., still hadn’t changed much. They continued following the same philosophical tendency as ancient philosophers by focusing their studies of the material world through elemental phenomena.

These conceptions of matter which were developed by philosophers before Marx’s time laid a foundation for a tendency to use nature to explain nature itself, but that tendency still had many shortcomings, such as: oversimplification of matter into fictitious “elements;” failure to understand the nature of consciousness as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness; failure to recognize the significance of matter in human society, leading to a failure to solve social issues based on a materialist basis, etc.

Annotation 57

Here are further explanations of these shortcomings of early materialists:

Oversimplification of matter into fictitious “elements”

Due to a lack of understanding and knowledge of matter, metaphysical materialists created erroneous conceptions of “elements” which do not accurately describe the nature of matter. By using such an erroneously conceived system of non-existing elements to describe nature, metaphysical materialists were prevented from gaining real insights into the material world which delayed and hindered scientific progress.

Failure to understand the nature of consciousness as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness

Many early materialists believed that consciousness was simply a mechanical byproduct of material processes, and that mental events (thoughts, consciousness) could not affect the material world, since these events were simply mechanically determined by the material world.

As a first principle, Dialectical Materialism does hold that consciousness is created by matter. However, Dialectical Materialism also holds that consciousness can influence the material world through conscious action. This constitutes a dialectical relationship.

As Lenin explains in Materialism and Empirio-criticism: “Consciousness in general reflects being—that is a general principle of all materialism... social consciousness reflects social being.”

Whereas early materialists erroneously held that consciousness is simply an “accidental” byproduct of matter, Dialectical Materialism holds that consciousness is a characteristic of the nature of matter. As Engels wrote in the notation of Dialectics of Nature:

That matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain is for mechanism a pure accident, although necessarily determined, step by step, where it happens. But the truth is that it is the nature of matter to advance to the evolution of thinking beings, hence this always necessarily occurs wherever the conditions for it (not necessarily identical at all places and times) are present.

Dialectical materialism also breaks from early materialism by positing that consciousness has a dialectical relationship with matter. Consciousness arises from the material world, but can also influence the material world through conscious action. In other words, mental events can trigger physical actions which affect the material world.

As Marx explains in Theses on Feuerbach:

The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice... Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

Put more simply, we as humans are capable of “revolutionary practice” which can “change the world” because our consciousness allows us to “change circumstances.” This is discussed further in Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.

Failure to recognize the significance of matter in human society, leading to a failure to solve social issues based on a materialist basis

Dialectical materialists believe that matter exists in many forms, and that human society is a special form of existence of matter. Lenin referred to the material existence of human society as social being, which stood in contrast with human society’s social consciousness. Social being encompasses all of the material existence and processes of human society.

As Lenin wrote in Materialism and Empirio-criticism:

Social being is independent of the social consciousness of men. The fact that you live and conduct your business, beget children, produce products and exchange them, gives rise to an objectively necessary chain of events, a chain of development, which is independent of your social consciousness, and is never grasped by the latter completely. The highest task of humanity is to comprehend this objective logic of economic evolution (the evolution of social life) in its general and fundamental features, so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries in as definite, clear and critical a fashion as possible.

Early materialists failed to recognise the relationship between matter and consciousness — as Lenin puts it, specifically, between social being and social consciousness. Thus in contemplating social issues, these early materialists were unable to find proper materialist solutions.

These shortcomings resulted in a non-thorough materialist viewpoint: when dealing with questions about nature, the early materialists had a strong materialist viewpoint but when dealing with social issues, they “slipped” into an idealist viewpoint.

Annotation 58

Lenin explains this concept of “slipping into” idealism through a non-thorough materialist viewpoint in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: “Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation, you have already lost every one of your weapons against fideism, for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism — and that is all fideism wants.”

Note: fideism is a form of idealism which holds that truth and knowledge are received through faith or revelation. Subjectivism is the centering of one’s own self in conscious activities and perspective; see Annotation 222, p. 218.

In the same work, Lenin upholds that objective reality can be known through sense perception:

We ask, is a man given objective reality when he sees something red or feels something hard, etc., or not? [...] If you hold that it is not given, you... inevitably sink to subjectivism... If you hold that it is given, a philosophical concept is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long, long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.

Lenin also explains that proper materialism must recognize objective/absolute truth:

To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth.

A failure to recognize the existence of such objective, absolute truth, according to Lenin, constitutes “relativism,” a position that all truth is relative and can never be absolutely, objectively knowable.

It is unconditionally true that to every scientific ideology (as distinct, for instance, from religious ideology), there corresponds an objective truth, absolute nature. You will say that this distinction between relative and absolute truth is indefinite. And I shall reply: yes, it is sufficiently ‘indefinite’ to prevent science from becoming a dogma in the bad sense of the term, from becoming something dead, frozen, ossified; but it is at the same time sufficiently ‘definite’ to enable us to dissociate ourselves in the most emphatic and irrevocable manner from fideism and agnosticism, from philosophical idealism and the sophistry of the followers of Hume and Kant. Here is a boundary which you have not noticed, and not having noticed it, you have fallen into the swamp of reactionary philosophy. It is the boundary between dialectical materialism and relativism.

In other words, while proper materialism must contain a degree of relativistic thinking sufficient to challenge assumptions and reexamine perceived truth periodically, materialists must not fall into complete relativism (such as that espoused by Hume and Kant) lest they fall into idealist positions. Ultimately, Absolute Truth — according to Lenin — constitutes the alignment of conscious understanding with objective reality (not to be confused with Hegel’s notion of Absolute Truth; see Annotation 232, p. 228).

Lenin recognized the development of Marx and Engels as “modern materialism, which is immeasurably richer in content and in comparably more consistent than all preceding forms of materialism,” in large part because Marx and Engels were able to apply materialism properly to social sciences by taking the “direct materialist road as against idealism.” He goes on to describe would-be materialists who fall to idealist positions due to relativism and other philosophical inadequacies as “a contemptible middle party in philosophy, who confuse the materialist and idealist trends on every question.”

Lenin warned that a failure to hold a thoroughly materialist viewpoint leads philosophers to become “ensnared in idealism, that is, in a diluted and subtle fideism; they became ensnared from the moment they took ‘sensation’ not as an image of the external world but as a special ‘element.’ It is nobody’s sensation, nobody’s mind, nobody’s spirit, nobody’s will — this is what one inevitably comes to if one does not recognise the materialist theory that the human mind reflects an objectively real external world.”

In other words, idealist conceptions of sensation inject mysticism into philosophy by conceiving of sensation as otherworldly, supernatural, and detached from material human beings with material experiences in the material world.

The development of natural sciences in the late 19^th century and early 20^th centuries (especially the inventions of Roentgen^[32], Becquerel^[33], Thomson^[34] etc.), disproved the theories of “classical elements” such as fire, water, air, etc. [see Primitive Materialism, p. 52]. These innovations led to a viewpoint crisis in the field of physical science. Many idealists used this opportunity to affirm the non-material nature of the world, ascribing the roles of supernatural forces to the birth of the world.

Annotation 59

Lenin discussed this viewpoint crisis extensively in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Here Lenin discusses relativist reactions to new breakthroughs in natural science, which led even scientists (who proclaimed to be materialists) to take idealist positions:

We are faced, says Poincaré [a French scientist], with the “ruins” of the old principles of physics, “a general debacle of principles.” It is true, he remarks, that all the mentioned departures from principles refer to infinitesimal magnitudes; it is possible that we are still ignorant of other infinitesimals counteracting the undermining of the old principles... But at any rate we have reached a “period of doubt.” We have already seen what epistemological deductions the author draws from this “period of doubt:” “it is not nature which imposes on [or dictates to] us the concepts of space and time, but we who impose them on nature;” “whatever is not thought, is pure nothing.” These deductions are idealist deductions. The breakdown of the most fundamental principles shows (such is Poincaré’s trend of thought) that these principles are not copies, photographs of nature, not images of something external in relation to man’s consciousness, but products of his consciousness. Poincaré does not develop these deductions consistently, nor is he essentially interested in the philosophical aspect of the question.

Lenin concludes by stating that the non-thorough materialist position has lead directly to these idealist positions of relativism:

The essence of the crisis in modern physics consists in the breakdown of the old laws and basic principles, in the rejection of an objective reality existing outside the mind, that is, in the replacement of materialism by idealism and agnosticism.

With this historical background, in order to fight against the distortions of many idealists and to protect the development of the materialist viewpoint, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin simultaneously summarized all the natural scientific achievements in late 19^th and early 20^th century and built upon Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ thought to develop this definition of matter:

“Matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality which is given to man in his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”

Lenin’s definition of matter shows that:

First, we need to distinguish between the definition of “matter” as a philosophical category (the category that summarizes the most basic and common attributes of all material existence, and which was defined with the objective of solving the basic issues of philosophy) from the definition of “matter” that was used in specialized sciences (specific and sense-detectable substance).

Second, the most basic, common attribute of all kinds of matter [and under both definitions listed in the previous paragraph] is objective existence, meaning matter exists outside of human consciousness, independently of human consciousness, no matter whether humans can perceive it with our senses or not.

Third, matter, with its specific forms, can cause and affect mental events in humans when it directly or indirectly impacts the human senses; human consciousness is the reflection of matter; matter is the thing that is reflected by human consciousness.

Lenin’s definition of matter played an important role in the development of materialism and scientific consciousness.

First, by pointing out that the most basic, common attribute of matter is objective existence, Lenin successfully distinguished the basic difference between the definition of matter as a philosophical category and the definition of matter as a category of specialized sciences. It helped solve the problems of defining matter in the previous forms of materialism; it offered scientific evidence to define what can be considered matter; it layed out a theoretical foundation for building a materialist viewpoint of history, and overcame the shortcomings of idealist conceptions of society.

Second, by asserting that matter was “objective reality,” “given to man in his sensations,” and “copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations,” Lenin not only confirmed the primary existence of matter and the secondary existence of consciousness [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88] but he also affirmed that humans had the ability to be aware of objective reality through the “copying, photographing and reflection of our sensations” [in other words, sense perceptions].

b. Mode and Forms of Existence of Matter

According to the dialectical materialist viewpoint, motion is the mode of existence of matter; space and time are the forms of existence of matter.

Annotation 60

Mode refers to the way or manner in which something occurs or exists. You can think of mode as pertaining to the “how,” as opposed to the “what.” For example, the mode of circulation refers to how commodities circulate within society [see Annotation 14, p. 16]; mode of production refers to how commodities are produced in society. So, mode of existence of matter refers to how matter exists in our universe.
Form comes from the category pair [see Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics, p. 126] of Content and Form [see p. 147]. Form refers to how we perceive objects, phenomena, and ideas. So, form of existence of matter refers to the ways in which we perceive the existence of matter [explained below] in our universe.

- Motion is the Mode of Existence of Matter

As Friedrich Engels explained: “Motion, in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right up to thinking.”

According to Engels, motion encompasses more than just positional changes. Motion embodies “all the changes and processes happening in this universe;” matter is always associated with motion, and matter can only express its existence through motion.

Annotation 61

In Dialectical Materialist philosophy, “motion” is also known as “change” and it refers to the changes which occur as a result of the mutual impacts which occur in or between subjects through the negation of contradictions. Motion is a constant attribute of all things, phenomena, and ideas (see Characteristics of Development, p. 124).

Because matter is inseparable from motion (and vice versa), Engels defined motion as the mode of matter — the way or manner in which matter exists. It is impossible for matter in our universe to exist in completely static and unchanging state, isolated from the rest of existence; thus matter exists in the mode of motion. Over time, motion leads to development as things, phenomena, and ideas transition through various stages of quality change [see Annotation 117, p. 119].

Matter exists objectively, therefore motion also exists objectively. The motion of matter is self-motion^[35].

Annotation 62

It is important to note that “matter,” in the philosophical sense as used in dialectical materialist phlosophy, includes all that is “objective” (external) to individual human cosnciousness. This includes objective phenomena which human senses are unable to detect, such as objective social relations, objective economic values, etc. Objectiveness is discussed more in Annotation 108, p. 112; objective social relations are discussed more in Annotation 10, p. 10.

In Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels discussed the properties of motion and explained that motion can neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore, motion can only change form or transfer from one object to another. In this sense, all objects are dynamically linked together through motion:

The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existence extending from stars to atoms... In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion. It already becomes evident here that matter is unthinkable without motion. And if, in addition, matter confronts us as something given, equally uncreatable as indestructible, it follows that motion also is as uncreatable as indestructible. It became impossible to reject this conclusion as soon as it was recognised that the universe is a system, an interconnection of bodies.

In other words, every body of matter is in motion relative to other bodies of matter, and thus matter is inseparable from motion. Motion results from the interaction of bodies of matter. Because motion and matter define each other, and because motion can only exist in relation to matter and matter can only exist in relation to motion, the motion of matter can be described as “self-motion,” because the motion is not created externally but exists only within and in relation to matter itself. Engels further explains that if this were not true — if motion were external to matter — then motion itself would have had to have been created external to matter, which is impossible:

To say that matter during the whole unlimited time of its existence has only once, and for what is an infinitesimally short period in comparison to its eternity, found itself able to differentiate its motion and thereby to unfold the whole wealth of this motion, and that before and after this remains restricted for eternity to mere change of place — this is equivalent to maintaining that matter is mortal and motion transitory. The indestructibility of motion cannot be merely quantitative, it must also be conceived qualitatively; matter whose purely mechanical change of place includes indeed the possibility under favourable conditions of being transformed into heat, electricity, chemical action, or life, but which is not capable of producing these conditions from out of itself, such matter has forfeited motion; motion which has lost the capacity of being transformed into the various forms appropriate to it may indeed still have dynamis but no longer energeia, and so has become partially destroyed. Both, however, are unthinkable.

So, motion can change forms and can transfer from one material body to another, but it can never be created externally from matter, and neither motion nor matter can be created or destroyed in our universe. Thus, matter exists in a state of “self-motion;” motion can never externally be created nor externally applied to matter.

To put it another way, motion results from the fact that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist as assemblages of relationships [see The Principle of General Relationships, p. 107], and these relationships contain opposing forces. As Lenin explained in his Philosophical Notebooks:

The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their ‘self-movement,’ in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.

Based on the scientific achievements which occurred in his lifetime, Engels classified motion into 5 basic forms: mechanical motion (changes in positions of objects in space); physical motion (movements of molecules, electrons, fundamental particles, thermal processes, electricity…); chemical motion (changes of organic and inorganic substances in combination and separation processes…); biological motion (changes of living objects, or genetic structure…); social motion (changes in economy, politics, culture, and social life).

These basic forms of motion are arranged into levels of advancement based on the level of complexity of matter that is affected.

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The basic forms of motion each affect different forms of matter, but these forms of motion do not exist independently from each other; they actually have strong relationships with each other, in which the more advanced forms of motion develop from lower forms of motion; the more advanced forms of motion also internally include lower forms of motion. [I.e., biological motion contains chemical motion; chemical motion contains physical motion; etc.]

Every object exists with many forms of motion, but any given object is defined by its most advanced form of motion. [I.e., living creatures are defined in terms of biological motion, societies are defined in terms of social motion, etc.]

By classifying the basic forms of motion, Engels laid out the foundation for classification and synthesization of science. The basic forms of motion differ from one another, but they are also unified with each other into one continuous system of motion. Understanding this dialectical relationship between different forms of motion helped to overcome misunderstandings and confusion about motion.

Annotation 63

In Dialectics of Nature, Engels clears up a great deal of confusion and addresses many misconceptions about matter, motion, forces, energy, etc. which existed in both science and philosophy at the time by defining and explaining the dialectical nature of matter and motion.

When Dialectical Materialism affirmed that motion was the mode of existence — the natural attribute of matter — it also confirmed that motion is absolute and eternal. This does not mean that Dialectical Materialism denies that things can become frozen; however, according to the dialectical materialist viewpoint, freezing is a special form of motion, it is motion in equilibrium and freezing is relative and temporary.

Motion in equilibrium is motion that has not changed the positions, forms, and/or structures of things.

Freezing is a relative phenomenon because freezing only occurs in some forms of motion and in some specific relations, it does not occur in all forms of motion and all kinds of relations. Freezing is a temporary phenomenon because freezing only exists for a limited period of time, it cannot last forever.

Annotation 64

Equilibrium can exist at any advancement of motion. Lenin discussed equilibrium as it pertains to the social form of motion in discussing an equilibrium of forces existing in Russia in 1905 in this article, An Equilibrium of Forces:

1) The result to date (Monday, October 30) is an equilibrium of forces, as we already pointed out in Proletary, No. 23.
2) Tsarism is no longer strong enough, the revolution not yet strong enough, to win.
3) Hence the tremendous amount of vacillation. The terrific and enormous increase of revolutionary happenings (strikes, meetings, barricades, committees of public safety, complete paralysis of the government, etc.), on the other hand, the absence of resolute repressive measures. The troops are wavering.
4) The Tsar’s Court is wavering (The Times and the Daily Telegraph) between dictatorship and a constitution.
The Court is wavering and biding its time. Strictly speaking, these are its correct tactics: the equilibrium of forces compels it to bide its time, for power is in its hands.
The revolution has reached a stage at which it is disadvantageous for the counter-revolution to attack, to assume the offensive.
For us, for the proletariat, for consistent revolutionary democrats, this is not enough. If we do not rise to a higher level, if we do not manage to launch an independent offensive, if we do not smash the forces of Tsarism, do not destroy its actual power, then the revolution will stop half way, then the bourgeoisie will fool the workers.
5) Rumour has it that a constitution has been decided upon. If that is so, then it follows that the Tsar is heeding the lessons of 1848 and other revolutions: he wants to grant a constitution without a constituent assembly, before a constituent assembly, apart from a constituent assembly. What kind of constitution? At best (for ’the Tsar) a Constitutional-Democratic constitution.
This implies: achievement of the Constitutional-Democrats’ ideal, skipping the revolution; deceiving the people, for all the same there will be no complete and actual freedom of elections.
Should not the revolution skip this granted constitution?

- Space and Time are Forms of Existence of Matter

Every form of matter exists in a specific position, with specific space particularity (height, width, length, etc.), in specific relation (in front or behind, above or under, to the left or right, etc.) with other forms of matter. These positional relations exist in what we call space. [Space is defined by positional relations of matter.]

On the other hand, the existence of matter is also expressed in the speed of change and the order in which changes occur. These changes occur in what we call time. As Engels wrote: “For the basic forms of all existence are space and time, and a being outside of time is as absurd as an existence outside space.” Matter, space, and time are not separable; there is no matter that exists outside of space and time; there is also no space and time that exist outside of matter’s motion.

Annotation 65

Space and time, as the forms of matter, i.e.: the ways in which we perceive the existence of matter. We are only able to perceive and understand material objects as they exist within space and time.

Space and time, as forms of existence of matter, exist objectively [see Annotation 108,

p. 112], and are defined by matter. [Space is defined by the positional relations between material objects; time is defined by the speed of change of material objects and the order in which these changes occur.] Space has three dimensions: height, width, length; time has one direction: from the past to the future.

c. The Material Unity of the World

Dialectical Materialism affirms that the nature of the world is matter, and the world is unified in its material properties. [In other words: the entire universe, in all its diversity, is made of matter, and the properties of matter are the same throughout the known universe.]

The material nature of the world is proven on the following basis:

First, there is only one world: the material world; the material world is the first existence [i.e., it existed before consciousness], it exists objectively, and independently, of human consciousness.

Second, the material world exists eternally, endlessly, infinitely; it has no known beginning point and there is no evidence that it will ever disappear.

Third, all known objects and phenomena of the material world have objective relations with each other and all objects and phenomena exist in unity with each other. All of them are specific forms and structures of matter, or have material origin which was born from matter, and all are governed by the objective rules of the material world. In the material world, there is nothing that exists outside of the changing and transforming processes of matter; all of these processes exist as causes and effects of each other.

Annotation 66

The most important thing to understand here is that every object and phenomenon in the universe arises as matter, all material objects and phenomena are dynamically linked to one another in an infinite chain of causes and effects and changes and transformations, all governed by the material laws of our reality. This understanding is the material foundation of dialectical materialism.

2. Consciousness

a. The Source of Consciousness

According to the materialist viewpoint, consciousness has natural and social sources.

Annotation 67

Consciousness arises from nature, and from social activities and relations.

Natural refers to the material world. Without the material world of matter, material processes, and the evolution of material systems — up to and including the human brain — consciousness would never have formed.

Social activities and relations also contributed to the development of consciousness. The social processes of labor and language were also prerequisites for the development of conscious activity in human beings.

- Natural Source of Consciousness

There are many factors that form the natural sources for consciousness, but the two most basic factors are human brains and the relationship between humans and the objective world which makes possible creative and dynamic reflection.

About human brains: consciousness is an attribute of a highly organized form of matter, which is the brain. Consciousness is the function and the result of the neurophysiological activities of human brains. As human brains evolved and developed over time, their neurophysiological activities became richer, and, as these activities progressed, consciousness developed further and further over time. This explains why the human evolution process is also a process of developing the capacity for perception and thinking. Whenever human neurophysiological activities don’t function normally because of damaged brains, our mental life is also disturbed.

About the relationship between humans and the objective world which made possible creative and dynamic reflection: The relationship between humans and the objective world has been essential for as long as humans have existed. In this relationship, the objective world is reflected through human senses which interact with human brains and then form our consciousness.

Consciousness exists as a dynamic set of relationships between the external material world, human sense perception, and the functions of the human brain.

Reflection is the re-creation of the features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction. Reflection is a characteristic of all forms of matter.

There are many forms and levels of reflection such as [from more simple to more complex]: physical and chemical reflection, biological reflection, mental reflection, creative and dynamic reflection, etc.

Annotation 68

Change is driven by mutual impacts between or within things, phenomena, and/or ideas. Any time two such subjects impact one another, traces of some form or another are left on both interacting subjects. This characteristic of change is called reflection.

The concept of reflection, first proposed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, has been advanced through the work of various Soviet psychologists, philosophers, and scientists (including Ivan Pavlov, Todor Pavlov, Aleksei Leontiev, Lev Vygotsky, Valentin Voloshinov, and others), and is used as a basis for scientific inquiry up to this day by mainstream researchers in Cuba, Vietnam, China, and Laos. The information provided below is somewhat simplified and generalized to give the reader a basic familiarity with the theory of reflection and the development of reflection in nature.

Dialectical materialist scientists have developed a theory of the development of evolution of forms of reflection, positing that forms of reflection have become increasingly complex as organic processes and life have evolved and grown more complex over time.

The chart below gives an idea of how different forms of reaction have evolved over time:

This chart outlines the basic development tendency of Forms of Reflection in matter which lead from inorganic matter, to life, to human consciousness and society.

Obviously, not all subjects develop completely along the path outlined above. Thus far, to our knowledge, only human beings have developed entirely to the level of consciousness and society. It is also unknown whether, or how, human society may develop into some future, as-yet-unknown, form.

Physical and chemical reflection is the simplest form of reflection, dealing with the ways in which inorganic matter is reflected in human consciousness. Physical and chemical reflection is the reflection of mechanical, physical, and chemical changes and reactions of inorganic matter (i.e., changes in structures, positions, physical-chemical properties, and the processes of combining and dissolving substances). Physical and chemical reactions are passive: when two objects interact with each other physically or chemically, they do not do so consciously.

Annotation 69

Reflection occurs any time two material objects interact and the features of the object are transferred to each other. Below are some very simplified illustrations to relate the basic idea of the physical reflection of material objects.

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Reflection as Change in Position:

1. Round Object moves towards Square Object.

2. Round Object impacts Square Object.

3. Square Object changes position; Round Object “bounces” and reverses direction.

4.Thus, Square Object’s change in position reflects the motion of Round Object (and vice-versa). Traces of both contradicting objects are reflected in the respective motion and position of each object.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-12.png

Reflection as Change in Structure:

1. Round Object moves toward Square Object.

2. Round Object impacts Square Object.

3. Structural changes (traces) occur in both Round and Square Object as a result of impact.

4. These changes constitute structural, physical reflection.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-13.png

Chemical Reflection:

1. Atom C is attached to Atom B.

2. Atom C detaches from Atom B and transfers to attach to Atom A.

3. This is a process of chemical reflection, in which both molecules mutually reflect one another after A _CB a process of chemical reaction (one molecule loses Atom C while the other gains Atom C).

As dialectical materialists, we must strive to develop our understanding of the reflections of physical and chemical changes and reactions so that our conceptions reflect the material world as accurately as possible. For example: we must not ascribe consciousness to physical processes. Example: a gambler who comes to believe that a pair of dice is “spiteful” or “cursed” is attributing conscious motivation to unconscious physical processes, which is an inaccurate ideological reflection of reality.

Biological reflection is a higher, more complex form of reflection [compared to physical reflection]. It deals with reflection of organic material in the natural world. As our observations of biological processes have become more sophisticated and complex [through developments in natural science, the development of better tools for observation such as microscopes and other technologies, and so on], our conscious reflections of the natural world have also become more complex.

Biological reflection is expressed through excitation, induction, and reflexes.

Excitation is the reaction of simple plant and animal life-forms which occurs when they change position or structure as a direct result of physical changes to their habitat [i.e., a plant which moves toward the sun throughout the day].

Induction is the reaction of animals with simple nerve systems which can sense or feel their environments. Induction occurs through unconditioned reflex mechanisms.

Annotation 70

Unconditioned reflexes are characterized by permanent connections between sensory perceptions and reactions. Such reactions are not learned, but simply occur automatically based on physiological mechanisms occurring within the organism. An example of an unconditioned reflex response would be muscles in the leg twitching at the response of a tap on the knee. Such responses are purely physiological and are never learned (“conditioned” into us) — these reactions are simply induced physiologically.

Mental reflections are reactions which occur in animals with central nervous systems. Mental reflections occur through conditioned reflex mechanisms.

Annotation 71

Conditioned reflexes are reactions which are learned by organisms. These responses are acquired as animals learn to associate previously unrelated neural stimuli to elicit a particular reaction. The Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov famously developed our understanding of conditioned responses by ringing a dinner bell shortly before giving dogs food. After a few repetitions, dogs would begin to salivate upon hearing the dinner bell being rung, even before any food was offered. Any dog which did not receive this conditioning would not salivate upon hearing a dinner bell. This is what makes it a learned, conditioned response — a type of mental reflection.

Dynamic and creative reflection is the most advanced form of reflection. It only occurs in matter that has the highest structural level, such as the human brain. Dynamic and creative reflection is done through the human brain’s nervous physiological activities whenever the objective world impacts human senses. This is a kind of reflection that actively selects and processes information to create new information and to understand the meaning of that information. This dynamic and creative reflection is called consciousness.

Annotation 72

Remember Lenin’s definition of matter from Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: “Matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality which is given to man in his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”

An intrinsic property of matter is that it can be sensed by human beings, and through this sensation, reflected in human consciousness. Thus, all forms of matter share the characteristic of being able to be reflected in the human mind.

Criticizing Karl Pearson, who said that it was not logical to maintain that all matter had the property of being conscious, Lenin wrote in brackets: “But it is logical to suppose that all matter possesses a property which is essentially kindred to sensation: the property to reflect.” Understanding the concept of dynamic and creative reflection is critical to understanding the role of consciousness and the ideal in Dialectical Materialism. In particular, reflection differentiates Dialectical Materialism from the idealist form of dialectics used by Hegel [see Annotation 9, p. 10]. As Marx famously wrote in Capital Volume I:

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [craftsman/artisan/creator] of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.

In other words, Hegelian idealism saw human consciousness as defining the material world. Dialectical Materialism inverts this relationship to recognize that what we conceive in our minds is only a reflection of the material world. As Marx explains in The German Ideology, all conscious thought stems from life processes through reflection:

Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

Marx and Engels argued that consciousness arose from the life-processes of human beings. Life-processes are processes of motion and change which occur within organisms to sustain life, and these processes have a dialectical relationship with consciousness: the processes of life, therefore, reflect consciousness, just as consciousness reflects human life-processes. Conscious activities (such as being able to hunt, gather, and cook food, build shelter, and so on) improve the life-processes of human beings (by improving our health, extending our life-spans, etc.); and as our life-processes improved, our consciousness was able to develop more fully. As a concrete example of the dialectic between life processes and consciousness, it is now widely believed by scientists that the advent of cooking and preparing food (conscious activity) improved the functioning of the human brain^[36] (a life process) which, in turn, developed human consciousness, and so on. Life-processes thus determine how consciousness reflects reality, while consciousness impacts back on life-processes, reflecting the dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness [see p. 88] and between practical activities and consciousness [see Annotation 230, p. 226].

Because consciousness arose from life-processes of human beings in the material world, we know that the material world is reflected in our consciousness. However, these reflections do not determine the material world, and do not mirror the material world exactly [see Annotation 77, p. 79]. It is also important to understand that, since life-processes in the material world predate and determine consciousness, consciousness can never be a first basis of seeking truth about our world. As Marx further explains in The German Ideology:

Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations. This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i.e. to recognise it by means of another interpretation.

In other words, Hegelian idealism makes the critical mistake of believing that the ideal — consciousness — is the first basis of reality, and that anything and everything can be achieved through mere conscious activity. Marx, on the other hand, argues that “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life,” and that we must understand the ways in which reality is reflected in consciousness before we can hope to affect change in the material conditions of human beings:

In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here [in the materialist perspective] we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.

So, the work of the Dialectical Materialist is not to try to develop Utopian conceptions of reality first, to then proceed to try and force such purely ideal conceptions onto reality (see Annotation 17, p. 18).

Rather, we must understand the material basis of reality, as well as the material processes of change and motion which govern reality, and only then can we search for ways in which human beings can influence material reality through conscious activity. As Marx explains, the revolutionary must not be fooled into believing we can simply conceive of an ideal world and then replicate it into reality through interpretation and conscious thought alone. Instead, we must start with a firm understanding of material conditions and, from that material basis, determine how to build our revolutionary movement through conscious impact of material relations and processes of development in the material world.

As Marx wrote in The German Ideology: “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” This distinction may seem subtle at first, but it has massive implications for how Marx suggests we go about participating in revolutionary activity. For Marx, purely-idealist debates and criticisms are an unproductive waste of time:

The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly ‘world-shattering’ statements, are the staunchest conservatives. The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against ‘phrases.’ They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world. The only results which this philosophic criticism could achieve were a few (and at that thoroughly one-sided) elucidations of Christianity from the point of view of religious history; all the rest of their assertions are only further embellishments of their claim to have furnished, in these unimportant elucidations, discoveries of universal importance.

Marx also discusses the uselessness of idealist conjecture:

Moreover, it is quite immaterial what consciousness starts to do on its own: out of all such muck we get only the one inference that these three moments, the forces of production, the state of society, and consciousness, can and must come into contradiction with one another, because the division of labour implies the possibility, nay the fact that intellectual and material activity — enjoyment and labour, production and consumption — devolve on different individuals, and that the only possibility of their not coming into contradiction lies in the negation in its turn of the division of labour. It is self-evident, moreover, that ‘spectres,’ ‘bonds,’ ‘the higher being,’ ‘concept,’ ‘scruple,’ [terms for idealist conceptions] are merely the idealistic, spiritual expression, the conception apparently of the isolated individual, the image of very empirical fetters and limitations, within which the mode of production of life and the form of intercourse coupled with it move.

What Marx means by this is that we should focus on the material processes and conditions of society if we intend to change society, because idealist speculation, conjecture, critique, and thought alone, at the individual level, will never be capable of affecting revolutionary change in our material world.

Instead, we must focus on the material basis of reality, the material conditions of society, and seek revolutionary measures which are built upon materialist foundations. Only by understanding material processes of development, as well as the dialectical relationship between consciousness and matter, can we reliably and effectively begin to impact reality through conscious activity. This begins with the recognition that conscious thought itself is a reflection of material reality which developed and results from life-processes of material motion and processes of change within the human brain.

This concept of reflection, pioneered by Marx and Engels, was significantly developed by V. I. Lenin in his response to Machian positivists who posited that what we perceive is not truly reality [see Annotation 32, p. 27]. In his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin wrote: “Life gives rise to the brain. Nature is reflected in the human brain.”

In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin further defined the relationship between matter and consciousness through reflection.

LENIN’S PROOF OF THE THEORY OF REFLECTION

In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin offered the following arguments to back up the theory of reflection.

1) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our perceptions, outside of us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin [a chemical substance which was newly discovered at time of writing] existed in coal tar yesterday and it is equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this alizarin and received no sensations from it.

Lenin is saying that the material world must exist outside of and independent from our consciousness. He cites as evidence the discovery of a chemical substance which until recently we had no sensory perception of, noting that this substance must have existed long before we became aware of it through sensory observation.

2) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there can be no such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the thing-in-itself is “beyond” phenomena (Kant) or that we can or must fence ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume) — all this is the sheerest nonsense, [unfounded belief], trick, invention.

Lenin is referencing a centuries-old debate about whether or not human beings are capable of having real knowledge of a “thing-in-itself,” or if we can only perceive phenomena of things (characteristics observable to our senses). The “thing-in-itself” refers to the actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness. So the question being posed is: can we REALLY have knowledge of material objects outside of our consciousness, or does consciousness itself act as a barrier to ever REALLY knowing anything about material objects and the material world outside of our consciousness?

Immanuel Kant argued that we can never know the true nature of the material world, writing: “we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing-in-itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.” This idea that the senses could not be trusted to deliver accurate knowledge — and thus, the “thing-in-itself” is essentially unknowable — was carried forward by later empiricists such as Bacon and Hume [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. In Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Marx and Engels refute this notion, arguing that practice allows us to discover truth about “things-in-themselves:”

The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical crotchets is practice — namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable “thing-in-itself”.

Lenin expanded on this argument, explaining that the phenomena of objects which we observe with our senses do accurately reflect material objects, even though we might not know everything about these objects at once. Over time, as we learn more and more about material objects and the material world through practice and repeated observation, we more fully and accurately come to understand “things-in-themselves, as he writes in Empirio-Criticism and Materialism:

3) In the theory of knowledge, as in every other branch of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as readymade and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.

Here, Lenin further elaborates on the dialectical nature of knowledge: we must simultaneously accept that our knowledge is never perfect and unchanging, but we must also recognize that we are capable of making our knowledge more exact and complete over time. To further defend his ideas about reflection, Lenin cited Czech philosopher Karl Kautsky’s argument against Kant:

That I see green, red and white is grounded in my faculty of sight. But that green is something different from red testifies to something that lies outside of me, to real differences between the things... The relations and differences between the things themselves revealed to me by the individual space and time concepts are real relations and differences of the external world, not conditioned by the nature of my perceptive faculty... If this were really so [i.e., if Kant’s doctrine of the ideality of time and space were true], we could know nothing about the world outside us, not even that it exists.

Lenin followed from Marx and Engels that, in order to further develop our understanding and knowledge of the material world, it was necessary to engage in practice [see Annotation 211, p. 205]. Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we [use] these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.

Notice that Engels is careful to use the words so far: “its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.” Engels does not argue that human understanding of the material world is infallible: mistakes are often made. But over time, as such mistakes are discovered and our understanding improves, our knowledge of the material world develops. This is only possible if the phenomena of objects which we observe — the reflections within our consciousness — do actually and accurately represent material reality. Lenin elaborated on this necessity to constantly update and improve dialectical materialist philosophy as new information and knowledge became available:

Engels, for instance, assimilated the, to him, new term, energy, and began to employ it in 1885 (Preface to the 2^nd ed. of Anti-Dühring) and in 1888 (Ludwig Feuerbach), but to employ it equally with the concepts of ‘force’ and ‘motion,’ and along with them. Engels was able to enrich his materialism by adopting a new terminology.

Engels provided further elaborations on how practical experience and mastery of the material world refutes the notion that it is impossible to have real knowledge of the material world in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy:

The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical fancies is practice, viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible or ungraspable... The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained just such thingsin-themselves until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the thing-in-itself became a thing for us, as for instance, alizarin [a dye which was originally plant-based], which we no longer trouble to grow in in the field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar.

So, dialectical materialism holds that there is a material world external from our consciousness; that conscious thoughts are reflections of this material world; that we can have real knowledge of the material world through sensory observation; and that our knowledge and understanding of the material world is best advanced through practice in the material world.

- Social Sources of Consciousness

There are many factors that constitute the social sources of consciousness. The most basic and direct factors are labor and language.

Labor is the process by which humans interact with the natural world in order to make products for our needs of existing and developing. Labor is also the process that changes the human body’s structure [i.e., muscles developing through exercise].

Annotation 73

In Dialectics of Nature, Engels describes the dialectical relationship between labor and human development:

Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source — next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
Before the first flint could be fashioned into a knife by human hands, a period of time probably elapsed in comparison with which the historical period known to us appears insignificant. But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.
Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones that had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, more and more complicated operations, have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini.
But the hand did not exist alone, it was only one member of an integral, highly complex organism. And what benefited the hand, benefited also the whole body it served.

Labor also allows us to discover the attributes, structures, motion laws, etc., of the natural world, via observable phenomena.

Annotation 74

We discover truth about the natural world through labor — through physical practice in the material world. See the discussion of practice in Annotation 211, p. 205.

All of these phenomena, through our human senses, impact our human brains. And through brain activity, knowledge and consciousness of the objective world are formed and developed.

Language is a system of material signals that carries information with cognitive content. Without language, consciousness could not exist and develop.

The birth of language goes hand in hand with labor. From the beginning, labor was social. The relationships between people who perform labor processes require them to have means to communicate and exchange thoughts. This requirement caused language to arise and develop along with the working processes. With language, humans not only communicate, but also summarise reality and convey experience and thoughts from generation to generation.

Annotation 75

From Dialectics of Nature:

It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man’s horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed by modulation to produce constantly more developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another.
Comparison with animals proves that this explanation of the origin of language from and in the process of labour is the only correct one. The little that even the most highly-developed animals need to communicate to each other does not require articulate speech. In its natural state, no animal feels handicapped by its inability to speak or to understand human speech. It is quite different when it has been tamed by man. The dog and the horse, by association with man, have developed such a good ear for articulate speech that they easily learn to understand any language within their range of concept. Moreover they have acquired the capacity for feelings such as affection for man, gratitude, etc., which were previously foreign to them. Anyone who has had much to do with such animals will hardly be able to escape the conviction that in many cases they now feel their inability to speak as a defect, although, unfortunately, it is one that can no longer be remedied because their vocal organs are too specialised in a definite direction. However, where vocal organs exist, within certain limits even this inability disappears. The buccal organs of birds are as different from those of man as they can be, yet birds are the only animals that can learn to speak; and it is the bird with the most hideous voice, the parrot, that speaks best of all. Let no one object that the parrot does not understand what it says. It is true that for the sheer pleasure of talking and associating with human beings, the parrot will chatter for hours at a stretch, continually repeating its whole vocabulary. But within the limits of its range of concepts it can also learn to understand what it is saying. Teach a parrot swear words in such a way that it gets an idea of their meaning (one of the great amusements of sailors returning from the tropics); tease it and you will soon discover that it knows how to use its swear words just as correctly as a Berlin costermonger. The same is true of begging for titbits.
First labour, after it and then with it speech — these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man, which, for all its similarity is far larger and more perfect. Hand in inevitably accompanied by a corresponding refinement of the organ of hearing, so the development of the brain as a whole is accompanied by a refinement of hand with the development of the brain went the development of its most immediate instruments — the senses. Just as the gradual development of speech is all the senses. The eagle sees much farther than man, but the human eye discerns considerably more in things than does the eye of the eagle. The dog has a far keener sense of smell than man, but it does not distinguish a hundredth part of the odours that for man are definite signs denoting different things. And the sense of touch, which the ape hardly possesses in its crudest initial form, has been developed only side by side with the development of the human hand itself, through the medium of labour.

So, the most basic, direct and important source that decides the birth and development of language is labor. Language appeared later than labor but always goes with labor. Language and labor were the two main stimulations affecting the brains of the primates which evolved into humans, slowly changing their brains into human brains and transforming animal psychology into human consciousness.

This diagram is based on work from an article titled “Evidence in Hand: Recent Discoveries and the Early Evolution of Human Manual Manipulation[37].”Modern research has discovered strong evidence[38] that the human hand evolved along with tool use, in line with Engels’ analysis in Dialectics of Nature.

Annotation 76

It is also worth noting that, just as human consciousness derived from labor and language and social activity, so too did society itself arise from language and labor, as Engels explained in Dialectics of Nature:

The reaction on labour and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of conclusion, gave both labour and speech an ever-renewed impulse to further development. This development did not reach its conclusion when man finally became distinct from the ape, but on the whole made further powerful progress, its degree and direction varying among different peoples and at different times, and here and there even being interrupted by local or temporary regression. This further development has been strongly urged forward, on the one hand, and guided along more definite directions, on the other, by a new element which came into play with the appearance of fully-fledged man, namely, society.

In other words, these factors of human’s physical nature and human society have a dialectical relationship with one another. Elements of human nature — in particular labor and language — led to the development of human society, which in turned played a key role in the development of human language and labor.

Human language and human labor mutually develop one another through a dialectical process to develop human nature. Simultaneously, human nature and human society mutually develop one another through a dialectical process.

Elements of human nature — in particular labor and language — led to the development of human society, which in turned played a key role in the development of human language and labor.

b. Nature and Structure of Consciousness

- Nature of Consciousness

Consciousness is the dynamic and creative reflection of the objective world in human brains; it is the subjective image of the objective world. [See discussion of dynamic and creative reflection on p. 68]

The dynamic and creative nature of reflection is expressed in human psycho-physiological activities when we receive, select, process, and save data in our brains. Within the human brain, we are able to collect data from the external material world. Based on this information, our brain is capable of creating new information, and we are able to analyze, interpret, and understand all of this information collectively within our consciousness.

The dynamic and creative nature of reflection is also expressed in several human processes:

The creation of ideas, hypotheses, stories, etc.
The ability to summarize nature and to comprehend the objective laws of nature.
The ability to construct models of ideas and systems of knowledge to guide our activities.

Consciousness is the subjective image of the objective world. Consciousness is defined by the objective world in both Content and Form [see Annotation 150, p. 147]. However, consciousness does not perfectly reflect the objective world. It modifies information through the subjective lenses (thoughts, feelings, aspirations, experiences, knowledge, needs, etc.) of humans. According to Marx and Engels, ideas are simply “sublimates [transformations] of [the human brain’s]... material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.”^[39]

Annotation 77

In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels refer to ideas somewhat poetically as “the phantoms formed in the human brain,” and explains that ideas arise directly from material human life processes [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. Lenin makes it very clear in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism that consciousness is not a mirror image, or exact reproduction of reality, quoting Engels:

The great basic question of all philosophy,” Engels says, “especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being,” of “spirit and nature.” Having divided the philosophers into “two great camps” on this basic question, Engels shows that there is “yet another side” to this basic philosophical question, viz., “in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality?” “The overwhelming majority of philosophers give an affirmative answer to this question,” says Engels, “including under this head not only all materialists but also the most consistent idealists.

Of extra importance is Lenin’s footnote to the above passage, regarding what he purports to be Viktor Chernov’s mistranslation of Engels:

Fr. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, etc., 4^th Germ. ed., S. 15. Russian translation, Geneva ed., 1905, p. 12–13. Mr. V. Chernov translates the word Spiegelbild literally (a mirror reflection) accusing Plekhanov of presenting the theory of Engels “in a very weakened form” by speaking in Russian simply of a “reflection” instead of a “mirror reflection”. This is mere cavilling. Spiegelbild [mirror reflection] in German is also used simply in the sense of Abbild [reflection, image].

Here, Lenin reaffirms and clarifies Engels’ idea that consciousness is not a perfect, exact duplicate of reality; not a “mirror image.” This, however, does not contradict the fact that we can obtain real knowledge of the real world in our consciousness, and that this knowledge improves over time through practice and observation. Indeed, Lenin’s passage on practice cited first in this annotation directly follows the above passage in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

See: Natural Source of Consciousness, p. 64, and Annotation 32, 27.

Consciousness is a social phenomenon and has a social nature. Consciousness arose from real life activities. Consciousness is always ruled by natural law and by social law.

Annotation 78

Natural law includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and other natural phenomena which govern the material world. Consciousness itself can never violate natural law as it arises from the natural processes of the natural world.

Social law includes the objective and universal relationships between social phenomena and social processes. Human society was created through labor, and this labor was performed in very specific material relations between humans and the natural world.

Note: social law is a key concept of historical materialism, which is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.

In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explains how social existence and social laws govern the consciousness of individuals:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

Consciousness is determined by the social communication needs of human beings as well as the material conditions of reality.

Annotation 79

The term material conditions refers to the external environment which humans inhabit. Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base^[40] of human society, and other objective externalities and systems which affect human life and society. Note that material conditions don’t refer to physical matter alone, but also include objective social relations and phenomena. In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx argues that “neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life.”

Consciousness is dynamic in nature, constantly learning and changing flexibly. Consciousness guides humans to transform the material world to suit our needs.

Annotation 80

Consciousness and material conditions have a dialectical relationship with one other, just as the base of society and the superstructure have a dialectical relationship with one other [see Annotation 29, p. 24]. Consciousness arises from material conditions, though conscious activity can affect material conditions.

As Marx explains in Capital Volume I:

At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose.

In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explains how the development of material conditions eventually leads to conscious activity which will in turn lead to changes in society:

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

As Marx further explains, material conditions must first be met before such revolutionary social changes can be made through conscious activity:

No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

- Structure of Consciousness

Consciousness has a very complicated structure, including many factors which have strong relationships with each other. The most basic factors are knowledge, sentiment and willpower.

Annotation 81

As with the concept of reflection (see Annotation 68, p. 65), the analysis of the structure of consciousness which follows is rooted in ideas first proposed by Marx, Engels and Lenin, and later developed through the work of various Soviet psychologists, philosophers, and scientists including Ivan Pavlov, Todor Pavlov, Aleksei Leontiev, Lev Vygotsky, Valentin Voloshinov, and others, and is used as a basis for scientific inquiry and development up to this day. According to Where is Marx in the Work and Thought of Vygotsky? by Lucien Sève (2018), much of this work, such as the groundbreaking work of Lev Vygotsky, has been heavily “de-Marxized,” stripped of all aspects of Marxism and, by extension, dialectical materialism, in translation to English.

Knowledge constitutes the understanding of human beings, and is the result of the cognitive process. Knowledge is the re-created image of perceived objects which takes the form of language. Knowledge is the mode of existence of consciousness and the condition for consciousness to develop.

Annotation 82

Marx and Engels discussed the relationship between language and consciousness extensively in The German Ideology, explaining that language — the form of knowledge which exists in human consciousness — evolved dialectically with and through social activity, and that consciousness also developed along with and through the material processes that gave rise to speech:

From the start the ‘spirit’ is afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’ with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.”So, language, physical speech organs, and human society all developed in dialectic relations with one another. Since language is the form of knowledge in human consciousness, this means that knowledge arose directly from these dialectical processes:
Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious.

The fact that knowledge has a language-form in human consciousness is also important to understand because it shows that consciousness arose dialectically as, and through, social activity, and indeed, language and social activity gave rise to consciousness as a replacement for animal instinct in our relations with nature.

Man’s consciousness of the necessity of associating with the individuals around him is the beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all. This beginning is as animal as social life itself at this stage. It is mere herd-consciousness, and at this point man is only distinguished from sheep by the fact that with him consciousness takes the place of instinct or that his instinct is a conscious one.

And, as language and social activity dialectically developed through one another, human society became complex enough to give rise to human societies and human economies:

This sheep-like or tribal consciousness receives its further development and extension through increased productivity, the increase of needs, and, what is fundamental to both of these, the increase of population. With these there develops the division of labour…

Knowledge can be separated into two broad categories: knowledge of nature, and knowledge of human society. Each of these categories of knowledge reflects its corresponding entity in the external world.

Annotation 83

Each category of knowledge reflects a corresponding entity in the external world.

It’s also important to note that human society and nature have a dialectical relationship with each other and mutually impact one another, and, by extension, knowledge of nature and knowledge of human society also dialectically influence one another. So these categories of knowledge are not isolated from one another but rather dynamically shape and influence each other continuously through time.

Based on levels of cognitive development, we can also classify knowledge into categories of: daily life knowledge and scientific knowledge, experience knowledge and theory knowledge, emotional knowledge and rational knowledge.

Annotation 84

The following information is from the Marxism-Leninism Textbook of Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism, released by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training:

Daily Life and Scientific Knowledge

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Daily Life Knowledge is the knowledge we acquire in our daily lives to deal with our daily tasks. From our interactions with nature and human society, we cultivate life experience and our understanding of every aspect of our daily lives in relation to human society and nature.

Scientific Knowledge arises from Daily Life Knowledge: as our daily lives become more complex, we develop a need to understand the material world and human society more deeply and comprehensively. Scientific Knowledge is thus a developed system of knowledge of nature and human society. Scientific Knowledge can be tested and can be applied to human life and activity in useful ways.

Experience and Theory Knowledge:

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-18.png

Experience Knowledge is cultivated from direct observation of nature and human society. This kind of knowledge is extremely diverse, and we can apply this kind of knowledge to guide our daily activities.

Theory Knowledge arises from Experience Knowledge. Theory Knowledge is composed of abstract generalizations of Experience Knowledge. Theory Knowledge is more profound, accurate, and systematically organized than Experience Knowledge and gives us an understanding of the laws and dynamics of nature and human society.

Emotional and Rational Knowledge:

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-19.png

Less Developed More Developed

Emotional Knowledge is the earlier stage of cognitive processing. Emotional Knowledge comes directly to us from our human senses. We obtain emotional knowledge when we use our human senses to directly learn things about nature and human society. Emotional Knowledge is usually manifested as immediate cognitive responses such as pleasure, pain, and other such impulses.

Rational Knowledge arises from Emotional Knowledge. It is a higher stage of cognitive processing, involving abstract thought and generalization of emotional knowledge.

Rational Knowledge is usually manifested as definitions, conjectures, judgments, etc.

See also: Principle of Development, p. 119; Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.

Sentiment is the resonant manifestation of human emotions and feelings in our relationships. Sentiment is a special form of reality reflection [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Whenever reality impacts human beings, we feel specific sensations and emotional reactions to those impacts. Over time, these specific sensations and emotions combine and dialectically develop into generalized human feelings, and we call these generalized feelings sentiment. Sentiment expresses and develops in every aspect of human life; it is a factor that improves and promotes cognitive and practical activities.

Annotation 85

As Marx explains in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: “Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being — and because he feels that he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential power of man energetically bent on its object.” Marx further elaborates that sentimental emotion is essential to human nature: “The domination of the objective essence within me, the sensuous eruption of my essential activity, is emotion which thereby becomes the activity of my nature.”

Depending on the subjects that are perceived, as well as our human emotions about them, sentiments can be manifested in many different forms such as: moral emotion, aesthetic emotion, religious emotion, etc.

Annotation 86

Moral Emotion is the basic manifestation of moral consciousness at an emotional level. For example: when we see people helping other people, we have positive emotional responses, yet when we see people harming other people, we have negative emotional responses. (Source: Nguyen Thi Khuyen of the National Institute of Administration of Vietnam)

Aesthetic Emotion refers to the the resonant feelings which arise from our interaction with beauty, sadness, comedy, etc., in life and in art. For example: when humans encounter beauty, we feel positive emotional responses. When humans encounter ugliness, we feel negative emotional responses. When we witness pain, we feel sympathetic feelings of pain and a desire to help. When we witness comedy, we feel humorous emotions ourselves. (Source: Textbook of General Aesthetic Studies from the Ministry of

Education and Training of Vietnam)

Religious Emotion is the human belief in supernatural or spiritual forces which can’t be tested or proved through material practice or observation. However, belief in these forces can give human beings emotional responses such as hope, love, etc. (Source: Pham Van Chuc, Doctor of Philosophy, Central Theoretical Council of the Communist Party of Vietnam)

These are just a few illustrative examples; there are many other ways in which human emotion and sentiment can manifest.

Willpower is the manifestation of one’s own strength used to overcome obstacles in the process of achieving goals. Willpower is a dynamic aspect of consciousness, a manifestation of human consciousness in the material world.

Annotation 87

An unnamed poem by Ho Chi Minh, written in 1950 for the Revolutionary Youth Pioneers, addresses the phenomenon of willpower:

Nothing in this world must be difficult
The only thing that we should fear is having a waivering heart
We can dig up mountains and fill the sea
Once we’ve willfully made a firm decision

Today, this poem serves as the lyrics for anthem of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (formerly the Revolutionary Youth Pioneers).

Willpower arises from human self-awareness and awareness of the purposes of our actions. Through this awareness and through willpower, we are able to struggle against ourselves and externalities to successfully achieve our goals. We can consider willpower to be the power of conscious human activity; willpower controls and regulates human behaviors in order to allow humans to move towards our goals voluntarily; willpower also allows humans to exercise self-restraint and self-control, and to be assertive in our actions according to our views and beliefs.

Annotation 88

In Dialectics of Nature, Engels explains how willpower developed in human beings as we separated from animals through the development of consciousness: “The further removed men are from animals, however, the more their effect on nature assumes the character of premeditated, planned action directed towards definite preconceived ends.”

In Capital Volume I, Marx explains how willpower uniquely allows humans to consciously change our own material conditions to suit our needs according to pre-conceived plans:

Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.

The true value of willpower is not only manifested in strength or weakness, but is also expressed in the content and meaning of the goals that we try to achieve through our willpower. Lenin believed that willpower is one of the factors that will create revolutionary careers for millions of people in the fierce class struggles to liberate ourselves and mankind.

Annotation 89

In “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Lenin explains how revolutions are born from the collective willpower of thousands of people:

History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most class-conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes. This can readily be understood, because even the finest of vanguards express the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of thousands, whereas at moments of great upsurge and the exertion of all human capacities, revolutions are made by the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of millions, spurred on by a most acute struggle of classes. Two very important practical conclusions follow from this: first, that in order to accomplish its task the revolutionary class must be able to master all forms or aspects of social activity without exception (completing after the capture of political power — sometimes at great risk and with very great danger — what it did not complete before the capture of power); second, that the revolutionary class must be prepared for the most rapid and brusque replacement of one form by another.

All of these factors [knowledge, sentiment, and willpower] which, together, create consciousness, have dialectical relationships with each other. Of these factors, knowledge is the most important, because it is the mode of existence of consciousness, and also the factor which guides the development of all the other factors, and it also determines how the other factors manifest.

3. The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness

The relationship between matter and consciousness is dialectical. In this relationship, matter comes first, and matter is the source of consciousness; it decides consciousness. However, consciousness is not totally passive, it can impact back to matter through the practical activities of human beings.

Annotation 90

Engels explained in Dialectics of Nature that “matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain,” which means that matter must necessarily come prior to consciousness.

As Marx explains in Capital Volume I, matter determines conscious activity:

The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

However, it’s important to remember that the relationship between matter and consciousness is dialectical, and that conscious activity — through the combination of willpower and labor — can also impact the material world; social change arises through the combined willpower of many human beings. See: Annotation 80, p. 81.

a. The Role of Matter in Consciousness

Dialectical Materialism affirms that:

• Matter is the first existence, and that consciousness comes after.

• Matter is the source of consciousness, it decides consciousness.

We know that matter determines consciousness because consciousness is the product of the high-level-structured matter such as the human brain. Consciousness itself can only exist after the development of the material structure of the human brain. Humans are the result of millions of years of development of the material world. We are, therefore, products of the material world. This conclusion has been firmly established through the development of natural science, which has given us great insight into the long history of the Earth and of the evolution of living organisms, including human beings.

All of this scientific evidence stands as the basis for the viewpoint: matter comes first, consciousness comes after [see Annotation 114, p. 116].

We have already discussed the factors which constitute the natural and social sources of consciousness:

• Human brains

• Impacts of the material world on human brains that cause reflections

• Labor

• Language

[See Annotation 72, p. 68 and Annotation 73, p. 75]

All of these factors also assert that matter is the origin of consciousness.

Annotation 91

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The material basis of consciousness is rooted in the following phenomena:

1. The material structure of the human brain.
1. Impacts from the material world cause reflections in human consciousness.
1. Human Labor — physical process which dialectically develops consciousness.
1. Human Speech — physical process which dialectically develops consciousness.
1. Evolution of human brains and consciousness through material processes of the material world.

For more information, see: Nature and Structure of Consciousness.

Consciousness is composed of reflections and subjective images of the material world, therefore the content of consciousness is decided by matter [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. The development of consciousness is determined by natural laws and by social laws^[41] as well as the material environment which we inhabit. All of these factors which determine consciousness are material in nature. Therefore, matter determines not only the content but also the development of consciousness.

b. The Role of Consciousness in Matter

In relation to matter, consciousness can impact matter through human activities.

When we discuss consciousness we are discussing human consciousness. So, when we talk about the role of consciousness, we are talking about the role of human beings. Consciousness in and of itself cannot directly change anything in reality. In order to change reality, humans have to implement material activities. However, consciousness controls every human activity, so even though consciousness does not directly create or change the material world, it equips humans with knowledge about objective reality, and based on that foundation of knowledge, humans are able to identify goals, set directions, develop plans, and select methods, solutions, tools, and means to achieve our goals. So, consciousness manifests its ability to impact matter through human activities.

The impact of consciousness on matter can have positive or negative results.

Annotation 92

“Positive” and “negative,” in this context, are subjective and relative terms which simply denote “moving towards a goal” and “moving away from a goal,” based on a specific perspective.

From the perspective of revolutionary communism, “positive” can be taken as moving towards the end goal of the liberation of the working class from capitalist oppression and the construction of a stateless, classless society. Likewise, “negative” can be taken as moving away from that goal. See: Annotation 114, p. 116.

Humans have the ability to overcome all challenges in the process of achieving our goals and improving our world, so long as our conscious activities meet the following criteria:

We must perceive reality accurately.
We must properly apply scientific knowledge, revolutionary sentiments, and directed willpower.
We must avoid contradicting objective laws of nature and society.

Successfully achieving our goals and improving the world in this manner constitutes the positive outcome of human consciousness.

On the contrary, if human consciousness wrongly reflects objective reality, nature, and laws, then, right from the beginning, our actions will have negative results which will do harm to ourselves and our society.

Therefore, by directing the activities of humans, consciousness can determine whether the results of human activities are beneficial or harmful. Our consciousness thus determines whether our activities will succeed or fail and whether our efforts will be effective or ineffective.

By studying the matter, origin, and nature of consciousness, as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness, we can see that:

Matter is the source of consciousness ^[42].
Matter determines the content and creative capacity of consciousness ^[43].
Matter is the prerequisite to form consciousness ^[44].
Consciousness only has the ability to impact matter, and this impact is indirect, because it has to be done through human material activities within material reality ^[45].

Matter determines consciousness while consciousness impacts matter indirectly through human activity.

The strength with which consciousness can impact the material world depends on:

The accuracy of reflection of the material world in consciousness ^[46].
Strength of willpower which transmits consciousness to human activity ^[47].
The degree of organization of social activity ^[48].
Material conditions in which human activity occurs ^[49].

Annotation 93

The importance of organization in determining the outcomes of human social activity is one of the most important concepts of Marxism-Leninism and is discussed frequently by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and nearly every other important communist revolutionary in history. Marx explains the connections between social organization and conscious human activity in Capital Volume I [see Annotation 80, p. 81].

4. Meaning of the methodology

Dialectical Materialism builds the most basic and common methodological^[50] principles for human cognitive and practical activities on the following bases:

The viewpoint of the material nature of the world [matter comes first, consciousness comes after].
The dynamic and creative nature of consciousness ^[51].
The dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness ^[52].

All cognitive and practical activities of humans originate from material reality and must observe objective natural and social laws, however, our activities are capable of impacting the material world through dynamic and creative conscious activity. [See The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].

Annotation 94

The above paragraph summarizes an important methodological concept which is critical for undestanding the philosophical framework of Dialectical Materialism. Dialectical Materialism, as a philosophy, synthesizes earlier materialist and idealist positions by recognizing the fact that the material determines consciousness, while consciousness can impact the material world through willful activity.

From this philosophical basis, the methodology of Materialist Dialectics has been developed to provide a deeper understanding of dialectical development, which is rooted in contradiction and negation within and between subjects. Materialist Dialectics is the subject of Chapter 2, p. 98.

According to this methodological principle [i.e., the Principle of the Dialectic Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness], if we hope to succeed in accomplishing our goals in the material world, then we must simultaneously meet two criteria:

1. We must ensure that our knowledge reflects the objective material world as much as possible, respecting the objective natural and social laws of the material world.

2. We must simultaneously recognize the dynamic and creative nature of our conscious activity.

When we say that human activities originate from material reality and must observe objective natural and social laws we' mean that human knowledge must originate from the material world. This means that if we hope to be successful in our activities, we should respect the natural and social laws of the material world.

This means that in our human perception and activities, we must determine goals, and set strategies, policies, and plans which are rooted firmly in objective material reality. Humans have to take objective material reality as the foundation of our activities and plans, and all of our activities must be carried out in the material world. Humans have to examine and understand our material conditions and transform them in ways that will help us to accomplish our goals.

When we talk about impacting the material world through dynamic and creative conscious activity, we mean we must recognize the positive, dynamic, and creative roles of consciousness. We must recognize the role human consciousness plays in dynamically and creatively manifesting our will in the material world through labor. Impacting the material world through conscious activity at a revolutionary scale requires humans to respect and understand the role of scientific knowledge; to study laboriously to master such knowledge; and then to propagate such knowledge so to the masses to develop public knowledge and belief so as to guide the people’s action.

Moreover, we also have to voluntarily study and practice^[53] in order to form and improve our revolutionary viewpoint^[54] and willpower^[55] in order to have both scientific and humanitarian activity guidelines.

To implement this principle [i.e., the Principle of the Dialectic Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness], we have to avoid, fight against, and overcome the diseases of subjectivism^[56] and idealism^[57] through such errors as:

Attempting to impose idealist plans and principles [which are not rooted in material conditions] into reality.
Considering fantasy, illusion, and imagination instead of reality.
Basing policies and programs on subjective desires.
Using sentiment as the starting point for developing policies, strategies, etc.

On the other hand, in cognitive and practical activities, we also have to fight against empiricism^[58], which disregards scientific knowledge and theories, and which is also very conservative, stagnant and passive.

Annotation 95

Process of Developing Revolutionary Public Knowledge

Developing revolutionary public knowledge must be preceded by mastery of knowledge and a firm grounding in the role and nature of knowledge.

In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels makes a scathing critique of idealist socialist revolutionary thought, writing:

To all these [idealist socialists], Socialism is the expression of absolute truth^[59], reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as an absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive of one another.

Here, Engels points out the absurdity of the idea that some abstract, purely ideal “truth” could liberate workers in the material world. Engels continues on, explaining how such idealist socialism could never lead to meaningful revolutionary change:

Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.

In other words, idealist revolutionary movements only tend to result in endless debate and meaningless theories which are divorced from objective reality and material conditions. Such theories and idealist constructions do not lead to effective action in the real world. Socialism must become real (i.e., based in objective material conditions and praxis^[60] in the real world) to affect change in the material world, as Engels explains elsewhere in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific [see Annotation 17, p. 18].

In Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx lays out an excellent case study of the failings of incoherent, idealist socialism. He begins by quoting the Gotha Program, which was an ideological program which the German Workers Party hoped to implement. In this text, Marx cites the Gotha Program line by line and offers his materialist critique of the idealist principles presented. In the following passage, Marx refutes some key errors caused by idealism and offers materialist correction:

Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power... But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.

Here, Marx points out the importance of having a firm understanding of the material reality of labor and its relation to the material, natural world. Marx points out that the idea that labor, alone, is the source of all wealth is an idealist notion of the bourgeoisie, a false consciousness [see Annotation 235, p. 231] which prevents proper material analysis and props up the capitalist viewpoint. A failure to grasp the truth of the material basis of reality weakens the socialist position, and any movement built on such weak idealist foundations will lead to failure in trying to bring about revolutionary change.

We have already discussed the shortcomings of empiricism in Annotation 10, p. 10, but it might be helpful to see another case study, this time from Engels, pointing out the flaws of empiricist analysis in his text Anti-Dühring. Engels begins by quoting the empiricist Eugen Dühring, who wrote:

Philosophy is the development of the highest form of consciousness of the world and of life, and in a wider sense embraces the principles of all knowledge and volition. Wherever a series of cognitions or stimuli or a group of forms of being come to be examined by human consciousness, the principles underlying these manifestations of necessity become an object of philosophy. These principles are the simple, or until now assumed to be simple, constituents of manifold knowledge and volition. Like the chemical composition of bodies, the general constitution of things can be reduced to basic forms and basic elements. These ultimate constituents or principles, once they have been discovered, are valid not only for what is immediately known and accessible, but also for the world which is unknown and inaccessible to us. Philosophical principles consequently provide the final supplement required by the sciences in order to become a uniform system by which nature and human life can be explained. Apart from the fundamental forms of all existence, philosophy has only two specific subjects of investigation — nature and the world of man. Accordingly, our material arranges itself quite naturally into three groups, namely, the general scheme of the universe, the science of the principles of nature, and finally the science of mankind. This succession at the same time contains an inner logical sequence, for the formal principles which are valid for all being take precedence, and the realms of the objects to which they are to be applied then follow in the degree of their subordination.

Engels then proceeds to critique this empiricist worldview, showing that it does not properly reflect the material world and amounts to idealism in its own right:

What [Dühring] is dealing with are therefore principles, formal tenets derived from thought and not from the external world, which are to be applied to nature and the realm of man, and to which therefore nature and man have to conform. But whence does thought obtain these principles? From itself?
No, for Herr Dühring himself says: the realm of pure thought is limited to logical schemata and mathematical forms (the latter, moreover, as we shall see, is wrong). Logical schemata can only relate to forms of thought; but what we are dealing with here is solely forms of being, of the external world, and these forms can never be created and derived by thought out of itself, but only from the external world. But with this the whole relationship is inverted: the principles are not the starting-point of the investigation, but its final result; they are not applied to nature and human history, but abstracted from them, it is not nature and the realm of man which conform to these principles, but the principles are only valid in so far as they are in conformity with nature and history. That is the only materialist conception of the matter, and Herr Dühring’s contrary conception is idealistic, makes things stand completely on their heads, and fashions the real world out of ideas, out of schemata, schemes or categories existing somewhere before the world, from eternity — just like a Hegel.

Lenin also heavily criticized empiricism in his work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, which we discuss at length in Annotation 32, p. 27.

Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics

Materialist dialectics is one of the basic theoretical parts that form the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism. It is the “science of common relations” and also the “science of common rules of motion and development of nature, society, and human thoughts... Dialectics, as understood by Marx, and also in conformity with Hegel, includes what is now called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology.”^[61]

[Note: Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge; for more information see Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.]

I. Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics

1. Dialectics and Basic Forms of Dialectics

a. Definitions of Dialectics and the Subjective Dialectic

In Marxism-Leninism, the term dialectic refers to regular relationships, interactions, transformations, motions, and developments of things, phenomena, and processes in nature, society and human thought.^[62]

There are two forms of dialectic: the objective dialectic and the subjective dialectic. The objective dialectic is the dialectic of the material world, while the subjective dialectic is the reflection of objective dialectic in human consciousness. [See Annotation 68, p. 65].

According to Engels, “Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevail throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature.”^[63]

Annotation 96

Dialectics is an umbrella term which includes both forms of dialectical systems: subjective and objective dialectics.

Objective dialectics are the dialectical processes which occur in the material world, including all motion, relationships, and dynamic changes which occur in space and time.

Subjective dialectics, or dialectical thought, is a system of analysis and organized thinking which aims to reflect the objective dialectics of the material world within human consciousness. Dialectical thinking has two component forms: dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics [see Annotation 49, p. 45].

Subjective dialectics is the theory that studies and summarises the [objective] dialectic of nature into a system with scientific principles and rules, in order to build a system of methodological principles of perception and practice. Dialectics is opposed to metaphysics — a system of thought which conceives of things and phenomena in the world in an isolated and unchanging state [See Annotation 8, p. 8].

b. Basic Forms of Dialectics

Dialectics has developed into three basic forms and levels: ancient primitive dialectics, German idealist dialectics, and the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism.

Ancient primitive dialectics is the earliest form of dialectics. It has developed independently in many philosophical systems in ancient China, India and Greece.

Chinese philosophy has two major forms of ancient primitive dialectics:

“Changing Theory” (a theory of common principles and rules pertaining to the changes in the universe)
The “Five Elements Theory” (a theory of the principles of mutual impact and transformation of the five elements of the universe) of the School of Yin-Yang. [See: Primitive Materialism, p. 52]

In Indian philosophy, Buddhist philosophy is a quintessential [see Annotation 6, p. 8] form of ancient primitive dialectics, which includes such concepts as “selflessness,” “impermanence,” and “predestination.”

An ancient, primitive form of dialectics also developed in Ancient Greek philosophy.

Friedrich Engels wrote: “The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought… This primitive, naive, but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.”^[64]

Engels also wrote of Greek dialectics: “Here, dialectical thought still appears in its pristine simplicity, as yet undisturbed by the charming obstacles which the metaphysicists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — Bacon and Locke in England, Wolff in Germany — put in its own way... Among the Greeks — just because they were not yet advanced enough to dissect and analyse nature — nature is still viewed as a whole, in general. The universal connection of natural phenomena is not proved in regard to particular; to the Greeks it is the result of direct contemplation.”^[65]

Annotation 97

Engels, here, is explaining how the ancient Greek dialecticians were correct to view nature as a cohesive system, a “whole, in general,” which they determined through direct observation of the natural world. The major shortcoming of this ancient Greek form of dialectics was a lack of inquiry into the specific processes and principles of nature. Engels laments that seventeenth and eighteenth century metaphysicists took us backwards by disregarding this view of nature as a cohesive, general whole.

Ancient, primitive dialectics had an accurate awareness of the dialectical characteristic of the world but with its primitive and naive perspective, it still lacked evidence-based forms of natural scientific achievements.

Jumping forward to the late 16^th century, natural sciences started developing rapidly in Europe. Scientists began deeply analysing and studying specific factors and phenomena of nature which led to the birth of modern European metaphysical analysis. In the 18^th century, metaphysics became the dominant methodology in philosophical thought and scientific study. However, when natural scientists moved from studying each subject separately to studying the unification of all those subjects in their relationships, the metaphysical method proved insufficient. Thus, European scientists and philosophers had to transition into a more advanced system of thought: dialectical thought.

The classical German idealist dialectics were founded by Kant and completed by Hegel. According to Engels: “The second form of dialectics, which is the form that comes closest to the German naturalists [natural scientists], is classical German philosophy, from Kant to Hegel.”^[66]

Annotation 98

Engels discusses this history, and the shortcomings of the metaphysical philosophy of his era, in The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring. First, Engels explains why early modern natural scientists initially did not feel constrained by their adherence to metaphysics, since inquiries in the initial revolution of scientific study were limited to the narrow development of specific fields of inquiry by necessity:

Empirical natural science has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for knowledge that the necessity of classifying it in each separate field of investigation systematically and in accordance with its inner inter-connection has become absolutely imperative.

Engels goes on to explain that at the time he was writing, enough knowledge had been accumulated within specific, distinct fields that it becomes necessary to begin studying the connections and overlaps between different fields, which called for theoretical and philosophical foundations:

It is becoming equally imperative to bring the individual spheres of knowledge into the correct connection with one another. In doing so, however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical thinking can be of assistance.

Unfortunately, natural scientists were held back by the existing metaphysical theoretical foundations which were dominant at the time as, according to Engels, “theoretical thinking is an innate quality only as regards natural capacity. This natural capacity must be developed, improved, and for its improvement there is as yet no other means than the study of previous philosophy.”

Metaphysical theory and formal logic were in common use by natural scientists at the time. As Engels explained in On Dialectics and Dialectics of Nature, metaphysics and formal logic could never be as useful as dialectical analysis for examining and unifying concepts from wide-ranging dynamic systems of overlapping fields of inquiry.

Unfortunately, dialectics had not yet been suitably developed for use in the natural sciences before the work of Marx and Engels in developing dialectical materialism, as Engels explained in On Dialectics:

Formal logic itself has been the arena of violent controversy from the time of Aristotle to the present day. And dialectics has so far been fairly closely investigated by only two thinkers, Aristotle and Hegel. But it is precisely dialectics that constitutes the most important form of thinking for present-day natural science, for it alone offers the analogue for, and thereby the method of explaining, the evolutionary processes occurring in nature, inter-connections in general, and transitions from one field of investigation to another.

The Idealist Dialectics of Hegel [see Annotation 9, p. 10] constituted a major development of dialectics, but the idealist nature of Hegelian dialectics made them unsuitable for natural scientists, who therefore discarded “Old-Hegelian” dialectics and were thus left without a suitable dialectical framework. Again, from On Dialectics:

The year 1848, which otherwise brought nothing to a conclusion in Germany, accomplished a complete revolution there only in the sphere of philosophy [and] the nation resolutely turned its back on classical German philosophy that had lost itself in the sands of Berlin old-Hegelianism... But a nation that wants to climb the pinnacles of science cannot possibly manage without theoretical thought. Not only Hegelianism but dialectics too was thrown overboard — and that just at the moment when the dialectical character of natural processes irresistibly forced itself upon the mind, when therefore only dialectics could be of assistance to natural science in negotiating the mountain of theory — and so there was a helpless relapse into the old metaphysics.

Engels goes on to explain that, having rejected Hegel’s dialectics, natural scientists were set adrift, cobbling together theoretical frameworks from the works of philosophers which were plagued by idealism and metaphysics, and which were therefore not suitable for the task of unifying the disparate fields of natural sciences together:

What prevailed among the public since then were, on the one hand, the vapid reflections of Schopenhauer, which were fashioned to fit the philistines, and later even those of Hartmann; and, on the other hand, the vulgar itinerant-preacher materialism of a Vogt and a Büchner. At the universities the most diverse varieties of eclecticism competed with one another and had only one thing in common, namely, that they were concocted from nothing but remnants of old philosophies and were all equally metaphysical. All that was saved from the remnants of classical philosophy was a certain neo-Kantianism, whose last word was the eternally unknowable thing-in-itself, that is, the bit of Kant [see Annotation 72, p. 68] that least merited preservation. The final result was the incoherence and confusion of theoretical thought now prevalent.

Engels explains that this lack of a proper dialectical materialist framework had frustrated natural scientists of his era:

One can scarcely pick up a theoretical book on natural science without getting the impression that natural scientists themselves feel how much they are dominated by this incoherence and confusion, and that the so-called philosophy now current offers them absolutely no way out. And here there really is no other way out, no possibility of achieving clarity, than by a return, in one form or another, from metaphysical to dialectical thinking.

After explaining that Hegel’s system of dialectics came closest to meeting the needs of contemporary science, Engels explains why Hegelian dialectics were ultimately rejected by the scientific community:

Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line. Hence, with the fall of the idealist point of departure, the system built upon it, in particular Hegelian philosophy of nature, also falls. It must however be recalled that the natural scientists’ polemic against Hegel, in so far as they at all correctly understood him, was directed solely against these two points: viz., the idealist point of departure and the arbitrary, fact-defying construction of the system.”

In other words, it was the idealism and the unworkable structuring of Hegelian dialectics that prevented its adoption by natural scientists. Engels finally explains how Marx was able to modify Hegel’s idealist dialectics into a materialist form which is suitable for empirical scientific inquiry:

It is the merit of Marx that... he was the first to have brought to the fore again the forgotten dialectical method, its connection with Hegelian dialectics and its distinction from the latter, and at the same time to have applied this method in Capital to the facts of an empirical science, political economy.

These Classical German philosophers [Kant, Hegel, etc.^[67]] systematically organized idealist dialectics into formal philosophies. Of particular note was Hegel’s belief that the dialectical process would eventually lead to an “absolute idea.” This foundational belief in an “absolute idea” is what chiefly defines Hegelian dialectics as idealist in nature [see Annotation 98, p. 100].

Hegel believed that the subjective dialectic is the basis of the objective dialectic. [In other words, Hegel believed that dialectical thought served as the objective dialectics of the material world.]

According to Hegel, the “absolute idea” was the starting point of all existence, and that this “absolute idea,” after creating the natural world, then came to exist within human consciousness.

Engels wrote that in Hegelian dialectics: “... spirit, mind, the idea, is primary and that the real world is only a copy of the idea.”^[68]

Annotation 99

In the above quoted passage, Engels was explaining why Hegelian dialectics were unsuitable for use in natural sciences. Here is a longer excerpt:

First of all it must be established that here it is not at all a question of defending Hegel’s point of departure: that spirit, mind, the idea, is primary and that the real world is only a copy of the idea... We all agree that in every field of science, in natural as in historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms and the various forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science, too, the inter-connections are not to be built into the facts, but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.

The German idealists (most notably Hegel) built an idealist system of dialectics organized into categories and common laws along with a strict logic of consciousness.

Lenin stated that: “Hegel brilliantly divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature) in the dialectics of concepts.”^[69]

Annotation 100

What Lenin means, here, is that Hegel inadvertently and unconsciously discovered the concept of reflection [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Hegel intuitively understood that the material world was reflected in human consciousness, and, by extension, subjective dialectics (dialectical thought) reflected objective dialectics (of the material world). Hegel’s error was an inversion of the ideal and the material. As Marx later pointed out in the Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, it is the material which precedes the ideal, and not the other way around:

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [craftsman/artisan/creator] of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.

Engels also quoted and emphasized Marx’s thoughts [in the Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, citing another quote of Marx from the Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, further quoted in Annotation 100 above]: “The mystification which dialectics suffers in Hegel’s hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”^[70]

Annotation 101

In the Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Engels explains some of the contemporary currents of science and philosophy of his era. Engels explains that Hegelian philosophy had been dismissed by a newer current of natural scientists who dismissed “the idealist point of departure and the arbitrary, fact-defying construction of the system.” In other words, the natural scientists rejected Hegelianism because it was both idealist and was not built on a foundation of objective facts.

Engels points out, however, that Marx “was the first to have brought to the fore again the forgotten dialectical method” of Hegel.

The dialectical method was forgotten in the sense that the natural scientists ignored and dismissed dialectics along with the rest of Hegel’s philosophy. So, Engels is pointing out that one of the great contributions of Marx was salvaging the dialectical method from Hegel while rejecting the idealist and non-fact-based characteristics of Hegelian philosophy.

Marx, according to Engels, proved that the dialectical method could be separated from idealism by “[applying the dialectical method] in Capital to the facts of an empirical science, political economy.” This was the origin of dialectical materialism: the resurrection of the dialectical method and the development of a dialectical method in a materialist and scientific form.

The idealist characteristics of classical German dialectics and Hegelian philosophy was a limitation that needed to be overcome [so that it could be utilized for scientific inquiry]. Marx and Engels overcame that limitation and in so doing developed materialist dialectics. This system of dialectics is the most advanced form of dialectics in the history of philosophy to date. It is the successor of previous systems of dialectics, and it arose as a critique of the classical German dialectics.

Engels said: “Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception of nature and history.”^[71]

2. Materialist Dialectics

a. Definition of Materialist Dialectics

Materialist dialectics have been defined in various ways by many prominent Marxist-Leninist philosophers.

Engels defined materialist dialectics as: “nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society, and thought.”^[72]

Engels also emphasized the role of the principle of general relations.^[73] As John Burdon

Sanderson Haldane noted in the 1939 preface to Dialectics of Nature: “In dialectics they

[Marx and Engels] saw the science of the general laws of change.”^[74]

Lenin emphasized the important role of the principles of development^[75] (including the theory of cognitive development) in the dialectics that Marx inherited from Hegelian philosophy.

Lenin wrote: “The main achievement was dialectics, i.e., the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest, and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge that provides us with a reflection of eternally developing matter.”^[76]

b. Basic Features and Roles of Materialist Dialectics

There are two basic features of the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism:

First, the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism is a system of dialectics that is based on the foundation of the scientific materialist viewpoint.

Annotation 102

Remember that scientific in Marxism-Leninism refers broadly to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding [see Objects and Purposes of Study, p. 38]. Remember also that materialism in Marxism-Leninism has specific meaning as well, which differentiates it from other forms of materialism [see Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism, p. 52]. Here, materialism includes an understanding that the material is the first basis of reality, meaning that the material determines the ideal (though human consciousness can impact the material world through willpower and labor [see Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79]). Materialism is also built upon scientific explanations (rooted in empirical data and practice, i.e. systematic experimentation and observation) of the world. And finally, remember that viewpoint is the starting point of inquiry [see Annotation 11, p. 12].

Thus, a scientific materialist viewpoint is a perspective which begins analysis of the world in a manner that is both scientifically systematic in pursuit of understanding and firmly rooted in a materialist conception of the world.

Note: Materialist Dialectics contains Twelve Basic Pairs of Categories, Two Basic Principles and Three Universal Laws. These are summarized, respectively, in Appendix A (p. 246), Appendix B (p. 247), and Appendix C (p. 248), and explained in depth throughout the rest of this chapter.

In this way, materialist dialectics fundamentally differs from the classical German idealist dialectics, and especially differs from Hegelian dialectics^[77] (as these dialectics were founded on idealist viewpoints).

Moreover, it also has a higher level of development compared to other dialectical systems of thought found in the history of philosophy going back to ancient times. Such previous forms of dialectics were fundamentally based on materialist stances, however the materialism of those ancient times was still naive, primitive and surface-level.

Second, the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism unifies dialectical materialist viewpoints and materialist dialectical methodology, so it not only explains the world, but is also a tool humans can use to perceive and improve the world.

Every principle and law of Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics is both:

1. An accurate explanation of the dialectical characteristics of the world.

2. A scientific methodology for perceiving and improving the world.

By summarizing the general interconnections and development of all things — every phenomenon in nature, society and human thought — Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics provides the most general methodological principles for the process of perceiving and improving the world. They are not just objective methodological principles; they are a comprehensive, constantly developing, and historical methodology.

This methodology can be used to analyze contradictions [see Annotation 119, p. 123] in order to find the basic origins and motivations of both motion and developmental processes. Therefore, materialist dialectics is a great scientific tool for the revolutionary class to perceive and improve the world.

With these basic features, materialist dialectics plays a very important role in the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism. Materialist dialectics are the foundation of the scientific and revolutionary characteristics of Marxism-Leninism and also offer the most general worldview and methodology for creative activities in scientific study and practical activities.

II. Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics

Annotation 103

The Principle of General Relationships and the Principle of Development are the most basic principles of materialist dialectics. These two principles are dialectically related to one another.

The following sections will outline the Principle of General Relationships and the Principle of Development, which are the most fundamental principles of materialist dialectics. These two concepts are closely (and dialectically) related:

1. The Principle of General Relationships

a. Definition of Relationship and Common Relationship

Annotation 104

The Principle of General Relationships describes how all things, phenomena, and ideas are related to one another, and are defined by these internal and external relationships

The Principle of Development relates to the idea that motion, change, and development are driven by internal and external relationships.

These two principles are dialectically linked: any given subject is defined by its internal relationships, and these same relationships drive the development of every subject.

Note: The foundation of the principles of Materialist Dialectics were laid out by

Engels in Dialectics of Nature. Engels began working on Dialectics of Nature in February, 1870 and had to stop in 1876 to work on Anti-Dühring. He then restarted work on Dialectics of Nature in 1878 and continued working on it until 1883, when Karl Marx died. Engels felt that it was more important to try and put together Marx’s great unfinished works, Capital Volumes 2, 3, and 4, and so stopped working on Dialectics of Nature once again. So, unfortunately, Engels died before this seminal work on Materialist Dialectics could be completed, and what we have instead is an unfinished assemblage of notes.

What follows in the rest of this book is a cohesive system of Materialist Dialectics which was built upon the foundations laid out by Engels in Dialectics of Nature and many other works of political and scholarly writing from various sources. This is the system of Materialist Dialectics studied by Vietnamese students and applied by Vietnamese communists today.

Because this text comes from predominantly Vietnamese scholarship and ideological development, we have had to translate some terms into English which are not derived from the “canon” of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. In some cases, various terms have been consolidated into one concept. For example: Engels used the term “interconnection” (German: innern Zusammenhang, literally: “inner connections”) in Dialectics of Nature, but Vietnamese political scientists use the term “relationship.” Where Engels uses the term “motion” (German: Bewegung) modern Vietnamese communists tend to use the word “development.” Wherever this is the case, we have chosen to use the words in English which most closely match the language used in the original Vietnamese of this text.

In materialist dialectics, the word relationship refers to the regulating principles, mutual interactions, and mutual transformations which exist between things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as those existing between aspects and factors within things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 105

Throughout this book, phenomenon/phenomena simply refers to anything that is observable by the human senses.

Materialist dialectics examines relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas and within things, phenomena, and ideas. A relationship which occurs between two separate things or phenomena is referred to as an external relationship. A relationship which occurs within a thing or phenomenon is referred to as an internal relationship.

These terms are relative; sometimes a relationship may be internal in one context but external in a different context. For example, consider a solar system:

When considering a solar system as a whole, the orbit of a moon around a planet may be considered as an internal relationship of the solar system. But when considering the moon as an isolated subject, its orbit around a planet may be seen as an external relationship which the moon has with the planet.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-24.png

The diagram above illustrates different types of relationships:

Object 1 has its own internal relationships (A), and, from its own perspective, it also has external relationships with Object 2 (B). From a wider perspective, the relationship between Object 1 and Object 2 (B) may be viewed as an internal relationship.

This system of relationships (between Object 1 and Object 2) will also have external relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas (C).

Relationships have a quality of generality, which refers to how frequently they occur between and within things, phenomena, and ideas. When we refer to general relationships, we are usually referring to relationships which exist broadly across many things, phenomena, and ideas. General relationships can exist both internally, within things, phenomena, and ideas, and externally, between things, phenomena, and ideas.

The most general relationships are universal relationships: these are relationships that exist between and within everything and all phenomena, and they are one of the two primary subjects of study of materialist dialectics. [The other primary subject of study is the Principle of Development; see page 119.]

Annotation 106

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-25.png

The discussion of generality of relationships can seem confusing at first. What’s important to understand is that generality is a spectrum ranging from the least general relationships (unique relationships, which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas) and the most general relationships (universal relationships, which occur between or within all things/phenomena/ideas).

Of particular importance in the study of materialist dialectics are universal relationships which exist within and between all things, phenomena, and ideas [see below].

Translation Note: In the original Vietnamese, the word “universal” is not used. Instead, the compound term “phổ biến nhất” is used, which literally means “most general.” In Vietnamese, this phrasing is commonly used to describe the concept of “universal” and it is thus not confusing to Vietnamese speakers. For this translation, we have opted to use the word “universal” because we feel it is less confusing and better explains the concept in English.

The universal relationships include (but are not limited to):

Relationships between basic philosophical category pairs (Private and Common, Essence and Phenomenon, etc.). ^[78]
Relationships between quantity and quality. ^[79]
Relationships between opposites. ^[80]

Together, in all forms of relationships in nature, society and human thought (special, general, and universal) there is unity in diversity and diversity in unity.

Annotation 107

Principle of General Relationships

According to Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought: “Materialist dialectics upholds the position that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in mutual relationships with each other, regulate each other, transform into each other, and that nothing exists in complete isolation. That is the core idea of the Principle of General Relationships.”

From this Principle, we find the characteristics of Diversity in Unity and Unity in Diversity; the basis of Diversity in Unity is the fact that every thing, phenomenon, or idea, contains many different relationships; the basis of Unity in Diversity is that many different relationships exist — unified — within each and every thing, phenomenon, and idea.

Diversity in Unity

There exist an infinite number of diverse relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas, but all of these relationships share the same foundation in the material world.

An infinite diversity of relationships exist within the unity of the material world.

The material world is not a chaotic and random assortment of things, phenomena, and ideas. Rather, it is a system of relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas. Likewise, since the material world exists as the foundation of all things, phenomena, and ideas, the material world is thus the foundation for all relationships within and between things, phenomena, and ideas. Because all relationships share a foundation in the material world, they also exist in unity, even though all relationships are diversified and different from one another.

Universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas manifest in infinitely diverse ways.

Unity in Diversity

When we examine the universal relationships that exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity.

Paraphrased From: Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought

b. Characteristics of Relationships

Objectiveness, generality, and diversity are the three basic characteristics of relationships.

- The Characteristic of Objectiveness of Relationships

According to the materialist dialectical viewpoint, relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas have objective characteristics.

Annotation 108

In materialist dialectics, objectiveness is an abstract concept that refers to the relative externality of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every thing, phenomena and idea exists externally to every other thing, phenomena, and idea. This means that to each individual subject (i.e., each individual thing/phenomena/idea), all other things, phenomena, and ideas are external objects

All things, phenomena, and ideas have the relative characteristic of objectiveness.

All together, the collection of all things, phenomena, and ideas in the universe create the external reality of any given subject. So, objectiveness is relative. In the case of human beings, every individual person exists as an individual subject to which all other things, phenomena, and ideas (including other human beings) have objective characteristics.

Alice and Bob are external to one another; each is objective from the other’s perspective.

Of course, objectiveness is always relative. Something might be external from a certain perspective but not from another perspective. For example, say there are two people: Bob and Alice. From Bob’s perspective, Alice has objective characteristics. But from Alice’s perspective, Bob would have objective characteristics.

The relationship between Alice and Bob has objective characteristics to both Alice and Bob.

As all relationships are inherently external to any given subject (even subjects which are party to the relationship), relationships also have objective characteristics.

Whenever two things, phenomena, or ideas have a relationship with one another, they form a pair. The relationship is inherent to this pair and external to any subject which exists outside of the pair. The mutual interaction and mutual transformation which occurs to the things, phenomena, or objects within the pair as the result of the relationship are inherent and objective properties of the pair.

Annotation 109 Translation note:

In the original Vietnamese text, the word for “objective” is “khách quan.” This is a compound word in which “khách” means “guest,” and “quan” means “point of view.” Therefore, “khách quan” literally means “the guest’s (or outsider’s) point of view.”

Thus we translate this to “objectiveness/objective,” the characteristic of being viewed from the outside.

The word “inherent” in the original Vietnamese is “vốn có.” This is another compound word: “vốn” is a shortened form of the word “vốn dĩ,” which means “by or through nature,” “naturally,” and “intrinsically.” “Có” means “to have” or “to exist.” “Vốn có” thus means “already existing naturally” or “already there, through nature.”

So we use the word “inherent” to mean “existing intrinsically or naturally within, without external influence.”

Human beings can’t change or impact external things and phenomena — and the relationships between them — through human will alone. Humans are limited to perceiving relationships between things and phenomena and then impacting or changing them through our practical activities.

- The Characteristic of Generality of Relationships

According to the dialectical viewpoint, there is no thing, phenomenon, nor idea that exists in absolute isolation from other things, phenomena and ideas.

Annotation 110

Although all things, phenomena, and ideas have the characteristic of externality and objectiveness to all other things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112], this does not mean that they exist in isolation. Isolation implies a complete lack of any relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas. On the contrary, according to the Principle of General Relationships [see p. 107], all things, phenomena, and ideas have relationships with all other things, phenomena, and ideas.

Simultaneously, there is also no known thing, phenomenon, nor idea that does not have a systematic structure, including component parts which in turn have their own internal relationships. This means that every existence is a system, and, moreso, is an open system that exists in relation with other systems. All systems interact and mutually transform one another.

Annotation 111

As explained above, a systematic structure is a structure which includes within itself a system of component parts and relationships. It has been postulated by some scientific models that there may be some “fundamental base particle” (quarks, preons, etc.), which, if true, would mean that there is a certain basic material component which cannot be further broken down. However, this would not contradict the Principle of Materialist Dialectics of General Relationships (which states that all things, phenomena, and ideas interact with and mutually transform one another — see Annotation 107, p. 110).

- The Characteristic of Diversity of Relationships

In addition to affirming the objectiveness^[81] and generality^[82] of relationships, the dialectical viewpoint of Marxism-Leninism also emphasizes the diversity of relationships. The characteristic of diversity is defined by the following features:

All things, phenomena, and ideas have different relationships. Every relationship plays a distinct role in the existence and development of the things, phenomena, and ideas which are included within.
Any given relationship between things, phenomena, and ideas will have different characteristics and manifestations under different conditions and/or during different periods of motion and/or at different stages of development.

Annotation 112

One of Marx’s most critical observations was that things are defined by their internal and external relationships, including human beings. For example, in Theses on Feuerbach, Marx wrote that “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.” It is only through relationships — through mutual impacts and transformations — that things, phenomena, and ideas (including human beings and human societies) change and develop over time. All of these relationships — which both define and transform all things, phenomena, and ideas in existence — exist in infinite diversity [see Annotation 107, p. 110].

Just as things, phenomena, and ideas change and transform through the course of relations with one another, the nature of the relationships themselves also change and develop over time.

Characteristics refer to the features and attributes that exist internally within a given thing, phenomena, or idea.

Manifestation refers to how a given thing, phenomena, or idea is expressed externally in the material world.

For example, a ball may have the characteristics of being made of rubber, having a mass of 100 grams, and having a melting point of 260℃. It may manifest by bouncing on the ground, having a spherical shape, and having a red appearance to human observers.

If ten such balls exist, they will all be slightly different. Even if they have the same mass and material composition, they will have slightly different variations in size, shape, etc. Even if each ball will melt at 260℃, the melting will manifest differently for each ball — they will melt into slightly different shapes, at slightly different speeds, etc.

Relationships also have characteristics and manifestations. For example, the moon’s orbit around the Earth is a relationship. It has characteristics such as the masses of each related body, forces of gravity, and other factors which produce and influence the orbit. The same orbital relationship also has manifestations such as the duration of the moon’s orbit around the Earth, the size of its ellipse, the orbit’s effects on the tides of the Earth’s ocean, etc.

Characteristics and Manifestation correspond, respectively, to the philosophical category pair of Content and Form, which is discussed in section page 147.

Therefore, no two relationships are exactly the same, even if they exist between very similar things, phenomena, and ideas and/or in very similar situations.

It is also important to note that the characteristic of diversity also applies to things, phenomena, and ideas themselves. In other words, every individual thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence also manifests differently from every other thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence, even if they seem quite similar.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Based on the objective and popular characteristics of relationships, we can see that in our cognitive and practical activities, we have to have a comprehensive viewpoint.

Having a comprehensive viewpoint requires that in the process of perceiving and handling real life situations, humans have to consider the internal dialectical relationships between the component parts, factors, and aspects within a thing or phenomenon. We also need to consider the external mutual interactions they have with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Only on such a comprehensive basis can we properly understand things and phenomena and then effectively handle problems in real life. So, the comprehensive viewpoint is the opposite of a unilateral and/or metaphysical viewpoint [see Annotation 51, p. 49] in both perception and practice.

Lenin said: “If we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all of its facets, its connections, and ‘mediacies [indirect relationships].’”^[83]

Annotation 113

The comprehensive viewpoint sees the subject in terms of all of its internal and external relationships.

Consider a factory. A factory exists as a collection of internal relationships (between the workers, between machines, between the workers and the machines, etc.) and external relationships (between the factory and its suppliers, between the factory and its customers, between the factory and the city, etc.). In order to have a comprehensive viewpoint when examining the factory, one must consider and understand all of the internal and external relationships which define it.

The diversified characteristic of relationships [see Annotation 107, p. 110] shows that in human cognitive and practical activities, we have to simultaneously use a comprehensive viewpoint and a historical viewpoint.

Having a historical viewpoint requires that, in perceiving and handling real life situations, we need to consider the specific properties of subjects, including their current stage of motion and development. We also need to consider that the exact same methods can’t be used to deal with different situations in reality — our methods must be tailored to suit the exact situation based on material conditions.

Annotation 114

While the comprehensive viewpoint focuses on internal and external relationships of subjects, the historical viewpoint focuses on the specific properties of subjects — especially the current stage of motion and development. In order to have a proper historical viewpoint, we must study and understand the way a subject has developed and transformed over time. To do this, we must examine the history of the subject’s changes over time, hence the term “historical viewpoint.” In addition, it’s important to understand that no two situations which we might encounter will ever be exactly the same. This is because the component parts and relationships that make up any given situation will manifest differently.

So, in order to properly deal with situations, we have to understand the component parts and relationships of examined subjects as well as their histories of development so that we can develop plans and strategies that are suitable to the unique circumstances at hand.

For example, it would be disastrous if communists today tried to employ the exact same methods which were used by the Communist Party of Vietnam in the 20^th century to defeat Japan, France, and the USA. This is because the material conditions and relationships of Vietnam in the 20^th century were very different from any material conditions existing on Earth today. It is possible to learn lessons from studying the methods of the Vietnamese revolution and to adapt some such methods to our modern circumstances, but it would be extremely ineffective to try to copy those methods and strategies — exactly as they manifested then and there — to the here and now.

In order to come up with suitable and effective solutions to deal with real life problems, we must clearly define the roles and positions of each specific relationship that comes into play, and the specific time, place, and material conditions in which they exist.

Annotation 115

A historical viewpoint focuses on the roles and positions of relationships and properties of subjects as well as their development over time.

The role of a relationship has to do with how it functions within a system of relationships and the position refers to its placement amongst other subjects and relationships.

Consider once again the example of the factory [see Annotation 113]. In addition to its internal and external relationships, the factory also has various roles — it functions within various systems and from various perspectives. For instance, the factory may have the role of financial asset for the corporation that owns it, it may have the role of place of employment for the surrounding community, it may have the role of supplier for various customers, etc.

The factory is also positioned among other subjects and relations. If it’s the only employer in town then it would have a position of great importance to the people of the community. If, on the other hand, if it’s just one of hundreds of factories in a heavily industrialized area, it may have a position of much less importance. It may have a position of great importance to an individual factory worker who lives in poverty in an economy where there are very few available jobs, but of less importance to a freelance subcontractor for whom the factory is just one of many customers, and so on.

These positions and roles will change over time. For example, the factory may initially exist as a small workshop with a small handful of workers, but it may grow into a massive factory with hundreds of employees. It is vital to understand this Principle of Development, which is discussed in more detail on the next page.

In summary, proper dialectical materialist analysis requires a comprehensive and historical viewpoint — we must consider subjects both comprehensively in terms of the internal and external relationships of the subject itself as well as historically in terms of roles and positions of subjects, as well as their relationships, material conditions, and development over time.

So, in both perception and practice, we have to avoid and overcome sophistry and eclectic viewpoints.

Annotation 116

Sophistry is the use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.

Eclecticism is an incoherent approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject, applying different theories in different situations without any consistency in analysis and thought. Eclectic arguments are typically composed of various pieces of evidence that are cherry picked and pieced together to form a perspective that lacks clarity. By definition, because they draw from different systems of thought without seeking a clear and cohesive understanding of the totality of the subject and its internal and external relations and its development over time, eclectic arguments run counter to the comprehensive and historical viewpoints. Eclecticism is somewhat similar to dialectical materialism in that it attempts to consider a subject from many different perspectives, and analyzes relationships pertaining to a subject, but the major flaw of eclecticism is a lack of clear and coherent systems and principles, which leads to a chaotic viewpoint and an inability to grasp the true nature of the subject at hand.

2. Principle of Development

a. Definition of Development

According to the metaphysical viewpoint, development is simply a quantitative increase or decrease; the metaphysical viewpoint does not account for qualitative changes of things and phenomena. Simultaneously, the metaphysical viewpoint also views development as a process of continuous progressions which follow a linear and straightforward path.

Annotation 117

In materialist dialectics, it is important to distinguish between quantity and quality.

Quantity describes the total amount of component parts that compose a subject.

Quality describes the unity of component parts, taken together, which defines the subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.

Both quantity and quality are dynamic attributes; over time, the quantity and quality of all things develop and change over time through the development of internal and external relationships. Quantity and quality itself form a dialectical relationship, and as quantity develops, quality will also develop. A given subject may be described by various quantity and quality relationships.

Example 1:

In the process of development, Quantity Change leads to Quality Change

A single football player, alone, has the quantity value of 1 football player and the quality of a football player. Eleven football players on a field would have the quantity value of 1 and will develop the quality of a football team. This subject, football team, is composed of the same component parts as the subject football player, but the quantity change and other properties (being on a field, playing a game or practicing, etc.) change the quality of the component parts into a different stable and unified form which we call a football team.

The relationship between quantity and quality is dynamic:

If one of the players doesn’t show up for practice, and there are only ten players on the field, it might still have the quality of football team, but in a live professional game there will be a certain threshold — a minimum number of players who must be present to officially be considered a team. If this number of players can’t be fielded then they will not be considered a full team and thus won’t be allowed to play.

Likewise, if there are only one or two players practicing together in a park, they would probably not be considered a football team (though they might be described in terms of having the quality of being on the same team).

Example 2:

Quantity: 1 O + 2 H atoms Quantity: Billions of H2O Molecules Quantity: ~5,000 Drops of Water Quality: Water Quality: Drop of Water Quality: Cup of Water

DEVELOPMENT: QUANTITY CHANGE LEADS TO QUALITY CHANGE

All of these have the quality of water because of the molecular quantities of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, however, from the perspective of volume, quantity changes still lead to quality changes.

The properties of quantity and quality are relative, depending on the viewpoint of analysis.

A single molecule of water has a quantity of one in terms of molecules, but it still retains the quality of “water” because of the quantities of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms per molecule which, in this stable form, give it the quality of water.

A drop of water might have a quantity of many billions of molecules, but it would still have the quality of “water.” It would also now assume the quality of a “drop.”

When you combine enough drops of water, you will eventually have a quality shift where the “drops” of water combine to form another quality — i.e., a “cup” of water. The quantity change leads to a change in quantity; we would no longer think of the water in terms of “drops” after the quantity rises to a certain level.

In terms of temperature and physical properties, if the water is heated to a certain point it will boil and the water will become steam. The quantity of water in terms of drops wouldn’t change, but the quantity-value of temperature would eventually lead to a quality value change from “water” to “steam.”

Example 3:

AS QUANTITY OF AGE INCREASES, QUALITY CHANGES

The same human being will undergo various quality changes as age quantity increases over time.

As humans age and the quantity of years we’ve lived builds up over time, our “quality” also changes, from baby, to child, to teenager, to young adult, to middle age, to old age, and eventually to death. The individual person is still the same human being, but the quality of the person will shift over time as the quantity-value of age increases.

Metaphysical vs. Dialectical Materialist Conceptions of Change

Metaphysics only consider linear properties of quantitychange; Materialist Dialectics takes quantity changes and quality shifts into consideration when considering change over time.

Because the metaphysical perspective tries to define the world in terms of static, isolated subjects, only quantity is considered and quality shifts are not taken into account. Thus, metaphysical logic sees development as linear, simple, and straightforward. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, sees development as a more complicated, fluid, and dynamic process involving multiple internal and external relationships changing in quantity and quality over time.

In contrast to the metaphysical viewpoint, in materialist dialectics, development refers to the motion of things and phenomena with a forward tendency: from less advanced to more advanced, from a less complete to a more complete level.

Annotation 118

In materialist dialectics, motion (also known as change) is the result of mutual impacts between or within things, phenomena, and ideas, and all motion and change results from mutual impacts which themselves result from internal and external relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Any given motion/change leads to quantity changes, and these quantity changes cumulatively lead to quality changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. Grasping this concept — that development is driven by relations — is critically important for understanding materialist dialectics.

The concept of “change” in materialist dialectics centers on internal and external relationships causing mutual impacts which lead to quantity changes which build into quality shifts.

This process, taken in total, is referred to as development. Development represents the entire process in which internal and external change/motion leads to changes in quantity which in turn lead to changes in quality over time. The process of development can be fast or slow, complex or simple, and can even move backwards, and all of these properties are relative. Development has a tendency to develop from less advanced to more advanced forms. The word tendency is used to denote phenomena, development, and motion which inclines in a particular direction. There may be exceptional cases which contradict such tendencies, but the general motion will incline towards one specific manner. Thus, it is important to note that “development” is not necessarily “good” nor “bad.” In some cases, “development” might well be considered “bad,” or unwanted. For example, rust developing on a car is typically not desired. So, the tendency of development from lower to higher levels of advancement implies a “forward motion,” though this motion can take an infinite number of forms, depending on the relative perspective. Development can also (temporarily) halt in a state of equilibrium [see Annotation 64, p. 62] or it can shift direction; though it can never “reverse,” just as time itself can never be “reversed.”

For example, during a flood, water may “develop” over the land, and as the floodwaters recede this may alternatively be viewed as another “forward” development process of recession — a development of the overall “flooding and receding” process. The flood is not actually “reversing” — the development is not being “undone.” Flood water may recede but it will leave behind many traces and impacts; thus it is not a true “reversal” of development.

Both flooding and flood recession are development processes with the same forward tendency. Flood recession may appear to be a “reversal,” but it is in fact forward development.

The false belief that development can be reversed is the root of conservative and reactionary positions [see Annotation 208].

Development can be considered positive or negative, depending on perspective. Some ecosystems have natural flood patterns which are vital for sustaining life. For a person living in a flood zone, however, the flood would most likely be considered an unwanted development, whereas flood recession would be a welcomed development.

It is important to note that the definition of development is not identical to the concept of “motion” (change) in general. It is not merely a simple quantitative increase or decrease, nor a repetitive cyclic change in quantity. Instead, in materialist dialectics, development is defined in terms of qualitative changes with the direction of advancing towards higher and more advanced levels. [See diagram Relationship Between Motion,

Quantity/Quality Shifts, and Dialectical Development, Annotation 119, below]

Development is also the process of creating and solving objective contradictions within and between things and phenomena. Development is thus the unified process of negating negative factors while retaining and advancing positive factors from old things and phenomena as they transform into new things and phenomena.

Annotation 119

A contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose one another. Although a contradiction might exist in equilibrium for some amount of time [see Annotation 64, p. 62], eventually, one force will overcome the other, resulting in a change of quality. This process of overcoming is called negation. In short, development is a process of change in a subject’s quantity as well as negation of contradictions within and between subjects, leading to quality shifts over time.

b. Characteristics of Development

Every development has the characteristics of objectiveness,^[84] generality,^[85] and diversity.^[86]The characteristic of objectiveness of development stems from the origin of motion.

Annotation 120

Remember that, in materialist dialectics, objectiveness is the relative characteristic that every subject has of existing and developing externally to all other subjects [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. Since motion originates from mutual impacts which occur between external things, objects, and relationships, the motions themselves also occur externally (relative to all other things, phenomena, and objects). This gives motion itself objective characteristics.

Dialectical Development consists of Quantity and Quality Shifts, which in turn derive from motion.

Development is derived from motion as a process of quality shifting which arise from quantity changes which arise from motion [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. Since development is essentially an accumulation of motion, and motion is objective, development itself must also be objective.

The Principle of Development states that development is a process that comes from within the thing-in-itself; the process of solving the contradictions within things and phenomena. Therefore, development is inevitable, objective, and occurs without dependence on human will.

Annotation 121

The “thing-in-itself” refers to the actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. Development arises from motion and self-motion [see Annotation 62, p. 59] with objective characteristics. Although human will can impact motion and development through conscious activity in the material world [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88], motion and development can and does occur without being dependent on human will. Human will is neither a requirement nor prerequisite for motion and development to occur.

Development has the characteristic of generality because development occurs in every process that exists in every field of nature, society, and human thought; in every thing, every phenomenon, and every idea and at every stage* of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every transformation process contains the possibility that it might lead to the birth of a new thing, phenomenon, or idea [through a change in quality, i.e. development].

Annotation 122

* In materialist dialectics, “stage” (or “stage of development”) refers to the current quantity and quality characteristics which a thing, phenomenon, or object possesses. Every time a quality change occurs, a new stage of development is entered into.

Development has the characteristic of diversity because every thing, phenomenon, and idea has its own process of development that is not totally identical to the process of development of any other thing, phenomenon, or idea. Things and phenomena will develop differently in different spaces and times. Simultaneously, within their own processes of development, things, phenomena, and ideas are impacted by other things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as by many other factors and historical conditions. Such impacts can change the direction of development of things, phenomena, and ideas. They can even temporarily set development back, and/or can lead to growth in one aspect but degeneration in another.

Annotation 123

Because development has the characteristic of generality and the characteristic of diversity, the principle of diversity in unity and unity in diversity also applies to development [see: Annotation 107, p. 110].

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Materialist dialectics upholds that the principle of development is the scientific theoretical basis that we must use to guide our perception of the world and to improve the world. Therefore, in our perception and reality, we have to have a development viewpoint.

According to Lenin: “dialectical logic requires that an object should be considered in development, in change, in ‘self-movement.”^[87]

This development viewpoint [which holds that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly developing, and that development is thus unavoidable] requires us to overcome conservatism, stagnation^[88], and prejudice, which are all opposed to development.

Annotation 124

Conservatism and prejudice are mindsets which seek to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas. Therefore, we must avoid and fight against such stagnant mindsets.

According to this development viewpoint, in order to perceive or solve any problem in real life, we must consider all things, phenomena, and ideas with their own forward tendency of development taken in mind. On the other hand, the path of development is a dialectical process that is reversible and full of contradictions. Therefore, we must be aware of this complexity in our analysis and planning. This means we need to have a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] which accounts for the diversity and complexity of development in perceiving and solving issues in reality.

Annotation 125

Materialist dialectics requires us to consider the complexity and constant motion of reality. By comparison, the metaphysical viewpoint (which considers all things, phenomena, and ideas as static, isolated entities which have linear and simple processes of development) stands as a barrier to understanding this complexity and incorporating it into our worldview. Thus, it is vital that we develop comprehensive and historical viewpoints which acknowledge the diversity and complexity of reality.

In summary, as a science of common relations and development, Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics serve a very important role in perception and practice. Engels affirmed the role of materialist dialectics in this passage:

“An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectics, with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes.”

Lenin also said: “Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development, but not a patchwork of bits and pieces.”^[89]

III. Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics

Category* is the most general grouping of aspects, attributes, and relations of things, phenomena, and ideas. Different specific fields of inquiry may categorize things, phenomena, and/or ideas differently from one another.

Annotation 126

* Translation note: In Vietnamese, the word “phạm trù” is used here, which translates in this context more closely to the English philosophical term “category of being,” which means “the most general, fundamental, or broadest class of entities.” “Category of being” is sometimes simplified in English-language philosophical discourse to “category,” which we have chosen to do here for ease of reading and to better reflect the way it reads in the original Vietnamese.

Every science has its own systems of categories that reflect the aspects, attributes, and basic relations that fall within its scope of study. For example, mathematics contains the categories “arithmetic,” “geometry,” “point,” “plane,” and “constant.” Physics contains the categories of “mass,” “speed,” “acceleration,” and “force,” and so on. Economics includes “commodity,” “value,” “price,” “monetary,” and “profit” categories.

Every such category reflects only the common relations found within the specific fields that fall within the scope of study of a specific science.

Categories of materialist dialectics, on the other hand, such as “matter,” “consciousness,” “motion,” “contradiction,” “quality,” “quantity,” “reason,” and “result,” are different. Categories of materialist dialectics reflect the most general aspects and attributes, as well as the most basic and general relations, of not just some specific fields of study, but of the whole of reality, including all of nature, society and human thought.

Every thing, phenomenon, and idea has many properties, including: a reason for existing in its current form, a process of motion and change, contradictions, content, form, and so on. These properties are aspects, attributes, and relations that are reflected in the categories of materialist dialectics. Therefore, the relationship between the categories of specific sciences and categories of materialist dialectics is a dialectical relationship between the Private and the Common [see Private and Common, p. 128].

Annotation 127

The categories of specific sciences are limited to the scope of study, while the categories of materialist dialectics encompass all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Unlike the categories contained within specific scientific fields, the philosophical categories of materialist dialectics can be used to analyze and define all things, phenomena, and ideas. The categories of specific scientific fields and the materialist dialectical categories have a Private/Common dialectical relationship [discussed on the next page].

As a science of general relations and development, materialist dialectics summarizes the most general relations of every field of nature, society, and human thought into basic category pairs: Private and Common, Reason and Result, Obviousness and Randomness, Content and Form, Essence and Phenomenon, Possibility and Reality.

Annotation 128

Every individual materialist dialectical category has a dialectical relationship with another materialist dialectical category. Thus, all categories in materialist dialectics are presented as category pairs. So, a category pair is simply a pair of categories within materialist dialectics which have a dialectical relationship with one another.

Note that the this formalized system of category pairs reflects many decades of work by Vietnamese philosophical and political scientists based on the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other socialist thinkers. Also note that these are not the only category pairs that can be discussed; there are potentially an infinite number of categories which can be used in materialist dialectical analysis. However, universal category pairs, which can be applied to analyze any and all things, phenomena, and ideas, are much fewer and farther between. That said, the universal category pairs discussed in this book are the ones which have most often been used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other prominent materialist dialecticians.

1. Private and Common

a. Categories of Private and Common

The Private Category encompasses specific things, phenomena, and ideas; the Common Category defines the common aspects, attributes, factors, and relations that exist in many things and phenomena.

Within every Private thing, phenomenon, and idea, there exists the Common, and also the Unique. The Unique encompasses the attributes and characteristics that exist in only one specific thing, phenomenon, or idea, and does not repeat in any other things, phenomena, or ideas.

Annotation 129

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-41.png

The Private category includes specific individual things, phenomena and ideas.

The Common category includes aspects, factors, and relations that exist in many things, phenomena, and ideas. For example, say there are two apples: Apple A and Apple B. Apple A is a specific individual object. Apple B is another distinct, separate object. In that sense, both apples are private apples, and fall within the Private category.

However, both Apple A and Apple B share common attributes. For instance, they are both fruits of the same type: “apple.” They may have other attributes in common: they may be the same color, they may have the same basic shape, they may be of similar size, etc. These are common attributes which they share. Thus, Apple A and Apple B will also fall within the common category, based on these common attributes.

Apple A and Apple B will also have unique attributes. Only Apple A has the exact molecules in the exact place and time which compose Apple A. There is no other object in the world which has those same molecules in that same place and time. This means that Apple A also has unique properties.

All private subjects have attributes in common with other private subjects.

The Common and Private categories have a dialectical relationship. The Common contains the Private, and the Private contains the Common. Every private subject has some attributes in common with other private subjects, and common attributes can only exist among private subjects. Thus every thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence contains internally within itself dialectical relationships between the Private and the Common, and has dialectical Private/Common relationships externally within other things, phenomena, and ideas.

All private subjects have attributes in common with other private subjects.

It is also true that every private subject contains within itself Unique attributes which it does not share with any other thing, phenomenon, or idea. For example, Mount Everest is unique in that it is 8,850 meters tall. No other mountain on Earth has that exact same height. Therefore, the private subject “Mount Everest” has unique properties which it does not share with any other subject, even though it has other attributes in common with countless other private entities.

All things, phenomena, and ideas contain the unique, the private, and the common.

Whenever two individual subjects have a relationship with one another, that relationship is a unique relationship in the sense that it is a relationship that is shared only by those two specific subjects; however, there will also be common attributes and properties which any such relationship will share with other relationships in existence. This recalls the principle of Unity in Diversity and Diversity in Unity [see Annotation 107, p. 110]. So, every thing, phenomenon, and idea contains the Common and the Unique and has unique and common relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas.

This category pair is very useful in developing a comprehensive viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. Remember that a comprehensive viewpoint indicates an understanding of the internal and external relations of a given subject. This means that in order to develop a comprehensive viewpoint, you must know the private aspects of each individual relation, component, and aspect of the subject, and you must also study the commonalities of the subject as well. It’s also important to study a variety of private information sources or data points to look for commonalities between them. In other words, if you want to have a proper comprehensive viewpoint [see Annotation 113, p. 116] about any subject, you have to find and analyze as many private data points and pieces of evidence as possible.

For example: If a person only ever saw one apple, a green apple, then that person might believe that “all apples are green.” This conclusion would be premature: the person is attempting to make an assumption about the Common without examining enough Privates. This is a failure of mistaking mistaking the Private for the Common which stems from a lack of a comprehensive viewpoint.

Now, let’s take a look at an example of how the “Unique” can become “Common,” and vice-versa: 1947 TODAY

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-45.png

“Unique” things, phenomena, and ideas can become “common” through development processes (and vice-versa).

In 1941, a Soviet soldier named Mikhail Kalashnikov was in the hospital after being wounded in the Battle of Bryansk. Another soldier in the hospital said to Kalashnikov, “why do our soldiers only have one rifle for two or three of our men, while the Germans have automatics?” To solve this problem, Kalashnikov designed the AK-47 machine gun. When he finished making the first prototype, it was the only AK-47 in the world.

At this precise moment, the AK-47 was simultaneously Unique, Private, and Common.

It was Unique because it was the first and only AK-47 in the world, and no other object in the world had those properties. It was Private because it was a specific object with its own individual existence. It was Common — even though it was the only existing prototype — because it shared Common features with other rifles, and with other prototypes. It was the only AK-47 in existence.

Soon, however, the Soviet Union began manufacturing them, and they became very common. Now there are millions of AK-47s in the world. So, today, that prototype machine gun remains simultaneously Unique, Private, and Common, with some slight developments:

It remains Private because it is a specific object with its own individual existence. Even though it is no longer the only AK-47 in existence, it remains Unique because it is still the very first AK-47 that was ever made, and even though there are now many other AK-47s, there is no other rifle in the universe that shares that same unique property. It remains Common because it still shares common features with other rifles and other prototypes, but it now also shares commonality with many other AK-47 rifles. It is no longer Unique for having the properties of an AK-47 in and of itself.

If someone were to destroy Kalashnikov’s prototype AK-47, the Private of that object would no longer exist — it would remain only as an idea, and the Private would transform to whatever becomes of the material components of the rifle. The Unique would also no longer remain specifically as it was before being destroyed. However, there would still be many other AK-47s which would share common features related to that prototype; for instance, that they were all designed based on the prototype’s design.

Translator’s Note: The words “Private,” “Common,” and “Unique” may seem unusual because they are direct translations from the Vietnamese words used to describe these concepts in the original text. Various other words have been used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other materialist dialecticians when discussing the underlying concepts of these philosophical categories. For instance, in most translations of Lenin, his discussion of such topics is typically translated into English using words such as “universal,” “general,” “special,” “particular,” etc.

Example (from Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks): “Language in essence expresses only the universal; what is meant, however, is the special, the particular. Hence what is meant cannot be said in speech.” Here, “universal” refers to that which is Common in all things, phenomena, and ideas, and “special/particular” refers to the Private — specific individual things, phenomena, and ideas — along with their Unique properties.

Here are excerpts from Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks discussing these concepts:

(‘It?’ The most universal word of all.) Who is it? I. Every person is an I.
Das Sinnliche? It is a universal, etc., etc. ‘This??’ Everyone is ‘this.’
Why can the particular not be named? One of the objects of a given kind (tables) is distinguished by something from the rest...
Leaves of a tree are green; John is a man; Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics (as Hegel’s genius recognised): the individual is the universal... And a naïve confusion, a helplessly pitiful confusion in the dialectics of the universal and the particular — of the concept and the sensuously perceptible reality of individual objects, things, phenomena.
Further, the ‘subsumption’ under logical categories of ‘sensibility’ (Sensibilität), ‘irritability’ (irritabilität) — this is said to be the particular in contrast to the universal!! — and ‘reproduction’ is an idle game.

Marx, too, discussed these concepts using words which are commonly translated into English using different terms. For example, in Capital:

The general form of relative value, embracing the whole world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent – here the linen – into the universal equivalent.

Here, “general form” refers to the commonalities of form that exist between all commodities. The “single commodity” refers to a private commodity; a specific commodity that exists separately from all other commodities. And when referring to a “universal equivalent,” Marx is referring to equivalence which such a commodity has in common with every other commodity.

The rest of this passage continues as a materialist dialectical analysis of the Private, Common, and Unique features and aspects of commodities:

The bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the values of all commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undifferentiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power. The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that it is the social resumé of the world of commodities. That form consequently makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific social character.

We have chosen to use the terms “Private,” “Common,” and “Unique” in the translation of this text because they most closely match the words used in the original Vietnamese. In summary, it is important to realize that you may encounter the underlying concepts which are related by these words using various phrasings in the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.

b. Dialectical Relationship Between Private and Common

According to the materialist dialectical viewpoint: the Private, the Common and the Unique exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. The Common only exists within the Private. It expresses its existence through the Private.

Annotation 130

The Common can’t exist as a specific thing, phenomenon, or idea. However, every specific thing, phenomenon, or idea exists as a private subject which has various features in common with other private things, phenomena, and ideas. We can therefore only understand the Common through observation and study of various private things, phenomena, and ideas. For example, a human can’t perceive with our senses alone the Common of apples. Only by observing many private apples can begin to derive an understanding of what all private apples have in common.

The Common does not exist in isolation from the Private. Therefore, commonality is inseparable from things, phenomena, and ideas. The Private only exists in relation to the Common. Likewise, there is no Private that exists in complete isolation from the Common.

Annotation 131

No commonality can possibly exist outside of private things, phenomena, and ideas because commonality describes features which different things, phenomena, and ideas share. No private thing, phenomenon, or idea can possibly exist absolutely without commonality because there is no thing, phenomenon, or idea that shares absolutely no features with any other thing, phenomenon, or idea.

The Private category is more all-encompassing and diverse than the Common category; Common is a part of Private but it is more profound and more “essential” than the Private. This is because Private is the synthesis of the Common and the Unique; the Common expresses generality and the regular predictability of many Privates.

Annotation 132

The Private encompasses all aspects of a specific, individual thing, phenomenon, or idea; thus it encompasses all aspects, features, and attributes of a given subject, including both the Common and the Unique. In this way, the Private is the synthesis of the Common and the Unique.

Common attributes require more consideration, effort, and study to properly determine, because multiple private subjects must be considered and analyzed before common attributes can be confidently discovered and understood. They offer us a more profound understanding of the essence [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156] and nature of things, phenomena, and ideas because they offer insights into the relationships between and within different things, phenomena, and ideas. As we discover more commonalities, and understand them more deeply, we begin to develop a more comprehensive perspective of reality. We begin to develop an understanding of the laws and principles which govern relations between and within things, phenomena, and ideas, and this gives us the power to more accurately predict how processes will develop and how things, phenomena, and ideas will change and mutually impact one another over time.

Under specific conditions, the Common and the Unique can transform into each other [See Annotation 129, p. 128].

The dialectical relationship between Private and Common was summarised by Lenin:

“Consequently, the opposites (the individual as opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, ideas) etc.”^[90] [Note: “individual and universal” here refer the same underlying concepts of “Private and Common” (respectively); see translator’s note on p. 132].

c. Meaning of the Methodology

We must acknowledge and recognize the Common in order to study the Private in our cognitive and practical activities. If we fail to acknowledge the Common, then whenever we attempt to understand and comprehend any Private thing, phenomenon or idea, we will make mistakes and become disoriented. To understand the Common we have to study and observe the Private because the Common does not exist abstractly outside of the Private.

Annotation 133

Our understanding of Common attributes arise from the observation and study of private things, phenomena, and ideas. At the same time, developing our understanding of Commonalities between and within Private subjects deepens our understanding of their essential nature [see: Essence and Phenomenon].

Dialectical analysis of private and common characteristics involves observing private subjects to determine common attributes and considering common attributes to gain insights about private subjects.

It is impossible to know anything at all about the Common without observing Private subjects, and attempting to understand Private subjects without taking into consideration the attributes and features which they have in Common with other Private subjects will lead to incomplete and erroneous analysis.

In addition, we must identify the Common features and attributes of every specific Private subject we study. We must avoid being dogmatic, metaphysical, and inflexible in applying our knowledge of commonalities to solve problems and interpret the world.

Annotation 134

Dogmatism and Revisionism in Relation to the Private and Common

Dogmatism is the inflexible adherence to ideals as incontrovertibly true while refusing to take any contradictory evidence into consideration. Dogmatism stands in direct opposition to materialist dialectics, which seeks to form opinions and conclusions only after careful consideration of all observable evidence.

Dogmatism typically arises when the Common is overemphasized without due consideration of the Private. A dogmatic position is one which adheres to ideals about commonalities without taking Private subjects into consideration.

Dogmatism can be avoided by continuously studying and observing and analyzing

Private subjects and taking any evidence which contradicts erroneous perceptions of “false commonalities” into consideration. This will simultaneously deepen our understanding of the Private while improving our understanding of the Common. For example: Sally might observe a few red apples and arrive at the conclusion: “all apples are red.” If Sally is then presented with a green apple, yet refuses to acknowledge it by continuing to insist that “all apples are red,” then Sally is engaging in dogmatism.

According to Vietnam’s Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought, the opposite of Dogmatism is Revisionism. Revisionism occurs when we overestimate the Private and fail to recognize commonalities. In failing to recognize common attributes and features between and within things, phenomena, and ideas, the Revisionist faces confusion and disorientation whenever they encounter any new things, phenomena, and ideas, because they lack any insight into essential characteristics of the subject and its relations with other subjects.

For example: if Sally has spent a lot of time studying a red apple, she may start to become confident that she understands everything there is to know about apples. If she is then presented with a green apple, she might become confused and disoriented and draw the conclusion that she has to start all over again with her analysis, from scratch, thinking: “this can’t possibly be an apple because it’s not red. It must be something else entirely.” Sally can avoid this revisionist confusion by examining the other common features which the red and green apples share before making any conclusions.

Metaphysical Perception of the Private and Common

The metaphysical position attempts to categorize things, phenomena, and ideas into static categories which are isolated and distinct from one another [see Annotation 8,

p. 8]. In this way, the metaphysical perception ultimately fails to properly understand the role of both the Private and the Common. Categories may be arranged in taxonomic configurations based on shared features, but ultimately every category is seen as distinct and isolated from every other category. This perspective severs the dialectical relationship between the Private, the Common, and the Unique, and thus leads to a distorted perception of reality. As Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.”

In other words, Engels points out that separating and dividing Private subjects into distinct and isolated categories without acknowledging the dialectical nature of the Private and the Common leads to severe limitations on what we can learn about the world. Instead, we have to examine things, phenomena, and ideas in relation to one another, which must include the analysis of Commonalities.

Rather than divide subjects into distinct, separate categories, materialist dialectics seek to examine Private subjects as they really exist: as a synthesis of Unique and Common attributes; and simultaneously to examine commonalities as they really exist: as properties which emerge from the relations of Private objects.

In our cognitive and practical activities, we must be able to take advantage of suitable conditions that will enable transformations from the Unique and the Common (and vice versa) for our specific purposes.

Annotation 135

In advancing the cause of socialism, revolutionaries must work to transform our Unique positions into common positions. For instance, the process of developing revolutionary public knowledge [see Annotation 94, p. 93] begins with studying and understanding revolutionary knowledge. Initially, this knowledge will be unique to the socialist movement. By disseminating the knowledge to the public, we hope to transform this knowledge into common knowledge.

Likewise, we hope to transform other common things, phenomena, and ideas back towards the Unique. For instance, the capitalist mode of production is currently the most common mode of production on Earth. In order to advance humanity towards communism, we must transition the capitalist mode of production from the Common towards the Unique, with the ambition of eventually eliminating this mode of production altogether.

2. Reason and Result

a. Categories of Reason and Result

The Reason category is used to define the mutual impacts between internal aspects of a thing, phenomenon or idea, or between things, phenomena, or ideas, that bring about changes.

The Result category defines the changes that were caused by mutual impacts which occur between aspects and factors within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, or externally between different things, phenomena, or ideas.

Annotation 136

Translation note: the Vietnamese words for “reason and result” can also be translated as “cause and effect.” We have chosen to use the words “reason and result” to distinguish materialist dialectical categories from metaphysical conceptions of development.

In metaphysics [see Annotation 8, p. 8], any given effect is seen to have a single cause. In materialist dialectics, we instead examine the mutual impacts which occur within and between subjects through motion and development processes.

Metaphysical vs. Materialist Dialectical conceptions of development.

In the metaphysical conception of cause and effect, (A) causes effect (B), then effect (B) causes effect (C), and so on. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, uses the model of development (see Annotation 117, p. 119), wherein objects (A) and (B) mutually impact one another, resulting in development (C). (C) will then have relations with other things, phenomena, and/or ideas, and the mutual impacts from these new relations will become the reasons for future results. Consider the following example:

Metaphysical vs. Materialist Dialectical conceptions of frying and eating an egg.

In the metaphysical “cause and effect” model, putting an egg in a hot pan is the cause which results in the effect of producing a fried egg. The egg being fried has the effect of the egg now being suitable for eating, which is the cause of the egg being eaten by a hungry person.

This is a simplification of the metaphysical conception of causes and effects, since metaphysics does recognize that one cause can have branches of multiple effects, but the essential characteristic of the metaphysical conception of causality is to break down all activity and change in the universe into static and distinct episodes of one distinct event causing one or more other distinct events.

In contrast, the materialist dialectical model of development holds that every result stems from mutual impacts which occur relationally between things, phenomena, and ideas, and that the resulting synthesis — the newly developed result of mutual impacts — will then have new relations with other things, phenomena, and ideas, and that these relations will become new reasons for new results through mutual impact.

In this example, the egg and the hot pan will mutually impact each other. The frying pan will become dirty and need to be washed (the result of putting an egg in the frying pan); meanwhile, the egg will become a fried egg, which is fit for human consumption (the result of being cooked in the frying pan). The fried egg will then have a relationship with a hungry human, and this relationship will be a new reason which will lead to further results (i.e., the human eating and digesting the egg).

So, the key difference between the classical metaphysical conception of causality and the materialist dialectical model of development is that metaphysics focus more on individual events in time whereas materialist dialectics focus on the relations and mutual impacts between things, phenomena, and ideas over time.

b. Dialectical relationship between Reason and Result

The relationship between Reason and Result is objective, and it contains inevitability: there is no Reason that does not lead to a Result; and likewise, there is no Result without any Reason.

Reasons cause Results, which is why Reason always comes before Result, and Result always comes after Reason.

A Reason can cause one or many Results and a Result can be caused by one or many Reasons.

When many Reasons lead to a single Result, the impacts which lead to the Result are mutual between all things, phenomena, and ideas at hand. These mutual impacts can have many relational positions or roles, including: direct reasons, indirect reasons, internal reasons, external reasons, etc.

Annotation 137

As stated in the previous annotation, Reasons which lead to Results stem from mutually impacting relations between things, phenomena, and ideas. There is no way for one subject to affect another subject without also being affected itself in some way.

Reasons can take many forms, including (but not limited to):

Types of Reasons and Results

Direct Reasons stem from immediate relations.

Direct Reasons are Reasons which stem from immediate relations, with no intervening relations standing between the Reason and Result.

For example, dropping a coffee cup causes an immediate relationship between the cup and the ground, and that relation leads directly to the Result of the coffee cup breaking to pieces.

Indirect Reasons have an intervening relationship between the Reason and the Result.

Indirect Reasons are Reasons which have intervening relations between a Reason and a Result.

For example, the dropped coffee cup above may have smashed into pieces directly because it hit the ground, but it may also have indirect Reasons. The person holding the cup may have been frightened because she heard a loud noise, and the loud noise was caused by a car backfiring, and the car backfiring was caused by the driver not maintaining his car engine.

In materialist dialectical terms, the driver’s relationship with his car would be an indirect Reason for the car backfiring; the relationship between the car (which backfired) and the person holding the coffee cup would be the direct Reason for dropping the cup; and the cup’s relationship with the ground would be the direct reason for the cup smashing. At the same time, the driver’s relationship with his car would be an indirect Reason for the Result of the coffee cup smashing to pieces.

Internal Reasons stem from internal relationships.

Internal Reasons are Reasons which stem from internal relations that occur between aspects and factors within a subject.

For example, if a building collapses because the steel structure within the building rusts and fails, then that could be viewed as an internal Reason for the collapse.

External Reasons stem from external relations.

External Reasons are reasons which stem from external relations that occur between different things, phenomena, and ideas.

For example, if a building collapses because it is smashed by a wrecking ball, then that could be viewed as an external Reason for the collapse.

All of these roles and positions can be viewed relatively. From one viewpoint, a Reason may be seen as internal, but from another viewpoint, it might be viewed as external. For example, if a couple has a disagreement which leads to an argument, the disagreement may be seen as an external Reason from the perspective of each individual within the couple. But to a relationship counselor viewing the situation from the outside, the disagreement may be seen as an internal Reason which leads to the couple (a subject defined by the internal relationship between the husband and wife) arguing.

From one perspective, a government official ordering a building to be torn down may be seen as the direct Reason for the Result of the building being torn down. But from a different perspective, one can see many intervening relations: complaints from local residents may have led to the government official making the order, the order would be delivered to a demolition crew, the demolition crew would assign a crew member to operate a wrecking ball, the crew member would operate the wrecking ball, the wrecking ball would smash the building. All of these can be seen as intervening relations which constitute indirect reasons leading up to the direct Reason of the wrecking ball smashing the building. Choosing the right viewpoint during analysis is critical to make sure that Reason and Result relations are viewed properly and productively, and care must also be taken to ensure that the correct Reasons are attributed to Results (see Reason and Result, p. 138).

Likewise, a Reason can cause many Results, including primary and secondary Results.

Annotation 138

Primary Results are Results which are more direct and predictable.

Secondary Results are Results which are indirect and less predictable.

For example, an earthquake may have primary Results such as the ground shaking, buildings being destroyed, etc. Secondary Results from the earthquake might include flights being rerouted from local airports, shortages at grocery stores, etc.

In the motion of the material world, there is no known “first Reason” or “final Result.”

Annotation 139

With our current understanding of the universe, it is uncertain what might have caused the creation of all existence. Was it the Big Bang? If so, did the Big Bang have some underlying reason? There is also no way to know if there will ever be a “final Result.” Will the heat death of the universe occur, and if so, will that end all transpiring of relations which would end the cycle of development — of Reasons and Results?

As of now, we do not have solid answers to these questions. If and when answers arise, it is possible that the materialist dialectical framework will need to be updated to reflect new scientific knowledge, just as Marx, Engels, and Lenin have updated materialist dialectics in the past [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. What’s important to understand in the meantime is that within our realm of human experience and understanding, for all practical purposes, every Result which we live through and observe has some underlying Reason, and will itself lead to one or more Results.

Engels said: “we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis [see Annotation 200, p. 192], positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed, and that despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate [are mixed together]. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.”^[91]

Annotation 140

In the above passage, Engels is simply explaining that since all things, phenomena, and ideas are relationally linked and inter-related [see Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics, p. 106], the mutual impacts and processes of change which lead to development (the reasons and results which transpire between all things, phenomena, and ideas) are also all linked and inter-related. What might be viewed as a Reason is also a Result of one or more prior Reasons, just as every Result is also a Reason for future Results.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Because the relationship between Reason and Result is objective and inevitable, we can’t ignore the relationship between Reason and Result in our perception and practice. In reality, there is no thing, phenomenon or idea that can exist without any underlying Reason or Reasons; and vice versa, there is no Reason that does not lead to any Result.

Annotation 141

In political activity, it is important to remember that every interaction within every relationship will lead to mutual impacts which will cause change and development; in other words, everything we choose to do will be the Reason for one or more Results. We must be aware of unintended or unpredicted Results from our activities.

Reason-Result relationships are very complicated and diverse. Therefore, we must accurately identify the types of Reasons [direct, indirect, internal, external, etc.] so that we can come up with proper solutions which are suitable for the specific situation in both perception and practice. A Reason can lead to many results and, likewise, a Result can be caused by many Reasons, which is why we must have a comprehensive viewpoint and a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] in our perception of reality so we can properly analyse, solve and apply Reason-Result relationships.

Annotation 142

It is critical to understand that there may be many events or relationships which might be falsely ascribed as Reasons for a given Result (and vice-versa).

For example: in 1965, the United States of America officially declared war on North Vietnam after the so-called “Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” in which Vietnamese forces supposedly fired on a United States Navy ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is often described as the “cause” or the “Reason” that the Vietnam War began.

However, the real “Reason” why the USA declared war on North Vietnam had to do with the underlying contradiction between capitalist imperialism and communism in Vietnam. This contradiction had to be resolved one way or another. The United States of America willfully decided to try to negate this contradiction by instigating war, and this was the true reason the war began. In fact, the so-called “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” never even occurred as described — the attack on the USA’s ship never really occurred. A document released by the Pentagon in 2005 revealed that the incident was completely fabricated. So, saying that the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” was the Reason for the war is nonsensical, since it’s an event which never even occurred in reality.

Understanding the true nature of Reason and Result is very important for making decisions and choosing a path forward in political action. Attributing the wrong Reason to a Result, or misunderstanding the Results which stem from a Reason, can lead to serious setbacks and failures. Therefore, it is vital for revolutionaries to properly identify and understand the actual Reasons and Results which drive development.

3. Obviousness and Randomness

a. Categories of Obviousness and Randomness

Annotation 143

In Vietnamese, the words for these categories are “tất nhiên” and “ngẫu nhiên,” which respectively translate to “obvious” and “random.” In socialist literature, various words have been used by different authors to convey the underlying meaning of these categories (Engels, for instance, used the terms “necessary” and “accidental” to mean “obvious” and “random,” respectively). We have chosen to use words which closely match the Vietnamese used in the original text, but the reader should be aware that these same concepts may be described using many different words in various English translations of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, etc.

The Obviousness category refers to events that occur because of the essential [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156] internal aspects of the material structure of a subject. These essential internal characteristics become reasons for certain results under certain conditions: the Obvious has to happen in a certain way, it can’t happen any other way.

Annotation 144

Obviousness can only apply to material subjects in the material world and results which are certain to happen based on the material laws of nature. Obviousness arises from the internal aspects, features, and relations of physical objects. Paper will burn under certain specific conditions, due its internal material structure. If those conditions (i.e., temperature, the presence of oxygen, etc.) exist, then paper will catch fire predictably. In other words, paper will obviously burn under certain circumstances due to its internal composition,.

The Randomness category refers to things that happen because of external reasons: things that happen, essentially, by chance, due to impacts from many external relations. A Random outcome may occur or it may not occur; a Random outcome could happen this way or it could happen that way.

Annotation 145

As we discussed above, paper will burn if it reaches a certain temperature — that much is obvious. If your friend holds paper over the flame of the lighter, the paper will burn — that’s obvious. But you can’t be certain whether your friend will actually hold the paper to the flame or not. This demonstrates Randomness. Whether your friend will ultimately hold the paper to the flame or not depends on an external relation which is not defined by the internal structure of the paper, and which can’t be predicted with the same predictability as obvious events which are rooted in internal material aspects.

b. Dialectical relationship between Obviousness and Randomness

Obviousness and Randomness both exist objectively and play an important role in the motion and development of things and phenomena. Obviousness plays the decisive role.

Annotation 146

Obviousness plays the decisive role simply because Obviousness is far more predictable and the laws which govern material phenomena are essentially fixed. We can’t change the laws of physics, the nature of chemical reactions, etc.

Obviousness and Randomness exist in dialectical unity; there is no pure Obviousness, nor pure Randomness. It is obvious that Randomness shall occur in our universe, however Obviousness clears a path through this Randomness.

Annotation 147

Our universe is incredibly complex and there are many different potential external relations which could impact any given situation, such that some degree of Randomness is always present in any situation; in other words, the presence of Randomness can be seen as Obvious.

In 1922, Ho Chi Minh identified objective internal characteristics of the working class of France and its colonies. He wrote: “The mutual ignorance of the two proletariats gives rise to prejudices. The French workers look upon the native as an inferior and negligible human being, incapable of understanding and still less of taking action. The natives regard all the French as wicked exploiters. Imperialism and capitalism do not fail to take advantage of this mutual suspicion and this artificial racial hierarchy to frustrate propaganda and divide forces which ought to unite.”

In this example, Ho Chi Minh identifies prejudice as an obvious outcome of mutual ignorance. The prejudice arises as a matter of course from internal objective aspects of the two proletarian groups. As long as French and native workers remain ignorant of one another, prejudice will arise. The specific forms which this prejudice will take, however, and their resulting impacts and developments, will be more or less Random because there are many external factors (including the external impacts of the capitalist class, which seeks to take advantage of these prejudices) which can’t be predicted. Therefore, it is necessary for political revolutionaries to account for both random and obvious factors in confronting such prejudice. Ho Chi Minh’s suggestion for overcoming these difficulties was concise and to-the-point: “Intensify propaganda to overcome them.” Only by negating the internal aspects of mutual ignorance through education and propaganda could communists hope to negate the resulting prejudice.

As Engels said: “One knows that what is maintained to be necessary [obvious] is composed of sheer accidents, and that the so-called accidental [random] is the form behind which necessity hides itself — and so on.”^[92]

Obviousness and Randomness are not static properties: Randomness and Obviousness continuously change and develop over time. Under specific conditions, Obviousness and Randomness can transform into each other: Obviousness can become Random and Randomness can become obvious.

Annotation 148

Randomness can be introduced to an obvious situation: it may be obvious that a mineshaft will collapse, until human beings come along and intervene by repairing the structural integrity of the mineshaft. It may seem Random whether a city’s economy will grow or shrink, until a volcano erupts and buries the city in lava and ash, making it obvious that the economy will not grow because the city no longer exists.

Most situations are in a flux, as Obviousness and Randomness dialectically develop and change over time, with outcomes becoming more or less obvious or Random over time. It is vital that we, as political revolutionaries, are able to distinguish between Obviousness and Randomness and to leverage this understanding to our advantage.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Basically, in our perception and reality, we have to base our plans, strategies, and actions as much as possible on the Obvious, not the Random. However, we must not ignore Randomness, nor try to separate the Obvious from the Random. When faced with situations which seem very Random, we must find ways to develop Obviousness. When faced with what seems obvious, we must keep an eye out for Randomness. Obviousness and Randomness can mutually transform, so we need to create suitable conditions to hinder or promote such transformation to suit our purposes.

Annotation 149

We must always remember that no situation is purely obvious, nor purely Random, and to take this into account in all of our planning and activity.

A skyscraper made from heavy steel beams may seem quite sturdy and stable; it may appear obvious that the structure will remain stable and sound for decades. However, it is still important for engineers to periodically confirm that the steel is still sound through testing and observation. Engineers must also be prepared for Random events like lightning, earthquakes, storms, etc., which may affect the seemingly obvious structural integrity of the building.

Likewise, when faced with extremely complex situations which seem completely Random, we must seek out (or bring about) the obvious. Wildfires are extremely chaotic and difficult to predict. However, firefighters can rely on certain obvious patterns and natural laws which govern the spread of fire. By digging trenches, lighting counter-fires, spraying water, and other such actions, firefighters can bring wildfires under control. This illustrates how humans are able to make situations less Random by bringing about an increasing amount of Obviousness over time through practical activity.

4. Content and Form

a. Categories of Content and Form

The Content category refers to the sum of all aspects, attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from.

The Form category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Form thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 150

Content and Form can be difficult to comprehend at first because the ways in which Content and Form manifest and interact can vary wildly depending on the subject being discussed and the viewpoint from which the subject is being considered.

Content represents the component things, materials, attributes, features, etc., which, together, make up a thing, phenomenon, or idea. You can think of it as the “ingredients” from which a subject is made.
Form refers to a stable system of internal relationships which compose a thing, phenomenon, or idea, as well as the mode of existence and development [see Annotation 60, p. 59] of those relations.

Remember that from a dialectical materialist perspective, everything in our universe is defined by internal and external relations. If a thing, phenomenon, or idea has internal relations which are relatively stable, then it has a Form.

We would not call all of the assorted ingredients which are used to make a cake “a cake” unless they have been assembled together and baked into the stable form which we interpret as “a cake.” Once a portion is removed from the cake, the portion itself assumes a new stable form which we call “a slice of cake.” The slice of cake will maintain its relatively stable form until being eaten, discarded, or otherwise transitioning into some other form. It is only considered a “slice of cake” for as long as it maintains its own specific stable form.

Stability itself is also relative: a “spray” of water may only last for a few seconds but we can still conceive of it as having Form. On the other hand, a mountain has a set of stable internal relations (a Form) which might last for millions of years.

We can think of Form as having two aspects: inner Form and outer Form.

Inner form refers to the internal stable relations which we have already discussed.

Outer form is how an object “appears” to human senses.

In this book, we are primarily concerned with the inner Form of subjects, however, in other contexts (such as art and design), the outer Form plays a more prominent role.

Now, let’s identify some of the common viewpoints from which Content and Form might be considered.

Material vs. Ideal

When discussing the material — i.e., objective systems and objects^[93] — discussion of Content and Form is more straightforward.

Material

With material things and phenomena, the Content is what the thing is made out of: the physical parts, aspects, attributes, and processes that compose the subject. For example, the Content of a wooden chair might be the wood, nails, paint, and other materials which are used to create the chair.

A material object can be described in terms of content, inner form, and outer form.

The inner Form of a material object refers to stable internal relations which compose the object. The stable relationship between the wood and the nails — the nails bind the wood together, the wood is cut in certain patterns, the paint adheres to the wood through physical and chemical bonds, etc. Stability is, again, relative — over time, the paint will chip and flake, the wood will rot, the nails will rust, etc. Dialectical processes of change will eventually reduce the chair into something other than a chair (i.e., through rotting, burning, disassembly, etc.), but as long as the internal relations maintain the Form of a chair we conceive of it as a chair.

The outer Form of a material object refers to the way it appears to human consciousness. Its shape, aesthetics, etc.

Ideal

With the ideal — i.e., abstract ideas and concepts — discussion of Content and Form becomes more complicated. As Vietnam’s Marxism-Leninism Textbook for Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism explains:

Many times, human consciousness has difficulty in trying to clearly define the Content of a subject — especially when the subject is an abstract idea. We often mistake Content with inner Form. Usually, in this situation, there is a strong combination and intertwining between both Content and Form. In such a situation, the Form can be referred to as the “inner Form,” or the “Content-Form.”
With physical things and phenomena, this type of Form usually belongs to a very specific Private, it doesn’t exist in any other Private, it is the Unique [see Annotation 129, p. 128].

The reason the inner Form of physical objects usually exists in Private as the Unique is because the stable internal relations of any given physical object are equivalent to the specific material components which distinguish one physical object from all other physical objects. In other words, if you have two chairs which are exact copies of each other, made from the same kind of wood, cut into the same shape, using the same type and configuration of fasteners, etc., they are still not the exact same object. The internal relations of one chair are what make it that chair and distinguish it from all other objects in the universe. The outer Form of these chairs may have many commonalities (they look similar, they have the same color, etc.), but the inner Form is what distinguishes one chair from the other.

However, within the realm of abstract ideas, there are also Forms which many abstract Privates share. In the context of abstract ideas, we call this kind of Form the “outer Form,” the “form-Form,” or the “common Form.”
When we try to define the Content of a subject which is an abstract idea, our consciousness usually tries to answer the question: “what is the subject?”

This is usually a simple matter. Take, for example, the abstract idea of “freedom.” When we try to think of the Content of freedom we can answer it pretty easily. What is the subject of freedom? It is the condition which allows humans to follow their own will, it is the absence of external coercion, etc., etc.

But, when we try to define the Form of an abstract idea, our consciousness tries to answer the question: “how is the subject?” — this is when we have to define the mode of existence (the Form) of that subject.

This is where things get more complicated. The mode of existence of an abstract idea can usually be considered to be language, since our ideas are usually expressed through language, but it can take on other modes of existence as well, such as visual media (paintings, photographs), physical motions of the human body (body language, dance), etc. This is how the field of art studies is concerned with the philosophical categories of Content and Form.

Content and Form in Art

Many readers may already be familiar with the subject of Content and Form from studying art, design, communications, and related fields. At first glance, the definitions of Content and Form may seem different from what we’ve been discussing so far.

This is because art concerns itself with abstract ideas expressed through various Forms of physical representations.

These physical representations may include physical objects (photographs, paintings, sculptures), performed and/or recorded physical activities (dance, music, theater, film), human language recorded in stable physical Forms of written language (novels, poems, stories) or spontaneously performed oral language (storytelling, impromptu spoken-word poetry).

Because the study of art is primarily concerned with interpreting and understanding ideas expressed through these physical manifestations, art is concerned with the stable inner relations of the ideas which artists imbue within their works of art — much more than the stable inner relations of the physical components of the object.

According to the Vietnamese art textbook Curriculum of General Aesthetics:

What is the Form of a work of art? Form is the way to express the Content of an artwork. Form and Content within a work of art have a strong unity with each other and they regulate each other. Form is the organization, the inner structure of the Content of an artwork. Therefore, Form is the way that the Content expresses itself, and that way is described by two features. We must ask:
First: what expresses the Content of a work of art?
Second: how is it expressed?
Art exists when two conditions are met: first, there must be a subject with an outer Form. Second, an artist must convey aesthetic meaning, or humanization, of that subject. This aesthetic meaning is the Content.

So, in studying works of art, we are less concerned with the physical content of the artwork (the canvas, paint, etc.) than we are with the abstract content of the artwork (the ideas which the artist imbues within the artwork).

As for Form, the inner Form of art represents the stable internal relations which compose the art (both ideal, i.e., the stable internal relations of the abstract ideas imbued within the art by the artist, as well as physical, i.e., the stable internal relations of the physical media of the art).

The outer Form of art represents how our human senses perceive the art, such as composition techniques, the use of color, etc.

The chart below breaks down the differences in a general, non-artistic viewpoint of physical objects and processes in materialist dialectical terms (i.e., the viewpoint an engineer might have), as compared with the artistic viewpoint of physical objects and processes (which an art critic might have). Some fields, such as designing products for human use, might draw from both viewpoints.

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Content and Form in Specific Artistic Media

Every medium of art will interpret Content and Form in its own way. For example:

Literature is a specific art discipline which deals with recorded human language in the Form of writing. In written literature, the Content would be the ideas expressed in a piece of writing; what the words say. The inner Form would be the way the ideas relate to each other — i.e., story structure, pacing, character development, etc. The outer form would be the physical format of the writing — i.e., manuscript, magazine article, paperback book, ebook, etc.

Painting is a specific art discipline in which pigments are applied to objects to create images which convey ideas and emotions. In painting, the Content would be the meaning which an artist embodies in a work of art. The inner Form would include the stable internal relations within the artwork (i.e., the bonds and mixtures between the pigments, the canvas, etc.), while the outer Form would be how the artwork appears to human senses (composition, aesthetics, etc.). Generally speaking, the creator of the art will have to make decisions about the inner Form (i.e., selection of oil vs. acrylic vs. watercolor, selection of shade, tint, and hue, physical brush strokes, etc.) so as to produce the desired outer Form (the way the finished artwork will appear to viewers).

Theater is a specific art discipline in which human beings perform physical actions and use their voices to convey ideas to an audience. In theater, the Content includes the ideas which are being presented, such as the script, the musical score, the story, the performance choices of actors, costumes, props, etc. The inner Form would include the stable relations between the members of the cast, the director, the physical stage, the lighting, etc., and the outer Form would be the way the play appears to the audience.

These are just some examples. Each medium of expression will have its own variations in how Content and Form are considered.

Engels described the manifestation of Content and Form in Dialectics of Nature:

The whole of organic nature is one continuous proof of the identity or inseparability of form and content. Morphological and physiological phenomena, form and function, mutually determine one another. The differentiation of form (the cell) determines differentiation of substance into muscle, skin, bone, epithelium, etc., and the differentiation of substance in turn determines difference of form.

Content and Form are discussed frequently in analysis of human social systems and objective relations which occur within society. For example, Marx made many criticial insights into economics by analyzing and explaining the form of value [see Annotation 14, p. 16] under capitalism.

Indeed, the entire capitalist system can be viewed in terms of content and form. The current form of human civilization is capitalism. That is to say, capitalism is the stable set of relations and characteristis of the current political economy which dominates the planet. The content of capitalism includes all the components of the base and superstructure, including the various classes (capitalists, working class, etc.), the means of production, government institutions, corporate institutions, etc. All of these elements are configured together into the relatively stable form which we call “capitalism.”

b. Dialectical relationship between Content and Form

Content and Form have a strong dialectical relationship with one other. There is no Form that does not contain any Content. Simultaneously, there is no Content that does not exist in a specific Form. The same Content can manifest in many Forms and a Form can contain many Contents.

The relationship between Content and Form is a dialectical relationship in which Content decides Form and Form can impact Content.

Annotation 151

For example, if you want to make a table, and all you have available are wood and nails, then that Content (the wood and the nails) will determine the Form the table ends up taking. You are going to end up with a wooden table, and it will therefore have to have certain characteristics of Form.

When Content changes, the Form must change accordingly. If, instead of wood, you have iron, then the table you end up building will have a much different Form. Form can also influence the Content, but not nearly as much as Content determines Form. For instance, if you have wood and nails, but you develop a technique for building a table that doesn’t need any nails, then the result (a wooden table without any nails) would be an example of a development in Form reflecting as a change in Content.

The main tendency of Content is change. On the other hand, Form is relatively stable in every thing and phenomenon. As Content changes, Form must change accordingly. However, Content and Form are not always perfectly aligned.

Annotation 152

Since all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly changing, it stands to reason that the internal components (things, phenomena, and ideas, and their relations) which compose the Content of a subject will constantly be undergoing processes of change and development. Thus, we say that the tendency of Content is change. Since the Form is based on the internal relations of the components of Content, it stands to reason that a change in Content will lead to change in Form. These kinds of changes in Content and Form also occur through the dialectical process: changes in quantity lead to changes in quality [see Annotation 117, p. 119].

Quantity changes in Content lead to quality shifts in Form.

As soon as a wooden chair is finished being built, the paint is already beginning to degrade. The wood is already beginning to rot. The iron nails are already beginning to rust. These changes may be imperceptibly slow — they may even take centuries to occur, if the chair is kept in a hospitable environment — but the changes are occurring, quantitatively, over time, none-the-less.

Eventually, changes in quantity will lead to changes in quality. At some point, the chair might weaken and begin to wobble whenever it’s sat in. Human beings might recognize this quality and begin to think of it as a “wobbly chair.” The chair might degrade to the point where it can’t be safely used at all, in which case it will have quality shifted into a “broken chair.” If the chair is repaired, that would represent another quality shift. If it is used for firewood, that would be another quality shift.

Keep in mind that changes in Form do not directly cause changes in Content. If you disassemble a wooden chair into the constituent wood and nails, the wood and nails remain more or less unchanged. But if you burn a wooden chair, it’s the change in Content which leads to the change in Form from “chair” to “pile of ash.”

Form simply represents the stable relationships between the component parts of the subject’s Content. The only way to change Form is to change those inner relations, or to change the components which are relating. There is no way to change Form without changing the Content, and changing the Content changes the Form by definition.

Content determines Form, but Form is not fully decided by Content, and Form can impact back on Content. If a Form is suitable with its Content, it can improve the development of its Content. If a Form is not suitable with its Content, it can constrain the development of its Content.

Annotation 153

The dialectical relationship between Content and Form is somewhat similar to the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideal (see Matter and Consciousness,

p. 88). Just as the material world determines consciousness while consciousness impacts the material world, the Content of a subject determines the Form while the Form impacts the Content.

Suitability describes the applicability of a subject for a specific application or role. Whether or not something is “suitable” or not can be highly subjective (i.e., which music would be “suitable” to play at a party), or it can be more objective (i.e., what kind of batteries to use with an electronic device).

We might say that hardwood is “suitable” Content for the Form of a chair because it is durable, strong, relatively inexpensive, and long-lasting. It might be “unsuitable” to have a chair made of hardwood if it is to be used as an office chair, because the hard surfaces might cause strain and discomfort. However, we can utilize conscious activity to adjust and develop suitability between Content and Form. Changing the Content by adding cushioning or padding might make the Content and Form more suitable with each other. Similarly, changing the Form by designing contours and adding adjustability to the chair might make the Content and Form more suitable with each other for their intended application as an office chair.

If a Form is not suitable with the Content, it restrains the development of the Content. Just think of a shovel (Form) made of wood (Content), which will degrade very rapidly over time, vs. a shovel (Form) made of steel (Content) which will last much longer. This works in both directions. Consider the Content of drinking cups: a porcelain cup might last for a long time and even develop positively over time (by acquiring a desirable patina), while a cup made out of mild steel would not be desirable, as it would be highly prone to rust from extended use containing liquids.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Content and Form always have a dialectical relationship with each other. Therefore, in our perception and practice, we must not try to separate Content and Form, nor should we solely focus on one and ignore the other.

Because Content determines Form, whenever we are considering a thing, phenomenon, or idea, we must base our consideration first on its Content. If we want to change a thing or phenomenon, we have to change its Content first.

In reality, we must promote the positive impact of Form on Content by making the Form fit the Content. Likewise, we must also change the Form that is no longer suitable with its Content and therefore constrains the development of its Content.

Annotation 154

In any analysis, it is very important that we carefully consider whether or not Content and Form are suitable with each other in our own projects and activities. We can learn a lot about suitability from observation and practice (see Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204) and improve suitability through conscious activity.

Marx believed that it is vital to consider Content and Form when analyzing human society and political economy. One of his core critiques of political economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo was a failure to consider Content and Form when it comes to value, commodities, and money. He discusses this extensively in Capital Volume 1, as in this excerpt:

The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both.

Marx, here, is saying that studying the economy is more difficult than studying the human body because it can’t be physically observed and dissected. Rather, we have to rely on abstraction, which leaves us prone to making many more mistakes in analyzing Content and Form.

But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour – or value-form of the commodity – is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.

Marx’s analysis of capitalism relies to great extent upon recognizing the commodity-form of the product (Content) of labor. Labor existed long before capitalism. Labor has existed for as long as humans have worked to change our own material conditions. But under capitalism, labor specifically takes on the Form of a commodity which is bought by capitalists. This becomes the basis for Marx’s entire critique of capitalism.

Obviously, there is much more to Marx’s use of Content and Form in analyzing capitalism and human society, but this should hopefully give you some idea of the importance of Content and Form in analysis of human society and revolutionary activity.

5. Essence and Phenomenon

a. Categories of Essence and Phenomenon

The Essence category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion and development of things, phenomena, and ideas.

The Phenomenon category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions.

Annotation 155

Understanding Essence and Phenomena can be challenging at first, but it is very important for materialist dialectical analysis.

Essence should not be confused with Form. Form represents the stable internal relations of the component content of a subject, whereas Essence represents the synthesis of all internal aspects as well as all obvious and stable attributes which define the existence, motion, and development of a subject.

Phenomena are simply external manifestations of a subject which occur in specific conditions.

The Essence of a subject is not dependent on conditions, whereas in different conditions, the same subject will exhibit different Phenomena. For example, COVID-19 is, essentially, a specific virus strain. That is to say, all of the internal aspects and stable relations that define the existence, motion, and development of COVID-19 are synthesized as a virus which we call COVID-19.

The Phenomena of COVID-19 which we can observe in patients would include symptoms such as fever, coughing, trouble breathing, etc.

The Essence of a cloud is water vapor in the atmosphere: that is the synthesis, the coming-together, of all the internal stable relations and aspects which will determine how a cloud exists, moves, and develops over time.

The Phenomena of clouds are all the things we can sense: the appearance of big fluffy white things in the air, shadows on the ground, and, sometimes, rain.

Essence defines Phenomenon: the internal attributes and stable relations will produce the Phenomena which we can observe. A cloud is not essentially defined as a fluffy white thing in the air; that is just the appearance a cloud has to our human senses in certain specific conditions.

b. Dialectical relationship between Essence and Phenomenon

Essence and Phenomenon both exist objectively as two unified but opposing sides.

The unity between Essence and Phenomenon: Essence always manifests through Phenomena, and every Phenomenon is always the manifestation of a specific Essence. There is no pure Essence that exists separately from Phenomena and there is no Phenomenon that does not manifest from any kind of Essence.

When Essence changes, Phenomena also change accordingly. When Essence appears, Phenomena also appear, and when Essence disappears, Phenomena also disappear. Therefore, Lenin said: “The Essence appears. The appearance is essential.”^[94]

The Opposition of Essence and Phenomenon: Essence is that which defines a thing, Phenomenon, or idea, while Phenomena are diversified and conditional. Essence is internal, while Phenomena are external. Essence is relatively stable, while Phenomena continuously change.

Annotation 156

Essence and Phenomenon are simultaneously unified and opposite because neither can exist without the other, yet they have completely opposite features from one another.

Discussing the Essence and Phenomena of physical objects is relatively straight-forward. The Essence will typically encompass the physical object or system itself. For example, a car engine is essentially a machine; that is to say, the synthesis of all the internal aspects (the engine parts) as well as the obvious and stable relations (the relations between the parts of the engine; how they are assembled and work together in the engine system) that define the existence, motion and development of the engine (the way it works) are what essentially make it a car engine. All of these essential characteristics are internal, relatively stable, and remain the same regardless of the condition of the engine (i.e., they continue to exist whether the engine is turned on, turned off, inoperable, etc.).

The Phenomena of the car engine are all the things that we can sense from it, but this can vary a great deal depending on conditions. When the car engine is turned off, it will be silent. It may be cool to the touch. It will be at rest. If the engine is turned on, the parts will move, it will become hot, it will make noise. In some situations it might smoke or even catch on fire. All of these Phenomena are conditional, unstable, and external to the engine itself.

With ideas and abstract thought, Essence and Phenomenon becomes more difficult to determine and analyze. Lenin discussed this in his Philosophical Notebooks, beginning with a quote from Hegel:

Dialectics in general is “the pure movement of thought in Notions“ (i.e., putting it without the mysticism of idealism: human concepts are not fixed but are eternally in movement, they pass into one another, they flow into one another, otherwise they do not reflect living life.

Knowing that Hegel was an idealist, Lenin wanted to strip all idealism from his conception of dialectics, and thus made it clear that “the pure movement of thought” simply refers to the fact that human thoughts are constantly changing, always in motion, within the living human mind, writing:

The analysis of concepts, the study of them, the “art of operating with them” (Engels) always demands study of the movement of concepts, of their interconnection, of their mutual transitions).

This is a description of materialist dialectical analysis of human thought. We must understand that human thoughts are always in motion, always developing, and always mutually impacting other thoughts.

In particular, dialectics is the study of the opposition of the Thing-in-itself, of the essence, substratum, substance — from the appearance, from “Being-for-Others.” (Here, too, we see a transition, a flow from the one to the other: the essence appears. The appearance is essential.) Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on without end.

This is where Lenin introduces the concept of Essence and Phenomenon (or “appearance,” as Lenin puts it) as simultaneously oppositional and in unity. Essence refers to the qualities and nature of the “thing-in-itself” (its internal components, relations, etc.) while Phenomena represents “being-for-others” (that which external observers can sense or witness of a subject). However, as Lenin notes, Essence and Phenomena have a dialectical relationship with each other — a “flow from the one to the other.” The Essence “appears” by exuding Phenomena which we can sense.

Conscious thoughts also have Essence and Phenomena of their own. With thought, the development from Essence to Phenomena is constant and inevitable. The Essence of each thought leads to thought-Phenomena which develop in turn into the Essence of new thoughts in a constant flow.

In this sense, Essence and Phenomenon of abstract thought is somewhat different from Essence and Phenomenon of physical objects, but physical objects can have this same dialectical pattern of development. For example, the emissions from the engine of a car can be considered Phenomena of the engine, but as these Phenomena build up in the air (along with the emissions from many other cars), they can develop into a physical subject with a new Essence of its own, which we call “air pollution.”

We can also think of the light which comes from the sun. The light itself can be thought of as Phenomena of the sun, but the light energy can be captured by a solar panel and converted into energy, creating a new subject with its own Essence which we would describe as “solar energy.” In this sense, it is possible for Phenomena to have Phenomena. If you witness light waves in the desert which cause an optical illusion, then the illusion is a Phenomenon of the light waves (the light waves being the Essence which exuded the Phenomenon of illusion), and the light waves are the Phenomena of the sun (the essential subject which exudes the Phenomena of the light waves).

Essence and Phenomena can also be contextual. In some contexts, physical objects which have their own Essence (and Phenomena) may be the Phenomena of some other entity. For example, archaeologists can’t observe prehistoric civilizations directly. They can only study the things which are left behind. In this sense, we can think of an archaeological artifact, like a stone tool, as a Phenomenon of a prehistoric civilization. The tool has its own Essence and Phenomena, but it is also itself a Phenomenon. A single stone tool can’t tell archaeologists much about an ancient civilization, however, archaeologists can gather many Phenomena (tools, structural ruins, nearby animal bones and seeds, human remains, etc.) to look for patterns which reveal more insights about the Essence of the prehistoric civilization which exuded those Phenomena.

Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects: not only are appearances transitory, mobile, fluid, demarcated only by conventional boundaries, but the essence of things is so as well.

Lenin, here, points out that proper analysis hinges on understanding the Essence of a subject, since the Phenomena are fleeting and subject to change. Most notably, we should look for contradictions within the subject (see Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction, p. 175), because contradictions are what drive dialectical development of a subject over time.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

If we want to be accurately aware of things, phenomena, and ideas, we must not just stop at studying their Phenomena, we have to study their Essence. Only through examining many Phenomena of a subject can we fully and correctly understand the Essence of said subject.

Annotation 157

With physical objects, we must study the Phenomena to know anything about a subject, since Phenomena is, by definition, that which we can observe. Only through systematic, repeated observations can we come to understand the Essence of the object which exudes the Phenomena. Because Phenomena can change based on conditions, we must observe Phenomena under various conditions in a systematic way. This is the basis of all scientific inquiry.

This is also true for analyzing aspects of human society. To understand a social system, we must observe its Phenomena systematically over time and look for patterns which form under various conditions. We must also keep in mind that social systems develop and change over time, and so the Essence might develop with or without changes in certain Phenomena. For example, the phenomena of the United States of America have changed significantly over the years. The national flag, military uniforms, seals, and other iconography have changed throughout the history of the USA. Similarly, there have been many presidents, and the government and constitution have also been through many changes. That said, the essential nature of the USA’s political economy has not changed significantly since its foundation; the USA has been a capitalist bourgeois democracy since the beginning and remains so to this day. Regardless of which bourgeois-dominated political party holds power in the white house and congress — Whig, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise — the essential nature of the USA as a capitalist bourgeois democracy has remained the same.

According to Lenin: “Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on, without end.”^[95] On the other hand, Essence is what defines a thing, phenomenon, or idea. Therefore, in our perception and practice, we must recognize a thing, phenomenon, or idea based on its Essence, not its Phenomena, to evaluate it correctly, and after that, we can make fundamental improvements.

Annotation 158

For example: Thousands of years ago, people observed that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west everyday. Based on these Phenomena, many human civilizations developed the belief that the Essence of our solar system was that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun rotated around it. Today, thanks to scientific observation and practice, we have proven that the sun is the center of the solar system and that the earth is rotating around it, which is totally opposite to what many believed hundreds of years ago. In this case, the initially observed Phenomena were misleading, and it was only by getting a better grasp of the essential nature of the solar system that we could better comprehend its functioning.

It is usually easy to observe Phenomena (since they are defined by being observable) but it’s also easy to misunderstand relationships between Essence and Phenomena. Sometimes people get a false perception of Essence from real Phenomena, such as believing the Sun revolves around the Earth. Sometimes people attribute the wrong Phenomena to Essences as well, such as believing that all poor people are lazy.

Phenomena can easily be mistaken for essence. For example, bourgeois liberal political parties often portray themselves as being pro-worker and therefore exhibit phenomena such as rhetoric, slogans, propaganda, and even platform positions which appeal to workers. These phenomena may confuse many into believing that they are workers’ parties when, in reality, they are essentially dominated by the capitalist class. The reverse can also occur. For example, workers may be fooled into believing that a ruthless capitalist politician or celebrity is “working class at heart,” falsely believing that the capitalist’s class position is merely a phenomenon when in fact it is essential.

Understanding true Essence based on real Phenomena is one of the most important aspects of analysis. It is the primary realm of science. In politics, misunderstanding or mischaracterizing Essence and Phenomena can reinforce false beliefs about the way society works which can lead to promulgation of dangerous and reactionary ideologies like neoliberalism and fascism amidst the working class. For this reason, we must avoid examining Phenomena alone. We have to dive deep to discover and understand the essential nature of things, phenomena, and ideas in our analysis.

6. Possibility and Reality

a. Categories of Possibility and Reality

The Possibility category refers to things that have not happened nor existed in reality yet, but that would happen, or would exist given necessary conditions.

The Reality category refers to things that exist or have existed in reality and in human thought.

b. Dialectical Relationship Between Possibility and Reality

Possibility and Reality have a unified and inseparable relationship: Possibility can transform into Reality and Reality contains new Possibility; any given Possibility, under specific conditions, can transform into Reality.

Given specific conditions, there could be one or many possibilities for the development of any given thing, phenomenon, or idea: practical Possibility, random Possibility, obvious Possibility, abstract Possibility, near Possibility, far Possibility, etc.

Annotation 159

Excerpt From Marxism-Leninism Textbook of Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism

Editor’s notes in [brackets]

Reality has many aspects. It also has many tendencies of development. These aspects and tendencies of Reality have different roles and positions in the development process of Reality. For example, manifesting any given Possibility into Reality requires us to change a specific subject from one status to a different status. Some subjects are easier to transform and others are more difficult to transform. Some require us to change quality, others only require quantity changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119].

Because Reality has many aspects and tendencies of development, it is useful to classify Possibility. There are at least four types of Possibility, in two separate categories.

[The categorization below draws a distinction between the obvious and the practical.

The obvious is that which will certainly occur. If you drop an object, it will obviously fall. The practical is that which we certainly could make occur through human will. If you are holding an object, you could practically drop it.]

Obvious Possibility and Random Possibility [see: Obviousness and Randomness, p. 144].

Obvious Possibility refers to Possibility that will happen, because conditions to make it happen are set in place so that the Possibility developing into Reality is unavoidable.

[If the conditions arise for a hurricane to form, it eventually becomes obvious that a hurricane will form.]

Random Possibility is Possibility which may or may not happen depending on how external factors develop, our actions, the actions of others, etc. [Whether or not a hurricane may develop on any given day is, from our human perspective, random, since we do not have any technology to cause or prevent the development of hurricanes. Other events may be more or less random. We can, for instance, prepare for an incoming hurricane to minimize the risk of harm to human communities.]

Second, based on the practical relationships between subjects, we have:

Practical Possibility vs. Abstract Possibility:

Practical Possibility means that conditions in Reality which could make something happen are already in place. [If you have all the ingredients, knowledge, and equipment needed to make a pie, you could make a pie. The material conditions are in place.]

Abstract Possibility is Possibility which may become Reality in the future but the conditions which would make this Possibility become Reality have not yet developed.

[It is an abstract Possibility that you could make a pie, even if you don’t have the tools, ingredients, or knowledge. It is possible, in the abstract, that you could buy the ingredients and equipment and learn the necessary skills to make a pie. Near Possibility simply refers to Possibility which may become Reality in the shorter term, far Possibility refers to things which may happen in a more distant future, relative to the subject being discussed.]

In social life, in order to transform a Possibility into Reality, there must be objective conditions and subjective factors. Subjective factors include the ability of humans to change Possibility into Reality. Objective conditions refer to the situations needed to make such a change occur. [In other words, humans are able to subjectively change possibility into reality, but only when the objective circumstances exist in the external world.]

c. Meaning of the Methodology

We must base our perception and practice on Reality.

Lenin said: “Marxism takes its stand on the facts, and not on possibilities. A Marxist must, as the foundation of his policy, put [forth] only precisely and unquestionably demonstrated facts.”^[96]

However, in our perception and practice, we also need to comprehensively recognize possibilities which could arise from Reality. This will allow us to develop methods of practical operation which are suitable to changes and developments which might occur. We must actively make use of subjective factors in perception and practice to turn Possibility into Reality whenever it would serve our purposes.

Annotation 160

This idea is perhaps best exemplified in the traditional Vietnamese proverb: “you can’t just open your mouth and wait for fruit to drop into your mouth.” We have to actively apply our will, through practice and labor, to develop the best possibilities into manifested Reality. See more about subjective factors in Annotation 207, p. 202.

IV. Basic Laws of Materialist Dialectics

Laws are the regular, common, obvious, natural, and objective relations between internal aspects, factors, and attributes of a thing or phenomenon or between things and phenomena.

There are many types of laws in this world and they all have different prevalence, reach, characteristics, and roles in regard to the motion and development processes of things and phenomena in nature, society, and human thought. So, it is necessary to classify different laws for humans to understand and apply them effectively into practical activities. Classifying laws based on prevalence, we have: private laws, common laws, and universal laws [see: Private and Common, p. 128].

Private laws are laws that only apply to a specific range of things and phenomena. For example: laws of mechanical motion, laws of chemical motion, laws of biological motion, etc.

Common laws are laws that apply to a broader range of subjects than private laws, and they impact many different subjects. For instance: the law of preservation of mass, the law of preservation of energy, etc.

Universal laws are laws that impact every aspect of nature, society, and human thought. Materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws.

If we classify laws based on the reach of impact, we will have three main groups: laws of nature, laws of society, and laws of human thought.

Laws of nature are laws that arise in the natural world, including within the human body. They are not products of human conscious activities.

Laws of society are the laws of human activity in social relations; these laws only apply to the conscious activities of humans, yet they are still objective.

Annotation 161

We have already discussed how relations between human beings are objective [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. By extension, the human relations which compose human societies are objective, and thus, any laws which govern objective human relations must also be objective.

Marx’s assertion that human social relations are objective is critical to understanding his work. Marx pointed out that social relations may not be “physical,” in the sense that they can’t be observed directly with human senses, but that they still have an objective character — they exist externally to a given subject, and they have objective impacts on reality. For instance, the class relations between the capitalist class and the working class result in objective manifestations in reality, such as wealth accumulation, modes of circulation, etc.

Laws of human thought are laws of the intrinsic relationships between concepts, categories, judgments, inference, and the development process of human rational awareness.

As the science of common relations and development, materialist dialectics studies the universal laws that influence the entire natural world, human society, and human thought, all together as a whole.

These universal laws are:

The law of transformation between quantity and quality.
The law of unification and contradiction between opposites.
The law of negation of negation.

Annotation 162

Each of these laws is considered universal because they apply to all things, phenomena, and ideas, and all the internal and external relations thereof, in human perception and practice. All things, phenomena, and ideas change and develop as a result of mutual impacts and relationships in accordance with these universal laws. On a fundamental level, materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws and their utility.

1. Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality

The law of transformation between quantity and quality is a universal law which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought.

Annotation 163

Remember that mode refers to how something exists, functions, and develops [see Annotation 60, p. 59]. The universal mode of motion and development processes thus refers to how all things, ideas, and phenomena move, change, and develop.

Friedrich Engels defined the law of transformation between quantity and quality in Dialectics of Nature:

The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).

In other words, quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas lead to quality shifts.

The universal mode of motion and development processes follows the law of transformation between quantity and quality, which states:

Qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of the quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and, ideas; and, vice versa: quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 164

Put simply: quantity changes develop into quality changes, and quality changes lead to quantity changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. We say that these changes to quantity and quality occur on the “inevitable basis” of one another because quality changes always, invariably, arise from quantity changes, and, likewise, quantity changes always, invariably, arise from quality changes.

Just as quantity shifts lead to quality shifts, it is also true that quality shifts lead to quantity shifts. For example, if you have 11 donuts, then add 1 donut, you now have 1 dozen donuts. If you add 12 more donuts, you would then have 2 dozen.

Another example of quality shift leading to quantity shift would be a pond filling with rain water. Once enough drops of water collect and the pond is considered full — that is to say, once it is considered to be “a pond” of water — we will no longer think of the pond in terms of “drops.” We would think of the pond as “filled,” “overfilled,” “underfilled,” etc.

Note that both of these examples are related to our human perceptions and understanding of the material world. The material world does not change based on our perceptions, nor how we classify the quantity or quality of a given subject. There are also objective aspects related to quality shifts leading to quantity shifts. For example, if we adjust the quantity of the temperature of a sheet of paper to the point of burning, and the paper burns, then the quantity of paper would be reduced from one sheet to zero sheets. In other words, the quality shift arising from temperature quantity increase (i.e., the paper burning into ash) results in a quantity shift in how many pieces of paper exist (from one sheet to zero sheets). However, even this is ultimately a subjective assessment rooted in human consciousness, since we subjectively think in terms of “sheets of paper,” and the concept of a “sheet of paper” is essentially a classification rooted in human consciousness. It is merely an abstract way of perceiving and considering the quantity and quality of the material subject which we think of as “paper.”

The law of transformation between quantity and quality is an inevitable, objective, and universal relationship that repeats in every motion and development process of all things, phenomena, and ideas in nature, human society, and human thought.

a. Definitions of Quality and Quantity

- Definition of Quality

Quality refers to the organic unity which exists amongst the component parts of a thing, phenomenon, or idea that distinguishes it from other things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 165

Note: we have already given basic definitions of quantity and quality in Annotation 117, p. 119. What follows are more comprehensive philosophical definitions of quality and quantity. Our world exists as one continuity of matter. All things and phenomena in our universe exist essentially as one unified system — namely, the entity which we call “the universe.” This unified nature of existence is extremely difficult for human beings to comprehend. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel pointed out that, in this sense, the unity of “pure being” is indistinguishable from “nothingness.” In Science of Logic, Hegel noted that if we try to comprehend pure material existence, as a whole, without distinguishing any component thing or phenomenon from any other, then all is incomprehensible. Human consciousness needs to delineate and distinguish the component parts of this unified system from each other in order to make sense of it all.

Pure light and pure darkness are two voids which are the same thing. Something can be distinguished only in determinate light or darkness... [F]or this reason, it is only darkened light and illuminated darkness which have within themselves the moment of difference and are, therefore, determinate being.

The human mind has evolved to perceive various things, phenomena, and ideas as differentiated. Quality is the basis on which we perceive subjects as distinct from one another. Every thing, phenomenon, and idea is composed of internal components and relations. The unity of these internal components and relations is what we refer to as quality. For example, a human being’s quality refers to the unity of all the internal components and relationships of which the human being is composed (i.e., the cells, organs, blood, etc., as well as the thoughts, memories, etc., which make the human) in unity. Quality is also a subjective phenomenon: a reflection of the material world in human consciousness [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Therefore we may conceive of various qualities for the same subject. We can think of 12 donuts as “a box of donuts,” “a dozen donuts,” or as 12 individual donuts. We could consider a building as “one apartment building” or “forty apartments,” depending on the viewpoint of analysis.

So, objective and inherent attributes form the quality of things, phenomena, and ideas, but we must not confuse quality and attribute with one another. Every thing, phenomenon, and idea has both fundamental and non-fundamental attributes. Only fundamental attributes constitute the quality of things, phenomena and ideas. When the fundamental attributes change, the quality also changes. The distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes of things, phenomena, and ideas must depend on the purpose of the analysis; the same attribute may be fundamental when analyzing with one purpose but non-fundamental when analyzing with another purpose.

Annotation 166

Whether or not an attribute is considered “fundamental” depends entirely on conscious perspective. For example, one baker may consider chocolate chips to be “fundamental” for baking cookies while another baker may not. This subjective characteristic of what might be considered “fundamental” or not is reflected in how we consider quality. If you are trying to determine how much water you need to fill a swimming pool, you may think of a pool in terms of size (i.e., “this is an Olympic sized pool”), but if you just want to go for a swim, you are likely to just think in terms of the water level (i.e., “the pool is empty, we can’t swim”).

If you are planning the construction of a school and want to know how many classrooms it will need, you might think in terms of “classrooms of students.” But if you are considering funding for a school year, you might consider the total number of students.

The quality of a thing, phenomenon, or idea is determined by the qualities of its component parts.

Annotation 167

Qualities are composed of qualities, combined, in unity. “A swimming pool” may consist of a certain amount of concrete in a specific configuration combined with 5,000 gallons of water. A car may be composed of a body, an engine, four tires, etc. Each individual component exists as a quality — a unity of component attributes — in and of itself.

Quality is also determined by the structures and connections between component parts which manifest in specific relations. Therefore, distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes is also relative.

Annotation 168

It’s not just the component parts of a subject which define its quality, but also the relations of those component parts. For instance, a quantity of wood and nails configured in one set of structural relations may have the quality of a chair, whereas the same component parts arranged with different structures and relations may have the quality of a table. In this sense, quality can be thought of as a synthesis of the Content and Form [see Content and Form, p. 147] of a thing, phenomenon, or idea from a certain perspective.

For example, if we see two shoes, we may think of each shoe as an individual qualitative object (two shoes). On the other hand, we may think of the shoes, together, as a single qualitative “object” in terms of its utility and in terms of synthesis of content and form (“a pair of shoes”), so much so that if one shoe is lost then the remaining shoe is considered useless and discarded as trash.

Because there are countless ways in which quality — the configuration and relations and composition of constituent parts of any given subject — can manifest, we must recognize that quality itself, based on the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes, is a relative and subjective phenomenon of human consciousness.

Any given subject will have multiple qualities, depending on the relations which exist between and within that subject and other subjects.

Annotation 169

Any thing, phenomenon, or idea may be perceived from various different perspectives which would cause us to consider it as having different qualities. A single shoe may be considered as: a shoe, 3 pounds of leather, half of a pair, etc., depending on its internal and external relations and the perspective of the person considering the shoe.

We can’t consider things, phenomena, and ideas apart from quality. Quality exhibits a subject’s relative stability.

Annotation 170

Remember that quality is the way in which the human mind conceives of the world as a collection of distinct things, phenomena, and ideas. These perceptions of quality are purely relative, but they are important, because they are what allow us to develop an understanding of the complicated system of things, phenomena, and ideas which make up our universe. In our perception, quality represents the relative stability of a thing, phenomenon, or idea which makes it a subject that we can consider and analyze in and of itself. Understanding how we distinguish between different subjects is crucial in developing a scientific understanding of the world which is rooted in observation and practice.

- Definition of Quantity

Quantity refers to the amount or extent of specific attributes of a thing, phenomenon, or idea, including but not limited to:

The amount of component parts.
Scale or size.
Speed or rhythm of motion.

A thing, phenomenon, or idea can have many quantities, with each quantity determined by different criteria. [i.e., a car may be measured by many criteria of quantity, such as: length in meters, weight in kilograms, speed in kilometers per hour, etc.]

Quality and quantity embody two different aspects of the same subject. Both quality and quantity exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. However, the distinction between “quality” and “quantity” in the process of perceiving things, phenomena, and ideas has only relative significance: an attribute may be considered “quantity” from one perspective but “quality” from another perspective.

Annotation 171

If you are filling a box with a dozen donuts, then once you add the 12^th donut, one “dozen” may represent the quality which you seek. From the perspective of a customer buying donuts for a party, “dozen” may represent the “quantity.” In other words, you need to make an order (quality) of three dozen donuts (quantity). And the manager of the store, at the end of the day, may tally twenty orders (quantity) as the day’s sales goal (quality). Quantity and quality, therefore, are both considered relatively, based on perspective and the purpose of analysis at hand.

b. Dialectical Relationship Between Quantity and Quality

Every thing, phenomenon, and idea exists as a unity of two aspects: quality and quantity. Quantity and quality do not exist separate from one another. Quantity and quality dialectically and mutually impact one other. Changes in quantity lead to changes in quality. However, not every change in quantity will cause a change in quality.

Annotation 172

In order for quantity change to lead to quality change, a certain amount must be met.

This amount is called the threshold, which is explained further below in this section. A threshold may be exact and known (i.e., it takes exactly 12 donuts to make a dozen donuts) or it may be relative and unknown (i.e., a certain quantity of air inflated into a balloon may cause it to burst, but the exact, specific quantity of air may be relative to other factors such as air temperature and may be unknown to the observer until the balloon actually bursts).

With any given subject, there will be a range of quantity changes which can accumulate without leading to change in quality. This range is called the quantity range.

Quantity range is defined as a relationship between quantity and quality: the range of intervals in which the change in quantity does not substantially change the quality of a given subject. Within the limits of a quantity range, the subject retains the same quality.

Annotation 173

The quantity range is a range of quantities between quality shifts.

Quantity range can be thought of as the range of quantities which exists between thresholds. For instance, between the qualities of “one donut” and “one dozen donuts,” there is a quantity range of 10 donuts (2 donuts through 11 donuts) which can be added before the quality shifts to “one dozen donuts.” You can keep adding additional donuts, up to the quantity of 11 donuts, without reaching the threshold of quality shift to “one dozen donuts.” This is the quantity range between the qualities of donut and one dozen donuts. Again, the quantity range is relative to the perspective and the nature of analysis. One person may only be concerned with “dozens of donuts,” while another may consider the quality of “half dozens,” which would consider a quality shift to “one half-dozen donuts” to occur once the sixth donut (quantity) is added.

Motion and change usually begins with a change in quantity. When changes in quantity reach a certain amount, quality will also change. The amount, or degree, of quantity change at which quality change occurs is called the threshold.

Annotation 174

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-57.png

Note that the threshold is an approximate range. At a certain quantity, a glass may be considered “half full” and at another certain quantity, after passing the threshold, the glass will be considered “full,” though there may be a wide range of quantities at which the glass would be considered to have the quality of being “full,” depending on perspective and purpose of analysis.

When quantity change meets a threshold, within necessary and specific conditions, quality will change. This change in quality, which takes place in the motion and development process of things, phenomena, and ideas, is called a quality shift.

A quality shift occurs when a quantity changes beyond a threshold, leading to a change in quality.

Quality shifts inevitably occur as transformations in the development processes of things, phenomena, and ideas. Qualitative changes can be expressed or manifested through many forms of quality shifts which are determined by the contradictions, characteristics and conditions of a given subject, including such characteristics as: fast or slow, big or small, partial or entire, spontaneous or intentional.

Annotation 175

Quality shifts are inevitable because there is no thing, phenomenon, nor idea which can exist statically, forever, without ever undergoing change. Eventually, any given subject will undergo quality shifts, even if such transformation may take millions of years to occur.

Quality shifts can take various forms, depending on the nature of internal and external relationships, contradictions, and mutual impacts. For instance, a river may dry up or it may flood depending on internal and external relations and characteristics, but it will not simply flow at the same level forever without ever undergoing any quality shifts.

The rate and degree of quality shifts can vary considerably based on such internal and external factors, and may be “spontaneous,” that is to say, without human intervention, or may be the result of the intentional, conscious action of human beings.

Quality shifts mark the end of one motion period and the start of a new motion period.

Annotation 176

The Quantity Range (A) refers to the range of quantities between two qualities in the process of development. The Quality Shift (B) refers to the point at which quantity accumulates to the point of changing the Quality of the developing subject. The Period of Motion (C) includes both the quantity range and the quality shifts themselves.

Period of motion refers to the development which occurs between two quality shifts, including the quality shifts themselves.

Period of motion differs from quantity range because quantity range only includes the range of quantity change which can occur between quality shifts, without including the quality shifts themselves.

For example, a period of motion for a cup filling with water from a half cup would include all of the change which occurs from the cup being half full to the cup becoming entirely full. The quantity range of this same process would only include the quantities of water that stand between half-full and full, where the cup is neither considered to be “half full” or “full” but somewhere in between, i.e., between quality shifts.

Quality shift represents discontinuity within the continuous development process of things and phenomena. In the material world, all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing continuous sequences of quantitative changes leading to quality shifts, creating an endless line of nodes, showing how all things, phenomena, and ideas move and develop to increasingly advanced degrees [see illustration on p. 121 for a visualization of this “endless line of nodes”].

As Friedrich Engels summarised: “merely quantitative changes beyond a certain point pass into qualitative differences.”^[97]

Annotation 177

Processes of change and development in our universe are continuously ongoing. Whenever a quality shift occurs, it represents a brief discontinuity in the sense that we perceive a definite and distinct transformation from one thing, phenomenon, or idea into another; in other words, we can distinguish between the mode of existence of the thing, phenomenon, or idea before and after the quality shift.

Take, for example, the “lifespan” of a house. A human being could easily distinguish between the empty land which exists before the house is built, the construction site which exists as it’s being built, and the house itself once construction is completed. In reality, this process of change is continuous, but to our human perception, each quality shift represents a definite and distinct period of change and discontinuity in terms of our perception of the “thing” which is the house.

This is related to the historic perspective of things, phenomena, and ideas, in which we recognize the continuity of existence between different stages of development of things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 201, p. 195].

When a quality shift occurs, there is an impact on the quantity. Quality impacts quantity in a number of ways, including [but not limited to]:

Changing the structure, scale, or level of the subject.
Changing the rhythm or speed of the motion and development of the subject.

In summary, dialectical unity between quantity and quality exists in every thing, phenomenon, and idea. A gradual quantitative change [through the quantity range] will eventually meet the threshold, which will inevitably lead to a qualitative change through quality shift. Simultaneously, the new quality will mutually impact the quantity, causing new quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas. This process takes place continuously, forming the fundamental and universal mode of movement and development processes of all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 178

Transformation between quantity and quality is the mode of movement and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas, because it reflects the way in which human consciousness perceives movement and development.

So, it is important to understand that there is no material manifestation of quantity and quality. They are simply mental constructs which reflect the ways in which we observe and understand change, motion, and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Transformation processes in the material world are fully fluid and continuous, but our consciousness perceives change in stages of development. Quality simply reflects how we distinguish one subject from another subject, as well as how we recognize the transformation process (and stages of development) of a single subject over time.

There is no specific point, metaphysically distinct point at which a “puppy” becomes an “adult dog,” but human beings will distinguish between a puppy and an adult dog, or recognize at a certain point that a puppy has “become” an adult dog, based on observation of quality.

Quality refers to the differences which are distinguished in human consciousness between one subject and another, or changes in a subject’s form over time.

There is no metaphysically distinct point at which a “puppy” becomes an “adult dog,” but human beings will distinguish between a puppy and an adult dog, or recognize at a certain point that a puppy has “become” an adult dog, based on observation of quality. We create categories which reflect quality to organize and systematically understand the world around us, and to distinguish between different subjects, and to distinguish between different stages of development of a given subject.

We can also distinguish differences of quality between different subjects: we can distinguish a cat from a dog, and we can distinguish one dog from another dog. These distinguishing attributes constitute differences in quality. Note that this conception of differentiation of things, phenomena, and ideas into qualities which constantly change and develop over time is fundamentally distinct from metaphysical categorization, which seeks to divide all things, phenomena, and ideas into static, perpetually unchanging categories (see Annotation 8, p. 8).

Distinction within the human mind is reflected in the concept of quantity and quality. If we do not observe quality differences between subjects, then we would not be able to distinguish between different subjects at all. If we could not recognize the quality shifts of any given subject, then we would not be aware of change or motion at all.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Every thing, phenomenon and idea has characteristics of quality and quantity which mutually impact and transform one another. Therefore, in perception and practice, we need to understand and take into account the law of transformation between quantity and quality in order to have a comprehensive viewpoint of things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 114, p. 116].

Quantitative changes of things, phenomena and ideas inevitably lead to qualitative changes in all things, phenomena, and ideas. Therefore, in our perception and practice, as we plan and enact change in our world and in human society, it is necessary to gradually accumulate changes in quantity in order to make changes in quality. At the same time, we must recognize and make use of the fact that quality shifts also lead to changes in quantity.

Annotation 179

We have to understand and utilize the law of transformation between quantity and quality in our activities. For instance, if a group of activists hopes to address hunger in their community, they have to realize that they can’t immediately enact a quality shift which solves the entire problem of hunger across the city instantaneously. Instead, the activists must recognize that quantity shifts lead to quality shifts through stages of development. In planning and acting, they may need to set certain development targets, predict thresholds at which quality shifts will occur, etc.

For instance, the first goal for these activists may be to provide free lunches to houseless people in a particular park every weekend. If they can accomplish this, then they will not have completely eliminated hunger in the city, but they will have reached a threshold — a quality shift — in that nobody in that specific park will be hungry at lunch time on weekends. From there, they can continue to build quality shifts through accumulation of changes in quantity, one stage of development at a time.

Quality shifts leading to quantity shifts must also be recognized and utilized in our planning and activities. For example, once an effective strategy is developed for eliminating hunger in one park through quantity changes leading to quality shifts, this strategy can then be implemented in other parks. Thus the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in one park” can lead to a quantity shift: “eliminating hunger in two parks, three parks, etc.,” until the quantity shift of “eliminating hunger in parks” leads to the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in all the parks in the city.” This entire process of enacting quantity changes to lead to quality shifts, and accumulating quality shifts to change quantity, are all focused toward the ultimate goal of achieving the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in the entire city.”

In short, it’s vital for us to understand the ways in which quantity and quality mutually impact each other so that we can formulate plans and activities which will lead to motion and development which accomplish our goals, step by step, through one stage of development at a time.

Changes in quantity can only lead to changes in quality provided the quantity accumulates to a certain threshold. Therefore, in practice, we need to overcome impatient, left-sided thought. Left-sided thinking refers to thinking which is overly subjective, idealistic, ignorant of the laws which govern material reality. Left-sided thinking neglects to acknowledge the necessity of quantity accumulation which precedes shifts in quality, focusing instead on attempting to perform continuous shifts in quality.

On the other hand, we must also recognize that once change in quantity has reached a threshold, it is inevitable that a quality shift will take place. Therefore, we need to overcome conservative and right-sided thought in practical work. Right-sided thinking is the expression of conservative, stagnant thought that resists or refuses to recognize quality shifts even as changes in quantity come to meet the threshold of quality shift.

Annotation 180

“Right-sided thinking” and “left-sided thinking” are Vietnamese political concepts which are rooted in the ideas of Lenin’s book: Leftwing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. In Vietnamese political philosophy, “left-sided thinking” is a form of dogmatic idealism which upholds unrealistic conceptions of change and development. Left-sided thinkers don’t have the patience for quantity accumulation which are prerequisite to quality shifts, or expect to skip entire stages of development which are necessary to precipitate change in the real world. An example of left-sided thinking would be believing that a capitalist society can instantly transition into a stateless, classless, communist society, skipping over the transitions in quantity and quality which are required to bring such a massive transformation in human society to fruition.

“Right-sided thinking,” on the other hand, is conservate resistance to change. Right-sided thinkers resist quality changes to human society; they either want to preserve society as it exists right now, or reverse development to some previous (real or imagined) stage of development. Right-sided thinkers also refuse to acknowledge quality shifts once they’ve occurred, idealistically pretending that changes in material conditions have not occurred. For example, right-sided thinkers may refuse to recognize advances which have been made in the liberation of women, or even attempt to reverse those advances in hopes of returning to previous stages of development when women had fewer freedoms. Here is a practical example of these concepts in use, from the Vietnam Encyclopedia, published by the Ministry of Culture and Information of Vietnam:

Opportunism is a system of political views that do not follow a clear direction nor a clear line, do not have a definite stance, and are inclined toward the immediate personal gain of the opportunist. In the proletarian revolutionary movement, opportunism is a politics of compromise, reform, and unprincipled collaboration with the enemy which run contrary to the basic interests of the working class and the working people. In practice, opportunism has two main trends, stemming from right-sided thinking and from left-sided thinking, respectively:
Right-wing opportunism is reformist, favors undue compromise, and aims to peacefully “convert” capitalism into socialism while abandoning the struggle for meaningful victory of the working class. Right-wing opportunism, typified by Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, has its origins in the Workers’ Parties of the Second International era and exists to this day.
Left-wing opportunism is a mixture of extremism and adventurism, dogmatism, arrogance, subjectivity, cults of violence, and disregard for the objective situation.
Both “right” and “left” opportunism push the workers’ movement to futile sacrifice and failure.

Quality shifts are diverse and plentiful, so we need to promote and apply quality shifts creatively and flexibly to suit the specific material conditions we face in a given situation. This is especially true in changing human society, as social development processes depend not only on objective conditions but also on subjective human factors. Therefore, we need to be active and take the initiative to promote the process of converting between quantity and quality in the most effective way.

Annotation 181

Put simply, we have to use our human will and labor to actively promote quantity changes which lead to quality changes, and quality changes which lead to quantity changes, which move us towards our goal of ending all forms of oppression in human society. This will involve not just objective factors^[98] (i.e., material conditions which are necessary to accomplish something), but subjective factors^[99] as well (factors which we, as a subject, are capable of impacting directly).

2. Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites

The law of unification and contradiction between opposites is the Essence of dialectics [see: Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]. According to Lenin: “In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the Essence of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development.”^[100] According to the law of unification and contradiction between opposites, the fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradiction which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 182

In other words, contradiction (defined further in the next section) is the force which serves as the fundamental, originating, and universal force which drives all motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Contradiction is a fundamental driving force because it is the most basic driving force which all other forms of motion and development are based upon.

Contradiction is the originating driving force because all motion and development arises from contradiction.

Contradiction is the universal driving force because all things, phenomena, and ideas — without exception — are driven to motion and development by contradiction.

a. Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction

- Definition of Contradiction

In dialectics, the concept of contradiction is used to refer to the relationship, opposition, and transformation between opposites which takes place within all things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as between all things, phenomena, and ideas. This dialectical concept of contradiction is fundamentally different from the metaphysical concept of contradiction. The metaphysical concept of contradiction is an illogical conception of opposition without unity and without dialectical transformation between opposites.

Annotation 183

A contradiction is, fundamentally, just a type of relationship. In a contradictory relationship, two things, phenomena, and/or ideas mutually impact one another, resulting in the eventual negation of one subject and the synthesis of the negator and the negated into some new form.

The metaphysical concept of contradiction is considered illogical because it establishes no connection between that which is negated and the resulting synthesis.

In the metaphysical conception of contradiction, the negated “disappears” and is not represented in the resulting synthesis.

Metaphysical contradiction presents contradicting subjects as isolated from one another and completely distinct, when in reality the relationship between the negated and the negator essentially defines the contradiction. The negated subject is seen as completely negated; that is to say, it is conceived of as essentially “disappearing” into the synthesized result of the contradiction. In this sense, this metaphysical conception of negation is inaccurate in that it is represented as a complete, terminating process.

In the above example, once the fox eats the rabbit, the rabbit is considered “gone” after a terminal negation process (see Annotation 196, p. 188) ends the contradiction.

The materialist dialectical conception of contradiction recognizes that contradicting subjects are defined by their relationship and that the synthesis of the contradiction carries forward attributes and characteristics from both the negator and the negated.

Materialist dialectical contradiction recognizes that every contradiction is defined by the relationship between the negated and the negator. Materialist dialectics also recognizes that attributes and characteristics of the negated subject are carried forward into the synthesized subject [see Annotation 203, p. 198]. Materialist dialectics also recognizes that contradiction continues indefinitely, as the negated becomes negated again, and so on, continuously, forever [see Negation of Negation, p. 185].

In the example on the previous page, the fox consuming the rabbit constitutes a negation process in which the fox takes on characteristics from the rabbit (i.e., nutritional and energy content, any diseases which may be carried forward to the fox, etc.).

Contradiction arises from opposition which exists within or between things, phenomena, and ideas. The concept of opposing “sides” refers to such aspects, properties, and tendencies of motion which oppose one another, yet are, simultaneously, conditions and premises of the existence of one another. Examples include:

Negative charge and positive charge within atoms.
Anabolism and catabolism within living organisms [anabolism refers to the growth and building up of molecules within an organism, while catabolism refers to the digestion and breaking down of molecules within an organism].
Production and consumption as socioeconomic activities.
Trial and error which leads to cognitive development.

Annotation 184

All of the above forms of contradiction drive motion and development. These processes exist in unity and opposition. For example, in political economics, production is driven by consumption and consumption is facilitated by production. Even though these are fundamentally opposite forces (production adds to the total quantity of products, while consumption reduces the total quantity of products), they can’t exist without one another, and they drive each other forward. This is the dialectical nature of contradiction as the driving force of all motion and development as defined in materialist dialectics.

- The General Properties of Contradictions

Contradiction is objective and universal. According to Friedrich Engels: “If simple mechanical change of position contains a contradiction, this is even more true of the higher forms of motion of matter, and especially of organic life and its development. We saw above that life consists precisely and primarily in this — that a being is at each moment itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly originates and resolves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in. We likewise saw that also, in the sphere of thought, we could not escape contradictions, and that, for example, the contradiction between man’s inherently unlimited capacity for knowledge and its actual presence only in men who are externally limited and possess limited cognition finds its solution in what is — at least practically, for us — an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress.”^[101]

Annotation 185

Here, Engels is explaining how contradiction is the driving force in both material and conscious processes of motion and development. The process of life is a process of contradiction — all organic life forms must consume organic matter so that they can produce growth and offspring, must produce certain molecules and metabolic processes so that they can consume nutrients, and so on. Once these contradictory processes stop, as Engels says, “death steps in” (though even death is a transition forward).

Conscious motion and development are also rooted in contradictory forces. Engels points out the contradiction between humanity’s seemingly infinite capacity for learning with the seemingly infinite amount of knowledge which can be obtained in the world. This great contradiction drives a seemingly endless process of expanding human knowledge, collectively, over countless generations.

Contradictions are not only objective and universal, but also diverse and plentiful. The diverse nature of contradictions is evident in the fact that every subject can include many different contradictions and that contradictions manifest differently depending upon specific conditions. Contradictions can hold different positions and roles in the existence, motion, and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. These positions and roles include [but are not limited to]:

Internal and external contradictions
Fundamental and non-fundamental contradictions
Primary and secondary contradictions

Annotation 186

Internal contradictions are contradictions which exist in the internal relations of a subject, while external contradictions exist between two or more subjects as external relations.

For example: a sports team might have internal contradictions between players, between the players and the coach, between the coach and management, etc. External contradictions might exist between the team and other teams, between the team and league officials, between the team and the landlords who own the team’s practice space, etc.

A fundamental contradiction is a contradiction which defines the Essence of a relationship [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]. Fundamental contradictions exist throughout the entire development process of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction exists in only one aspect or attribute of a thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction can impact a subject, but it will not control or decide the essential development of the subject. Whether or not a contradiction is fundamental is relative to the point of view.

For example: the fundamental contradiction of one nation engaged in war against one another might be the war itself. There will exist many other contradictions; one nation at war might have a trade dispute with a third nation which is not participating in the war. From the “war perspective,” this contradiction is non-fundamental, as it does not define the essential characteristic of the nation at war (though from the perspective of a diplomat charged with ending the trade dispute, the war may be seen as a non-fundamental contradiction while the dispute would be seen as fundamental).

In the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, there are many development stages. In each stage of development, there will be one contradiction which drives the development process. This is what we call the primary contradiction. Secondary contradictions include all the other contradictions which exist during that stage of development. Determining whether a contradiction is primary or secondary is relative: it depends heavily upon the material conditions and the situation.

For example: when restoring an old car that doesn’t run any more, a mechanic may consider the primary contradiction to be the non-functioning engine. There may be many secondary contradictions which contribute to the problems with the car’s engine problems. The battery may be dead, the spark plugs may need to be bad, the tires may need replacement, the timing belt may be loose, etc. Those are all secondary contradictions which do not define the stage of development which is “repairing the engine.” Some of these secondary contradictions may need to be resolved (such as replacing the spark plugs) before the primary contradiction can be fully addressed; others, such as a cracked windshield, may not need to be addressed before the primary contradiction can be dealt with.

On the other hand, a secondary contradiction may become the primary contradiction: if a mechanic resolves every problem with the engine except for one bad spark plug, then the bad spark plug will shift from being a secondary contradiction to being the primary contradiction: the bad spark plug is now the primary reason the car won’t start and this stage of development can’t be completed.

Within all the various fields of inquiry, there exist contradictions which have a diverse range of different properties and characteristics.

Annotation 187

Different fields of study will focus on different forms of contradictions, and any given thing, phenomenon, or idea may contain countless contradictions which can be analyzed and considered for different purposes. For example, consider a large city, which might contain far too many contradictions to count. Civil engineers may focus primarily on contradictions in traffic patterns, the structural integrity of bridges and roads, ensuring that buildings are safe and healthy for inhabitants, etc. Utilities departments will focus on contradictions related to sewage, electrical, and sanitation systems. The education system will focus on contradictions which prevent students from achieving success in schools.

All of these various methods of analysis may focus on specific forms of contradictions, though there will also be overlap. For instance, designing a school bus system will require the education system and civil engineers to discover and grapple with contradictions which might be hindrances for transporting students safely to school.

b. Motion Process of Contradictions

In every contradiction, the opposing sides are united with each other and opposed to each other at the same time. The concept of “unity between opposites” refers to the fact that a contradiction is a binding, inseparable, and mutually impacting relationship which exists between opposites.

Annotation 188

Contradictions are binding and inseparable because they hold a relationship together. If two opposing things, phenomena, or ideas simply separate, then contradiction, by definition, no longer exists. For example, an economy is bound together by the contradiction of production and consumption; if production exists without consumption (or vice-versa), it can’t be considered to be an economy.

Contradictions are said to be mutually impacting because any time a contradiction exists between two opposing sides, both sides are mutually impacted for as long as the contradiction exists and develops. Of course, it is possible for two opposing sides to separate from one another; for example, a factory which produced buggy whips may have failed to find consumers after the invention of the car. Thus, there would exist a situation in which production exists without consumption. In this situation, the termination of the contradiction between production and consumption leads to a new contradiction: the factory will now be in the midst of a crisis which will require it to either provide a different product or go out of business.

Thus we see that production and consumption can’t be separated from one another without leading to a change in the essential nature of the relationship and the opposing subjects, and we see that the opposing sides mutually impact one another (a change in consumption will affect production, and vice-versa).

In any given contradictory relationship, each oppositional side is the premise for the other’s existence. Unity among opposites also defines the identity of each opposing side. Lenin wrote: “The identity of opposites (it would be more correct, perhaps, to say their ‘unity,’—although the difference between the terms identity and unity is not particularly important here. In a certain sense, both are correct) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society).”^[102]

Annotation 189

Here, Lenin is explaining that identity and unity are (more or less) the same concept when it comes to understanding the nature of contradiction between opposites. In material processes of nature, social processes, and processes of consciousness, we perceive and define oppositional forces by recognizing mutually exclusive and contradictory tendencies within and between things, phenomena, and ideas. In other words, whenever we think of an oppositional relationship, we define it in terms of the opposition.

War, disease, and economy are all examples of unity in contradiction.

When we think of a war, we think of the contradictions which exist between the opposing nations. When we think of a disease, we define it by the oppositional forces between the ailment and the human body. When we think of an economy, we think of the oppositional forces of production and consumption within the economy.

In other words, the identity of contradictory relationships is defined by the unity of the opposing sides with one another.

The concept struggle of opposites refers to the tendency of opposites to eliminate and negate each other. There exist many diverse forms of struggle between opposites. Struggle can manifest in various forms based on:

The nature of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea.
Relationships within a thing, phenomenon, or idea (or between things, phenomena, and ideas).
Specific material conditions [see Annotation 10, p. 10].

The process of unity and struggle of opposites inevitably leads to a transformation between them. The transformation between opposites takes place with rich diversity, and such transformations can vary depending on the properties of the opposite sides as well as specific material conditions.

Annotation 190

Opposing sides, by definition, oppose one another. If forces or characteristics which exist within or between things, phenomena, or ideas do not oppose one another, then they are not, by definition, opposites. Thus, it can be understood that opposing sides have a tendency to struggle against one another. It is this very struggle which defines two sides as opposites, and as contradictory.

Lenin explained that some contradicting opposite sides can exist in what he described as equilibrium, but that this is only ever a temporary state of affairs, as exemplified in his article An Equilibrium of Forces.

[See Annotation 64, p. 62 for relevant text and more info on equilibrium.]

Clearly, Lenin sees that this equilibrium of contradictory forces is not permanently sustainable. Indeed, no equilibrium of contradictory forces can be permanent. Eventually, one opposing side will overtake the other, and eventually, any given contradiction will result in one opposing side overcoming the other.

According to the law of unification and contradiction between opposites, the struggle between two opposing sides is absolute, while the unity between them is relative, conditional, and temporary; in unity there is a struggle: a struggle in unity. According to Lenin: “The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”^[103]

Annotation 191

“Absolute” and “Relative” are philosophical classifications which refer to interdependence. That which is absolute exists independently and with permanence. That which is relative is temporary, and dependent on other conditions or circumstances in order to exist.

So Lenin’s point is that unity exists temporarily in any given pair of opposing sides, as the unity only exists as long as the opposing sides are opposing one another. As soon as one side eliminates or negates the other, the unity subsides. However, opposition is considered absolute, because it is opposition which drives motion and change in all things, phenomena, and ideas through contradictory processes of opposing sides.

In the same text quoted in the passage above, On the Questions of Dialectics, Lenin notes:

The distinction between subjectivism (skepticism, sophistry, etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that in (objective) dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is itself relative. For objective dialectics there is an absolute within the relative. For subjectivism and sophistry the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute...
Such must also be the method of exposition (i.e., study) of dialectics in general... To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., with any proposition: the leaves of a tree are green; John is a man: Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics (as Hegel’s genius recognised): the individual is the universal.
The individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes) etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs, the concepts of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a dog, this is a leaf of a tree, etc., we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other.

In other words, we must understand that in materialist dialectics, the absolute and the relative exist within one another; in other words, the absolute and the relative have a dialectical relationship with one another in all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Relative unity refers to the nature of unity between contradictory subjects. Contradictory subjects are unified in the sense that any given contradiction is essentially defined by the contradiction between two subjects. Thus, the two subjects are unified in contradiction. However, this unity is relative in the sense that this unification is temporary (the unity will end upon negation and synthesis) and relative (i.e., defined by the relationship between the two contradicting subjects).

Absolute struggle refers to the fact that contradiction, negation, and synthesis will go on forever; in this sense, contradictory processes are absolute because such struggle exists permanently; struggle has no set beginning or end point, and exists independently of any specific thing, phenomenon, or idea.

Relative Unity refers to the temporary and relative nature of specific relationships which define and unify specific contradictions; Absolute Struggle refers to the permanent, constant nature of development through contradiction.

The relationship between relative unity and absolute struggle defines and drives change, motion, and development through contradiction.

This applies to contradictions. The relative unity and the absolute struggle between opposing sides have a dialectical relationship with one another. The permanent absoluteness of struggle — the fact that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing processes of change through contradictory forces — can only manifest in the relative unity of opposing sides, which can only exist through the temporary existence of conditional relations between opposing sides.

The interaction that leads to the transformation between opposites is a process. At the beginning, contradictions manifest as differences and then develop into two opposing sides. When the two contradictions are fiercely matched and when the conditions are ripe, they will transform each other, and finally, the conflict will be resolved. As old contradictions disappear, new contradictions are formed and the process of mutual impact and transformation between opposites continues, which drives the motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas. The relationship, impact and transformation between opposites are the source and driving force of all movement and development in the world. Lenin affirmed: “Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.”^[104]

Annotation 192

Any given process of development — that is to say, of transformation or motion — can be seen as a struggle between opposites. Various forms of struggle can exist simultaneously for any given subject, and the way we interpret struggle can depend on our point of view.

For an engineer, a car moving along a road might be seen as a struggle between the power generated by the engine against the mass of the car itself and the friction of the tires on the ground. The driver of the car might see the process in terms of the struggle between the driver and the environment as they navigate across town avoiding accidents and following traffic laws.

An organism’s life can be seen as a struggle between the organism’s life processes and its environment, or it might be seen as a struggle of contradictory forces within the organism itself (i.e., forces of consumption of nutrition vs. forces of expending energy to survive, forces of disease vs. forces of the organism’s immune system, etc.).

Materialist dialectics requires us to identify, examine, and understand the opposing forces which drive all development in our universe. Only through understanding such contradictions can we intercede and affect changes in the world which suit our purposes.

For example, in order to fight against capitalism and other forms of oppression, we must first understand the contradictory forces which exist within and between those oppressive social structures. Only then can we determine how we might best apply our will, through labor processes, to dismantle such oppressive structures. We might do this by exacerbating existing contradictions within oppressive structures, by introducing new contradictions, by negating contradictions which inhibit our own progress, etc.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Given that contradictions are objective and universal, and that they are the source and driving force of movement and development, it is therefore necessary to detect, recognize, and understand contradictions, to fully analyze opposing sides, and to grasp the nature, origin and tendencies of motion and development in our awareness and practice.

Lenin said: “The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts… is the essence… of dialectics.”^[105]

Annotation 193

In other words, materialist dialectics is simply a system of understanding the world around us by viewing all things, phenomena, and ideas as collections of relationships and contradictions which exist within and between all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Since contradictions exist with such rich diversity, it is necessary to have a historical point of view [see Annotation 114, p. 116] — that is, to know how to analyze each specific type of contradiction and have appropriate methods for resolving them. In our perception and practice, it is necessary to properly distinguish the roles and positions of different types of contradictions in each situation and condition; we must also distinguish between different characteristics which contradictions might have in order to find the best method of resolving them.

Annotation 194

The historical viewpoint is vital because in order to fully understand any given contradiction, we must understand the process of development which led to its formation.

For example, before a car engine can be repaired, we must first find out what caused the engine to stop working to begin with. If the car is out of fuel, we must determine what caused it to run out of fuel. Did the driver simply drive until the fuel tank was empty, or is there a hole or leak in a fuel line, in the tank, etc.?

It is vital to know the history of development of a given pair of opposing sides, as well as the characteristics and other properties of both opposing sides, to fully understand the contradiction. Since all conscious activity (like all processes of motion and change) ultimately derives from the driving force of contradiction, it is vital for us to develop a historical and comprehensive perspective of any contradictions we hope to affect through our conscious activities.

3. Law of Negation of Negation

The law of negation of negation describes the fundamental and universal tendency of movement and development to occur through dialectical negation, forming a cyclical form of development through what is termed “negation of negation.”

a. Definition of Negation and Dialectical Negation

The world continuously and endlessly changes and develops. Things, phenomena, and ideas that arise, exist, develop and perish, are replaced by other things, phenomena, and ideas; one form of existence is replaced with another form of existence, again and again, continuously, through this development process. This procedure is called negation.

All processes of movement and development take place through negation. From certain perspectives, negations can be seen as end points to the development (and thus, existence) of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea [which we can think of as “terminal negations;” see Annotation below]. But from other perspectives, negations can also create the conditions and premises for new developments. Such negations, which create such conditions and premises for the development of things and phenomena, are called dialectical negation.

Annotation 195

Negation refers to any act of motion or transformation which arises from contradiction. Specifically, negation is what occurs when one opposing side completely overcomes the other. Nothing in our universe can transform or move all by itself, without any contradiction. Thus, negation drives all development and motion of all things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 119, p. 123]. There are various forms of negation, and the same negation process may be seen to take different forms depending on viewpoint of analysis [see Annotation 11, p. 12, and Annotation 114, p. 116], as depicted in the diagram below.

An overview of various forms of negation as they relate to dialectical development.

Dialectical negation occurs when the end of development leads directly to some new development process. Dialectical negation occurs through quality shifts [see Annotation 117, p. 119], which, themselves, occur through negation of opposite sides.

Replacement negation refers to the replacement of one thing, phenomenon, or idea with another through dialectical negation.

Translation Note: The terms “terminal negation” and “replacement negation” do not appear in the original Vietnamese text. We chose to assign terms to these concepts for clarity.

Replacement negation occurs when one thing, phenomenon, or idea takes the place of another. Replacement negation is always a dialectical process, where one subject is replaced gradually by another. Replacement may be relatively fast or slow, but it is never instantaneous — nothing can pop in and out of existence instantaneously. For example: swords were gradually replaced by firearms as the primary weapons of war over the course of many centuries. Today, swords have been completely replaced by firearms on the battlefield. This was a process of replacement negation — weapons are still used in war, but the type of weapon used has been completely replaced. Development continues, even though development of swords as battle weapons has essentially ended.

Terminal negation refers to the end of a specific cycle of development.

Terminal negation is what happens when development completely ends for a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. For example, from one viewpoint, the development of swords as weapons of war can be seen as having ended — having been terminally negated — due to the innovation of firearms. In essence, swords are no longer developed, nor implemented, in modern warfare.

Replacement negation and terminal negation must be considered in relative terms. From one viewpoint, we can see the rise of firearms as the underlying reason for the terminal negation of military use of swords. Today, no army on Earth uses swords as primary battlefield weapons and militaries no longer develop sword technology for battlefield use. However, from another viewpoint, the development of battlefield weapons has continued on long after the end of the primacy of swords, and it could be said that firearms have replaced swords as the primary battlefield weapon.

Consider the death of a human being. From one perspective, death is a terminal negation — the person’s consciousness has ended, and no further development of consciousness will occur for that individual. From other perspectives, development continues. The individual may have had children who will continue their familial lineage, they may have contributed ideas which will continue to impact other people for centuries to come, and so on. In that sense, replacement negation may be viewed as dialectical negation. For example, someone studying modes of transportation in the history of the USA may see the process of steam locomotives replacing horses, and then cars replacing steam locomotives, as processes of dialectical negation from the overarching perspective of the transportation system.

Materialist dialectics is concerned with all forms of negation, but focuses primarily on dialectical negation. Therefore, materialist dialectics is not just a theory of transformation in general, but fundamentally a theory of development

Annotation 196

All transformation is driven by negation. Development is a process, specifically, of dialectical negation, which is a specific form of transformation in which an end of development creates the conditions for new development, either through internal quality shifts or through replacement by some external subject.

Materialist dialectics is primarily concerned with dialectical negation (which drives development) because it is development which brings forth continuous change in our world. Terminal negations and other forms of transformation which do not drive further development are of limited utility, and can only represent certain limited viewpoints [i.e., the viewpoint of that which is terminated].

From a broader perspective, nearly all “terminations” are replaced in some way or another by some other form of development. For instance, even when a person dies, although the consciousness of that person may terminate, there will be continuous impacts which will be carried forward from the deceased person’s lifetime of consciousness, as well as from the developments which arise from the death itself.

This dialectical definition of negation differs greatly from metaphysical conceptions of development [see Annotation 201, p. 195], which are essentially viewed as terminal. From the metaphysical perspective, all things, phenomena, and ideas are viewed as separate from one another; therefore negations are viewed as terminal processes which bring development processes to their ends.

The metaphysical perspective of terminal negation views negation as an essentially terminal process representing the end point of the existence of a static and isolated thing, phenomenon, or idea.

In the above example, the metaphysical framework would present smashing a vase with a hammer as a terminal negation from the perspective of the observer. Once the vase is smashed, the vase is considered to no longer exist, and the broken shards are not considered to be “a vase” any more. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, view “the shards” as merely a developed form of the vase; a transition to a new stage of development; the negation was only terminal from the perspective of the vase itself.

Excerpt From Vietnam’s High School Freshman Civic Education textbook:

Metaphysical and dialectical negation share one commonality: they both see development as the replacement of an old subject with a new subject. However, metaphysical negation happens when outside forces impact on a subject, deleting completely the existence of the old subject. According to this metaphysical perspective, the old subject and the new subject which replaces it do not have any connection.

Dialectical negation fundamentally differs from metaphysical negation because it views development as a process of internal development. Dialectical negation does not view complete erasure or deletion of any former subject; instead, dialectical development sees the older subject, which is replaced (negated), as the premise or basis of existence for the new subject.

Comparison Examples:

Metaphysical Negation	Dialectical Negation
The earthquake destroyed the house.	The house was impacted by the external force of an earthquake, which caused it to collapse, due to internal characteristics of the house itself (which could not withstand the forces of the earthquake). The debris from the collapsed house will be cleared away, and will continue to develop. The space where the house stood will also continue to develop in some way, with the earthquake and the resulting collapse serving as the basis for this further development.
Water eroded the mountain.	The external force of water caused erosion by transferring material away from the mountain, due to the internal characteristics of the mountain’s composite material. The water, the material which was washed away, and the mountain will all continue to develop. The erosion process will be the basis for this further development.
The car has a new tire because it ran over a nail.	The external force of the nail caused the tire to permanently deflate, due to the internal characteristics of the tire, which could not withstand running over a nail. This served as the basis for further development: the old tire was removed and will be disposed of, which will serve as the basis for further development (i.e., the tire may be recycled or sent to a landfill); the removal of the tire serves as the basis for the further development of a new tire being installed.
When you add water, sunlight, and nutrition to a seed, it will grow into a plant.	The seed went through a process of negation as a sprout grew, through various stages of development, into a plant, facilitated by outside forces (such as water, nutrition, sunlight, etc. — the seed would not grow in isolation) as well as the internal characteristics of the seed itself; the seed served as the basis of the sprout’s development. The sprout then served as the basis for the growth of a seedling, and the seedling served as the basis for the growth of a fully grown plant. All of this development was driven by negation processes as quantity shifts gradually led to quality shifts through those various stages of development.

As you can see from the examples above, the metaphysical perspective focuses on external forces affecting a given subject and views every development process as terminal, with a beginning, middle, and end. The metaphysical perspective thus views negation as a termination of the subject (and, by extension, of development).

Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, views development as a continuous and never-ending process of mutual impact, negation, and further negation of each negation. A comprehensive and historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] must thus be sought to fully comprehend development and negation processeses.

Dialectical negation has two basic characteristics: objectivity and inheritance.

Dialectical negation is objective because negation arises from contradictions which exist between two opposite sides. These opposing sides may exist within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, but the opposing sides are still, by definition, externally opposed to one another from the perspective of either side.

Annotation 197

Though any given negation may be viewed as terminal from a certain perspective, materialist dialectics is most concerned with processes of development wherein the end of one stage of development creates the conditions for further development [see Annotation 117, p. 119].

Therefore, every development is simultaneously an internal and an external process, depending on perspective. Development processes may, from certain perspectives, be seen to take place within a subject or between two subjects, but they are always external (and, therefore, objective — see Annotation 108, p. 112) from the perspective of either opposing side while simultaneously internal to the relationship.

For example: The relationship between a husband and wife may be seen as an internal process of development of “the marriage” from the perspective of a marriage counselor. However, from their own perspectives, each “opposing side” (i.e., the husband and the wife) see one another as external to each other.

Therefore, the development of a marriage may be seen as an internal process, but the mutual impacts and negations which occur within the relationship are objective and external forces from the perspective of either opposing side.

This is important because it means that all development and all negation are essentially objective processes; therefore no entity has complete, omniscient control over any development process. We must, therefore, understand the nature of development and negation in order to be able to properly plan and affect change in our world.

Dialectical negation is, therefore, the result of the process of resolving inevitable contradictions within a subject [i.e., a relationship] itself. Dialectical negation allows for the old to be replaced by the new, thereby creating trends of development. Therefore, dialectical negation is also self-negation.

Annotation 198

To reiterate: from the perspective of either opposing side, development is an external, objective process. From the perspective of the contradictory relationship, processes of development are internal processes of self-negation. Thus, dialectical negation is both an objective process which no entity can completely control, while, simultaneously, an internal process of self-negation and self-development.

If two nations go to war, either nation may view the war as an objective, external development process, but from a wider perspective, the war is an internal development process of the diplomatic relationship between the two warring nations. This is drastically different from the metaphysical perspective, which views any negation process as a purely external process of development wherein one subject is permanently deleted from existence, then replaced by another subject [see Annotation 196, p. 188]. From the metaphysical perspective, a war is simply a conflict between two distinct and separate nations, and the conclusion of the war is a terminal negation which ends development of the war. From the materialist dialectical perspective, on the other hand, the end of the war would be seen as the basis of future development of the relationship between the two formerly warring nations.

Dialectical negation also has an inheritance characteristic: when one opposing side negates another, the remaining side inherits factors from the negated side which are suitable with present conditions.

Annotation 199

Every negation process arises from contradictions between two opposing sides. Within any such negation process, we can think of one side as the “negator” and the other side as the “negated.” Negation, like all relational processes, leads to mutual impact between both sides [see Annotation 136, p. 138]. Therefore, the negated will impact the negator; in other words, the negated side will be somehow reflected in the negator [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. This means that the negator will inherit and carry forward certain attributes, factors, and characteristics which it receives from the negated side.

Again, consider a war between two nations. Even if one nation completely conquers and subjugates the other in total victory, the victorious nation will still inherit certain factors from the defeated nation. Which factors are inherited will depend on the conditions. The victorious nation may pick up some cultural aspects from the defeated nation, such as cuisine, fashion, etc., they may incorporate tactics and strategies which they observed the defeated enemy using on the battlefield, and so on. The point is that the victorious nation will be impacted in some way by the defeated nation.

The factors which are adopted will be suitable with the present conditions. Take, for example, a car breaking down due to engine failure. This can be seen as an opposing relationship between the car itself and the car’s owner. If the present conditions are suitable [i.e., the owner has the funds and resources available, and the desire to repair the car], then the car may be repaired and continue operating for years to come. If, on the other hand, conditions aren’t suitable [i.e., the owner does not have the funds or resources or the owner no longer wants the car], then the car may be sent to the scrapyard.

As another example, if a fox eats a rabbit, it will inherit certain characteristics from the rabbit. It will inherit nutrition from the rabbit’s body. It may also inherit other characteristics, such as a disease the rabbit was carrying, if the conditions of the fox’s biological composition are suitable [i.e., if the disease can be transferred from the rabbit to the fox].

Dialectical negation is not a complete negation [i.e., deletion] of the old. Rather, dialectical negation is a continuity of growth in which the old develops into the new. In processes of dialectical negation, “the new” forms and develops on its own [see Annotation 62, p. 59], through the process of filtering out unsuitable factors, while retaining suitable content. Vladimir Lenin described dialectical negation as:

“Not empty negation, not futile negation, not skeptical negation, vacillation and doubt is characteristic and essential in dialectics — which undoubtedly contains the element of negation and indeed as its most important element — no, but negation as a moment of connection, as a moment of development, retaining the positive, i.e., without any vacillations, without any eclecticism.”^[106]

Annotation 200

The passage from Lenin above comes from Clemence Dutt’s popular English translation of one of Lenin’s notebooks. Below is our translation from the Vietnamese version of this text from the original text of this book, which we hope might be somewhat easier to understand:

Dialectical negation is not empty negation, it’s not negation without any thoughts, it’s not skeptical negation, it’s not hesitation. Skepticism is not a feature of the essence of the dialectic — of course, dialectics include the negative, it even plays as one of the important factors of a given subject — no, it is negation as the moment of development. Dialectical negation retains the positive, meaning there is no hesitation, there is no eclecticism.

In order to understand what Lenin is saying here, we should first understand what Lenin is responding to. The above notes are referring to the chapter titled “The Absolute Ideal” within Hegel’s Science of Logic [see note at the end of this Annotation]. In this chapter, Hegel recounts various critiques of dialectics and counters them.

Skepticism, here, refers to the tendency to address all human knowledge with doubt.

Philosophical skepticism never moves past two questions: 1. “Is this knowledge true?” 2. “Will human beings ever obtain true knowledge?” Skeptics of this nature engage in a sort of metaphysical inquisition in which every thesis that is ever encountered is immediately and utterly refuted and thus “negated” in the metaphysical sense of termination [see Annotation 196, p. 188].

Eclecticism refers to philosophical and ideological conceptions which draw from a variety of theories, styles, and ideas in an unsystematic manner. Lenin contends that dialectical negation is non-eclecticist because it rises above mere rhetorical combativeness and “total negation.” [This concept is explained more below within this annotation.]

With all this in mind, we see that Lenin is refuting the notion that dialectics are and can only be negative in nature. The metaphysical-skeptic conception of dialectics holds that negation takes the form of rhetorical arguing and refutation, in which one idea is presented, and a second idea is offered to counter the first idea, which completely and totally negates the first idea. According to this argument, dialectics is, therefore, a totally negative process.

A common misperception of dialectical development is that it is “fully negative,” insomuch as the initial thesis (initial subject) is completely negated by the antithesis (impacting subject). In fact, characteristics from both the thesis and antithesis are carried forward into the synthesis.

In the chapter from Science of Logic which Lenin is responding to in the referenced text, Hegel is arguing that the conception of dialectics as only negative — i.e., a system of thinking in which counter-arguments are presented to completely negate initial arguments — is inaccurate. Hegel explains that when one opposing side negates another, it thereafter “contains in general the determination of the first [opposing side] within itself.” In other words, after one opposing side negates another, it retains features and aspects from the opposing side which was negated. Lenin found this particular point to be so important that he wrote “this is very important for understanding dialectics” in the margin of his notebook.

The reason both Hegel and Lenin found this idea, that the “negator” contains elements of the “negated” after negation [see Annotation 231, p. 227], is that this counters the accusation that dialectics are “only negative.” This is why Lenin’s notes highlight the importance of the negator “retaining the positive” after negation. Lenin is pointing out the importance of the retention of features of the negated in the negator because it is this retention which prevents dialectical development from becoming a purely negative process.

In materialist dialectics, it is understood that negation is a process of retention: characteristics from both the thesis (initial subject) and antithesis (impacting subject) are retained in the resulting synthesis

We must also understand what Lenin means when he refers to “skepticism” in his notes. Lenin, here, is referring to the philosophical view that we can never know whether or not our beliefs are true. This belief was popularly known as Machism, or Empirio-Criticism, in Lenin’s time (see Annotation 32, p. 27).

A common critique of dialectics is that it is an inherently skeptical system of thought, since dialectics is seen as a process of presenting counter-arguments to suppositional arguments. Lenin, in his notes, presents the idea that such skepticism is “not a feature of dialectics” precisely because nothing is ever completely, totally, and entirely negated. In other words, the accusation that dialectical analysis is essentially skeptical is rooted in the mistaken notion that one opposing side (i.e., a counter-argument) completely negates the original supposition. In fact, according to materialist dialectics, the negator always retains features and aspects from the negated side, which counters this critique. Thus, dialectical development, which occurs through dialectical negation, is a process of forward motion — not a process of “vacillating” back and forth from one position to another — and there is no skeptical “hesitation” preventing forward progress.

This same idea (that the negator retains features from the negated) also counters another common critique of materialist dialectics: that dialectical analysis is simply a system of rhetorical sophistry [see Annotation 36, p. 33] and eclecticism.

Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that is completely unsystematic, drawing from a variety of theories, styles, and ideas without any cohesive and all-encompassing philosophical framework.

Some critics claim that dialectics must be eclecticist and sophistic in nature. These critics claim that dialectics is simply rhetorical disputation in which any given supposition is counter-argued, and that this counter-argument is negation. But materialist dialectics defines negation as one contradicting side overtaking the other while retaining traces and characteristics from the negated side — it is in no way simply an act of rhetorical dispute or refutation.

In summary, materialist dialectics upholds that nothing is ever completely and utterly deleted or erased from existence through negation. Instead, any time one opposing side negates another, aspects of the negated side are inherited by the negating side.

Note: For reference, here is Hegel’s passage which Lenin is referring to from Science and Logic in the cited notes above:

...a universal first, considered in and for itself, shows itself to be the other of itself. Taken quite generally, this determination can be taken to mean that what is at first immediate now appears as mediated, related to an other, or that the universal appears as a particular. Hence the second term that has thereby come into being is the negative of the first, and if we anticipate the subsequent progress, the first negative. The immediate, from this negative side, has been extinguished in the other, but the other is essentially not the empty negative, the nothing, that is taken to be the usual result of dialectic; rather is it the other of the first, the negative of the immediate; it is therefore determined as the mediated — contains in general the determination of the first within itself. Consequently the first is essentially preserved and retained even in the other. To hold fast the positive in its negative, and the content of the presupposition in the result, is the most important part of rational cognition; also only the simplest reflection is needed to furnish conviction of the absolute truth and necessity of this requirement, while with regard to the examples of proofs, the whole of Logic consists of these.

Therefore, dialectical negation is the inevitable tendency of progression of the inner relationship between the old and the new. It is the self-driving assertive force of all motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas.

b. Negation of Negation

In the perpetual movement of the material world, dialectical negation is an inexhaustible process. It creates a development tendency of things from lower level to higher level, taking place in a cyclical manner in the form of a “spiral.”

Annotation 201

The concept of the “spiral” form of development in dialectical materialist philosophy stands in contrast to the metaphysical conception of “linear” development.

Metaphysical Conception of Linear Development

The metaphysical viewpoint holds that development is more or less a straight line: as one subject is negated, it is replaced by another. This subject will then be negated by another, and so on, in what is essentially conceived of as a straight line of development [see Annotation 196, p. 188].

The metaphysical “line development” model sees an initial form as being “replaced” or entirely negated into a completely distinct entity.

In the above example, metaphysical line development simply sees raw aluminum as being negated and “replaced” in the real world. Once the aluminum can is created, the “raw aluminum” as a metaphysical entity is considered no longer to exist. Likewise, when the soda can is transformed into recycled aluminum, the can is considered “replaced,” and is no longer considered to have a metaphysical existence.

This conception of metaphysical line development directly contradicts the materialist dialectical concept of historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116].

Dialectical Materialist Conception of Development

The dialectical materialist conception of cyclical development stems from essential attributes of dialectical negation processes:

1. In every dialectical negation, the negating side inherits features and characteristics from the negated side.

2. When the negating side is, itself, negated (i.e., negation of the negation), the new negating side will retain features and aspects of the old negator.

3. This development process will continue indefinitely, so that negation is not simply a straight line of complete negation, but rather takes the shape of a “spiral” of negations of negations which always inherit features from previous forms.

Note that this conception of development as a spiral is simply an abstraction to help understand the essential characteristics of dialectical development and to distinguish this form of development from metaphysical conceptions of “linear development.”

In the example below, we see a depiction of the spiral development of aluminum through various stages of development. After raw aluminum is mined from the Earth, it begins a repeating spiral development process of being refined into usable goods, then recycled into raw material.

The “Spiral Development” model of materialist dialectics sees every stage of development as a higher form of the previous stage which carries forward characteristics from previous stages.

The illustrated example on the previous page plots the spiral development of aluminum as it cycles between stages defined as raw materials and refined products. Another perspective might depict development differently. For example, if we are examining development in terms of external relations between aluminum other elements, the development pattern would look different. In reality, all subjects have countless internal and external relations and development processes which can be examined.

The “raw aluminum” stage of development pictured in the illustration is not truly the beginning of this development process; there were millions of years of development which occurred before it was first discovered by humans. Similarly, the landfill will not be the end of this development process; there will be continued development forever for as long as motion in the universe continues.

This is a simplified and abstract model of development of aluminum. A more accurate representation might show any number of interim steps between each step depicted in the graphic above. For example: it must also be recognized that in reality the molecules of aluminum which the development process began with will be scattered and mixed with other subjects throughout the development process, and various other complexities exist in terms of the mutual impacts of internal and external relationships.

Determining the amount of detail to include or exclude in materialist dialectical analysis is crucial: too much detail and analysis might become unwieldy; too little detail and analysis might become too abstract and idealized to be useful in the real world. So, the idea of development as a spiral should not be taken literally; it is simply a way of conceptualizing the differences between dialectical negation and development as opposed to “straight-line” development upheld by metaphysical conceptions of negation and development, always carrying forward traces of previous stages of development.

In the chain of negations that make up the development processes of things, phenomena, and ideas, each dialectical negation creates the conditions and premises for subsequent developments. Through many iterations of negation, i.e., “negations of negations,” dialectical negation will inevitably lead to a forward tendency of motion.

Annotation 202

The forward tendency of motion describes the tendency for things, phenomena, and ideas to move from less advanced to more advanced forms through processes of motion and development.

As a reminder, “lower level” and “higher level,” i.e., “less advanced” and “more advanced,” should not be taken to have any connotations of “good” and “bad,” nor of “desirable” and “undesirable,” nor even of “less complex” and “more complex.”

Development from “lower levels” to “higher levels” is simply a shorthand for understanding the fact that development processes always move “forward,” that is to say, development can never happen in reverse, just as time itself can never be reversed. For example, society in Italy will never go back to the civilization of the Roman empire. It is conceivable that Italian society could develop to be more similar to Ancient Rome, but it would be impossible for Roman society to ever take on the exact characteristics of the Roman Empire ever again.

Cyclicality of development processes usually takes place in the form of a spiral, which is another result of “negation of negation.” Negations of negations lead to a development cycle in which things, phenomena, and ideas often undergo two fundamental negations carried through three basic forms. Through this negation pattern, basic features of the initial form are ultimately inherited by the “third form,” but at a higher level of development.

Annotation 203

Dialectical development tends to take place through a cyclical pattern in which development is carried through a triad of forms which develop through a pair of dialectical negation processes:

The cyclical pattern of development is an abstract pattern of dialectical change over time.

The graphic above illustrates this cyclical pattern, in which:

1. The initial form (the Assertion) begins the pattern. Contradiction within the initial subject or between it and another subject leads to the first negation.

2. The first negation leads to a second form (the Negation). This second form inherits some features or characteristics from the initial form.

3. The second form then encounters opposition, which leads to a second negation.

4. The second negation leads to a third form (Unity), which retains the features or characteristics of the second form, but now more closely resembles the first, initial form, only at a higher level of development.

Imagine a new car (initial form) crashes into another car (contradicting subject). The new car is dialectically developed (negated) into a second form: a wrecked car. This second form is now contradicted by a new subject — a recycling center — and negated into a third form: new steel. The third form possesses characteristics of the first form, but in a more developed form: after being recycled, the resulting steel it is newly made, in good condition for sale, etc., similarly to the first form of the new car.

In this example, a new car goes through a cyclical pattern of development in which the third form (new steel) possesses characteristics of the first form (a new car).

Keep in mind that this is relative to one’s perspective. If you consider the wrecked car to be the first form, then the steel would be the second form. The new steel will then need to be developed in some way (melted, hammered, cut, etc.) in order to be processed into some new product. From this perspective, the third form (i.e., molten steel) will have characteristics of the first form (i.e.: “unrefined”).

According to Marx and Engels, the development of capitalism from feudalism assumed this cyclical pattern:

The development of class structure is a dialectical process in which different classes synthesize to form the next era of class society. For example, the capitalist class emerged primarily as a synthesis of the feudal lords and peasants of the medieval era.

Note that this is only an abstract description of a tendency of dialectical development; exceptions can and do occur. Presumably, the development of communism as a stateless, classless society would constitute the negation of the “Class Society” form of human civilization. The Post-Class stage of development which follows would, itself, be a higher form — a unity — of pre-class human civilization, carrying forward traces from the Class Society stage of development.

Also note that determining which form is the “first” or “initial” pattern is entirely relative. Using the example of the development of class society: from one perspective, the Patricians may be seen as the initial form, but from another perspective the Plebeians might be considered the initial form. This depends entirely on the viewpoint and purpose of analysis. These conceptions of “spirals of development” and the pattern of “three forms through two negations” are, in essence, models which describe general tendencies and patterns of development and which help us understand the basic characteristics of dialectical negation and development.

Lenin describes this cycle of dialectical development as going “[f]rom assertion to negation — from negation to ‘unity’ with the asserted — without this, dialectics becomes empty negation, a game, skepsis [examination, observation, consideration].”^[107]

Annotation 204

Here, “assertion” simply refers to the initial form of a dialectical development cycle. The negation is the second form, and the “unity” is the third form, which resembles the first form (the assertion) at a higher stage of development. So, in this quotation, Lenin is simply recounting the “three steps” of a typical dialectical development cycle, and indicating that it is necessary to recognize this process, which is rooted in the inheritance of properties of prior forms through development into ever-higher forms, to prevent dialectics from becoming “empty negation,” or otherwise falling prey to the critiques that dialectics are purely negative, skeptical, and eclectic in nature [see Annotation 200, p. 192 and Annotation 36, p. 33].

The law of negation of negation generalizes the pervasive nature of development: dialectical development does not take the form of a straight path, but rather in the form of a spiral path. Lenin summarised that this path is “[a] development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis (‘the negation of the negation’), a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line…”^[108] The tendency to develop in a spiral curve demonstrates the dialectical nature of development; i.e., the cycle of inheritance, repetition, and progression. Each new round of the spiral appears to be repeating, but at a higher level. The continuation of the loops in a spiral reflects an endless progression from lower levels to higher levels of things, phenomena, and ideas.

In short, the law of negation of negation in materialist dialectics reflects the dialectical relationship between the negative and the assertion [i.e., the second and first forms of a dialectical development cycle; see Annotation 203, p. 198] in the development process of things, phenomena and ideas. Dialectical development is driven by dialectical negation; in the development of all things, phenomena, and ideas, the new is the result of inheriting characteristics from prior forms. This process of inheritance, repetition, and progression through negation leads to cyclical development. Engels wrote: “what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general — and for this reason extremely far-reaching and important — law of development of nature, history, and thought.”^[109]

Annotation 205

In the same text quoted above, Engels elaborates that dialectical development is composed of “processes which in their nature are antagonistic, contain a contradiction; transformation of one extreme into its opposite; and finally, as the kernel of the whole thing, the negation of the negation.”

c. Meaning of the Methodology

The law of negation of negation is the basis for correct perception of the tendency of motion and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Development and motion processes do not take place in a straight line; rather, it is a winding, complex road, consisting of many stages, and each process can be broken down into many different sub-processes. However, it must be understood that this complexity of development is only the manifestation of the general tendency to move forward [see Annotation 118, p. 122]. It is important to understand the nature of motion and development so that we can systematically change the world according to our revolutionary viewpoint. In order to consciously impact the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, we need to know their characteristics, nature, and relationships so that we can influence their motion and development in the direction that suits our purposes. We must comprehend and leverage the tendency of forward movement — in accordance with a scientific and revolutionary worldview — in order to effectively and systematically change the world.

Annotation 206

Understanding the forward tendency of motion is vital for cultivating a worldview which is both scientific and revolutionary. Such a worldview is scientific because it recognizes the material reality that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing change and development. Nothing in our universe is static, and all things are connected and defined by internal and external relationships (which are also constantly developing). Furthermore, this development progresses with a forward tendency, meaning that no process can be completely “reversed.” For example, you can clean rust from a car [which would be forward progress], but you can’t reverse the temporal process of rust.

Once we understand that all things, phenomena, and ideas in our universe are constantly developing and moving forward, we can then begin to find ways to impact motion and development systematically to consciously change the world around us. This is the foundation of a revolutionary worldview, since revolutionary change requires us to leverage and influence development processes to suit our needs and revolutionary ambitions. Thus, materialist dialectics are an applied system of observation and practice through which we seek to understand development processes and consciously impact them to suit our needs.

According to the rule of negation of negation, in the objective world, the new must inevitably come to replace the old. In nature, the new develops according to objective laws. In social life, new things arise from the purposeful, self-conscious, and creative actions of human beings. Therefore, it is necessary to leverage subjective factors as we seek to consciously impact the development of things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 207

Subjective factors are factors which we, as a subject, are capable of impacting. This may seem confusing, since we have previously established that all external things, phenomena, and ideas have objective relationships with all other things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112], meaning that any given subject is external to every other subject, and thus no subject can directly and completely control the motion and development of any other subject.

However, from the perspective of any given individual, there are certain things, phenomena, and ideas [as well as processes of motion and development] which we can impact. For example, if I see an apple on a table, the apple is objective to me. I can’t simply will the apple to move with my consciousness alone. However, I can impact the apple through conscious activity — I can consciously will my hand to pick up the apple and move it to another location.

Thus, factors which an individual can consciously impact are subjective factors. As revolutionists, we must focus on subjective factors. In other words, we must concentrate on that which we are capable of changing, since our purpose is to change the world. Focusing on factors which we can’t impact is a waste of time; we must simply determine what can be changed and then determine the most efficient and effective ways of impacting development processes and changing the world.

As revolutionists, we must have faith that we can introduce the “new,” faith in the success of the “new,” we must support the “new,” and fight for the victory of the “new.” Therefore, it is necessary to overcome conservative, stagnant, and dogmatic thoughts which restrain the development of the “new” and resist the law of negation of negation.

Annotation 208

Change is inevitable. All things, phenomena, and ideas undergo processes of motion and development. Any philosophy, ideology, or strategy which attempts to restrain motion and development is doomed to failure because change can neither be halted nor restrained. Thus, our strategies and actions must align with the material reality that change is inevitable, and we must seek to change the world by impacting processes of development and motion rather than attempting to reverse, restrain, or halt such processes.

Ideologies which erroneously strive to restrict change and development include rigidity (see Annotation 222, p. 218) and conservativism (see Annotation 236, p. 233).

In the process of negating the old we must leverage the principle of inheritance with discretion: we must encourage the inheritance of factors that are beneficial to our goals as we simultaneously attempt to filter out, overcome, and reform factors which would negatively impact our goals.

Annotation 209

If we understand the principle of inheritance, we can impact inheritance processes which derive from negation. For example, when repairing a car, we can seek out parts of the car which do not function properly or which do not suit the use-case of the car and add or replace parts which are more suitable.

In the same way, we can impact inheritence processes in our revolutionary political activities. We can seek to inherit characteristics from previous stages of development of our political organizations, social institutions, culture, etc., while simultaneously seeking to prevent the inheritence of traits and characteristics which are unsuitable for our revolutionary purposes. Over time, we can attempt to impact the inheritance of traits and aspects which are more conducive to our purposes while limiting and filtering out traits and aspects which are hindrances.

In an article titled “New Life” written in 1947, Ho Chi Minh wrote about the dialectical relationship between the new and the old in building a new society, writing:

Not everything old must be abandoned. We do not have to reinvent everything. What is old but bad must be abandoned. What is old but troublesome must be corrected appropriately. What is old but good must be further developed. What is new but good must be done.
... Growing up in the old society, we all carry within us more-or-less bad traces of the old society in terms of our ideas and habits... Habits are hard to change. That which is good and new is likely to be considered bad by the people because it is strange to them. On the contrary, that which is evil yet familiar is easily mistaken as normal and acceptable.

Ho Chi Minh understood the principles of development very well, as well as the difficulties we will face as revolutionaries as we try to change ourselves and our society. We must strive to develop a similar understanding as we move forward and attempt to affect the development of our world through practice and struggle.

Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism

In Marxism, epistemological reasoning (or epistemology) is the foundation of dialectics. Dialectical materialist epistemology is a theory of applying human cognitive ability to the objective world through practical activities. It explains the nature, path and general laws of the human process of perceiving truth and objective reality to serve human practical activities.

Annotation 210

Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge. It also deals with the philosophical question of: “how do we know what is true?”

Throughout history, philosophers have tried to determine the nature of truth and knowledge. In the era of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, there was an ongoing dispute between the materialists, who believed that truth could only be sought through sense experience of the material world, and the idealists, who believed that truth could only be sought through reasoning within the human mind.

Marx and Engels developed the philosophical system of dialectical materialism to resolve this dispute. Dialectical materialism upholds that the material and the ideal have a dialectical relationship with one another: the material determines the ideal, while the ideal impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].

However, it’s important to understand that Marx and Engels didn’t develop the system of dialectical materialism simply to understand the world. As Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

So, Marxist dialectical materialist epistemology is developed specifically to enable human beings to not only perceive truth and objective reality, but to then be able to apply our conscious thought, through practical activity, in order to bring about change in the world.

1. Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness

a. Praxis and Basic Forms of Praxis

Praxis includes all human material activities which have purpose and historical-social characteristics and which transform nature and society. Unlike other activities, praxis is activity in which humans attempt to materially impact the world to suit our purposes. Praxis activities define the nature of human beings and distinguish human beings from other animals. Praxis is objective activity, and praxis has been constantly developed by humans through the ages.

Annotation 211

In English, the words “practice” and “praxis” are often distinguished from one another. “Practice” is often used to refer to human activity which provides more information about the world around us and improves our knowledge and understanding, whereas “praxis” often refers to conscious human activity which is intended to change the world in some manner. In their original German, Marx and Engels used the same German word — Praxis — to refer to both concepts. Similarly, in the original Vietnamese text of this book, the same word — thực tiễn — is used for both “practice” and “praxis.”

One reason that these concepts are so closely related is that all conscious activity serves both rolls by simultaneously telling us more about reality and consciously changing reality in some way. For example, by pushing a heavy stone, you may be able to move the stone a small amount — constituting praxis — while simultaneously learning how heavy the stone is and how difficult it is to move — constituting practice. The main point of distinction, therefore, is intention. Virtually all conscious activity is practice, but only activity which has purpose and historical-social characteristics might be considered praxis:

Purpose simply describes a goal or desired outcome; specifically: a desired change in nature or human society. Activities with historical-social characteristics are activities which contribute in some way to the development of human society.

In this translation, we use “practice” and “praxis” interchangably to mean “conscious activity which improves our understanding, and which has purpose and historical-social characteristics.” You are likely to find these words used differently (as described above, or in other ways) in other texts. Engels explains the importance of practice/praxis in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we [use] these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.

Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach that “the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice [German: revolutionäre Praxis].” Engels further expounds upon this concept in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, writing:

The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical fancies is practice [original German: Praxis], viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible or ungraspable.

Praxis defines the nature of human beings because human beings are (to our present knowledge) the only beings which undertake actions with conscious awareness of our desired outcomes and comprehension of the historical development of our own society, which distinguishes human beings from all other animals. Praxis is objective activity, meaning that all praxis activities are performed in relation to external things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112].

Praxis has been constantly developed by humans through the ages, meaning that as we learn more about the nature of reality, of human society, and the laws of nature, we are able to develop our praxis to become more efficient and effective.

Praxis activities are very diverse, manifesting with ever-increasing variety, but there are only three basic forms: material production activities, socio-political activities, and scientific experimental activities.

Material production activity is the first and most basic form of praxis. In this form of praxis activity, humans use tools through labor processes to influence the natural world in order to create wealth and material resources and to develop the conditions necessary to maintain our existence and development.

Socio-political activity includes praxis activity utilized by various communities and organizations in human society to transform political-social relations in order to promote social development.

Scientific experimental activity is a special form of praxis activity. This includes human activities that resemble or replicate states of nature and society in order to determine the laws of change and development of subjects of study. This form of activity plays an important role in the development of society, especially in the current historical period of modern science and technological revolution.

Annotation 212

The three basic forms of praxis activities listed above obviously do not include all forms of human activity, as praxis only includes activities which have purpose and historical-social characteristics.

Material production activity has a very clear purpose: to improve the material conditions of an individual human being or a group of human beings. Material production activity has historical-social characteristics because developing material conditions for human beings leads directly to the development of human society. For example, as food production increases in terms of yield and efficiency, society can support a larger number of human beings and a wider range of human activities, which leads to the development of human society.

Socio-political activity has the purpose of promoting social development, which is obviously inherently historical-social in nature. An example of socio-political activity would include any sort of political campaign, liberation struggle, political revolutionary activity, etc.

Scientific experimental activity has the purpose of expanding our understanding of nature and human society, which leads directly to historical-social development in a variety of ways. For example, improving our scientific understanding of medicine through scientific experimental activity leads to longer lives and improved quality of life. Improving our scientific understanding of chemistry through scientific experimental activity leads to all sorts of materials which improve the quality of life and enable human beings to solve a variety of social problems.

In order to qualify as praxis activity, a given human activity must have a purpose and it must have historical-social characteristics. For instance, drawing is not always praxis in the sense of the word used in this text, but it would be praxis if it would qualify as material production activity (i.e., making art in order to sell, so as to make a living) or if the art is made with the intention of invoking social change.

Every basic praxis activity form has an important function, and these functions are not interchangeable with each other. However, they have close relationships with each other and different praxis activity forms often interact with each other. In these relationships, material production is the most important form of praxis activity, playing a decisive role in determining other praxis activities because material production is the most primitive activity and exists most commonly in human life. Material production creates the most essential, decisive material conditions for human survival and development. Without material production there cannot be other praxis activities. After all, all other praxis activities arise from material production praxis and all praxis activities ultimately aim to serve material production praxis.

Annotation 213

Without material production activity, human beings would not be able to live at all.

Thus, material production activities make all other forms of human activities possible. In addition, the primary reason we participate in socio-political activity is to ensure material security (food, water, shelter, etc.) for members of society, which ultimately relies on material production activity. Therefore, the primary reason we engage in scientific experimental activity is to improve material production activities in terms of efficiency, yield, effectiveness, etc

Of course, we engage in scientific experimental activity and material production activity for other reasons (art, entertainment, recreation, etc.), but these activities require that material security be secured first for those participating in the production and consumption of such products. In other words, material production activity is a prerequisite for all other forms of activity, since without some measure of material security humans cannot survive.

Material production activity has a dialectical relationship with all other praxis activity, with material production activity determining, while being impacted by, all other forms of praxis activity.

Thus, material production activity has a dialectical relationship with other forms of praxis activities, in which material production activity determines both socio-political and scientific experimental activity while socio-political and scientific experimental activity impact material production activity.

b. Consciousness and Levels of Consciousness

The dialectical materialist perspective sees consciousness as a process of reflecting the objective world within the human brain on a practical basis to create knowledge about the objective world. Consciousness is a self-aware process that is productive and creative.

This view stems from the following basic principles:

The dialectical materialist worldview acknowledges that the material world exists objectively and independently of human consciousness.
The dialectical materialist worldview recognizes the following human abilities:
- To perceive the objective world.
- To reflect the objective world into the human mind, which enables human subjects to learn about external objects. [see Annotation 66, p. 64]
- To admit that there are no material things nor phenomena which are unrecognizable, but only material things and phenomena that humans have not yet recognised. [see The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues, p. 48]

The dialectical materialist worldview affirms that conscious reflection [see Annotation 67, p. 64] of the objective world is a dialectical, productive, self-aware, and creative process. This reflection process develops from the unknown to the known, from knowing less to knowing more, from knowing less profoundly and less comprehensively to knowing more profoundly and more comprehensively.

Annotation 214

The above principle (that human knowledge develops from less, and less comprehensive, to more, and more comprehensive states) stands in contrast to various other philosophical systems of belief, including:

Hegel’s Absolute Idealism upholds a belief in an “absolute ideal” which constitutes an ultimate limit or “end point” of knowledge which humanity is moving towards. Dialectical materialism upholds that there is no such absolute ideal and thus no such terminal end point of human understanding. [See Annotation 234, p. 230] As Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring:

If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.

Fideism, which is the belief that knowledge is received from some higher power [i.e., God]. Fideism upholds that all knowledge is pre-existing, and that humanity simply receives it from on high. Dialectical materialism, on the other hand, argues that knowledge is developed over time through dialectical processes of consciousness and human activity.

Positivism, or empiricist materialism, which holds that there are hard limits to human knowledge, or that human knowledge — which can only be obtained from sense data — can’t be trusted. Dialectical materialism upholds that all things and phenomena can be known and understood, and that sense data can be trusted as an objective reflection of reality. For more information about skepticism about human sense data as well as positive and empiricist materialism, see Annotation 10, p. 10, and Annotation 58, p. 56].

The dialectical materialist worldview considers praxis as the primary and most direct basis of consciousness, and as the motive and the purpose of consciousness, and as the criterion for testing truth. [See: The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness, p. 216]

Annotation 215

Given the above principles — that human consciousness exists independently from the material world yet is capable of accurately perceiving and reflecting the material world, and that knowledge develops over time through a synthesis of consciousness and practical activity — we can conclude that consciousness is a self-aware process which is productive and creative.

Consciousness is productive and creative in the sense that conscious processes, in conjunction with practical experience and activity in the material world, leads to the development of knowledge and practical experience which allows humans to develop our understanding of the world as well as our own material conditions through the application of knowledge to our own labor activities.

Next, we will examine different ways of categorizing conscious activities as they pertain to developing knowledge and practical understanding of our world.

From the dialectical materialist point of view, consciousness is a process of development. Consciousness develops from empirical consciousness to theoretical consciousness; and from ordinary consciousness to scientific consciousness.

Annotation 216

In dialectical materialist philosophy, all systems of relation exist as processes of development in motion [see Annotation 120, p. 124]. Thus, consciousness can be defined as a system of relations between human brain activity and two forms of data input:

• Sense experience: observations of the external world detected by our senses.

• Knowledge: information which exists in the human mind as memories and ideas.

Consciousness is thus a process of the development of knowledge through a combination of human brain activity and human practical activity in the physical world (i.e., labor).

In the section below, we will explore different forms of consciousness, the development of consciousness, and the relationship between consciousness and knowledge. Note that these are abstractions of consciousness and knowledge, meant to help us understand how knowledge and consciousness develop over time. Thought processes are extremely complex, so we seek to develop a fundamental understanding of how consciousness develops and how knowledge develops because these processes are fundamental to the development of human beings and human societies.

Just as consciousness is a process of developing knowledge through brain activity, consciousness itself also develops over time. The development of consciousness can be considered based on the criteria of concrete/abstract and of passive/active.

Consciousness develops from a state of direct and immediate observation of the world which results in concrete knowledge to a higher stage which constitutes a more abstract and general understanding of the world. We call consciousness which is focused on direct, immediate, concrete, empirical observation of the world empirical consciousness, and we call consciousness which is focused on forming abstract generalizations about the world theoretical consciousness.

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Empirical consciousness is a process of collecting data about the world, which we call knowledge. We can gather two forms of knowledge through empirical consciousness: ordinary knowledge, and scientific knowledge.

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Ordinary knowledge is the knowledge we accumulate through our everyday experiences in the world. Scientific knowledge is gathered through more systematic scientific observations and experiments. Scientific knowledge usually develops from ordinary knowledge, as we begin to seek a more formal and systematic understanding of the things we witness in our daily lives.

According to Themes in Soviet Marxist Philosophy, edited by T. J. Blakely:

Ordinary knowledge notes what lies on the very surface, what happens during a certain event. Scientific knowledge wants to know why it happens in just this way. The essence of scientific knowledge lies in the confirmed generalization of facts, where it becomes necessary rather than contingent, universal instead of particular, law-bound, and can serve as a basis for predicting various phenomena, events and objects...
The whole progress of scientific knowledge is bound up with growth in the force and volume of scientific prediction. Prediction makes it possible to control processes and to direct them. Scientific knowledge opens up the possibility not only of predicting the future but also of consciously forming it. The vital meaning of every science can be expressed as follows: to know in order to predict and to predict in order to act.
An essential characteristic of scientific knowledge is that it is systematic, i.e., it is a set of information which is ordered according to certain theoretical principles. A collection of unsystematized knowledge is not yet science. Certain basic premises are fundamental to scientific knowledge, i.e., the laws which make it possible to systematize the knowledge. Knowledge becomes scientific when the collection of facts and their descriptions reach the level where they are included in a theory.

Theoretical consciousness arises from conscious reflection on accumulated knowledge, as human beings seek to develop general and abstract understanding of the underlying principles of processes we experience in the world. Once general principles of natural and social law are established, human beings then test those general conclusions against empirical reality through further observation (i.e., through empirical consciousness).

Thus, there is a dialectical relationship between empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness, as one form leads to another, back and forth, again and again, continuously.

Empirical and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship in which empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness lead to and mutually develop one another.

Consciousness also develops from passive and surface-level observation and understanding of the world (i.e., simply considering what, where, and when things happen) to more active pursuit of the underlying meaning of the world (i.e., trying to understand how and why things happen).

Consciousness which passively observes the world, directly, in daily life is referred to as ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness often develops into more active consciousness. This active pursuit of understanding through systematic observation and indirect experiences (i.e., experiences that do not occur in daily activity — such as scientific experimentation) is referred to as scientific consciousness.

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These concepts will be discussed in further detail below.

Empirical consciousness is the stage of development of consciousness in which perceptions are formed via direct observations of things and phenomena in the natural world, or of society, or through scientific experimentation and systematic observation. Empirical consciousness results in empirical knowledge.

Empirical knowledge has two types: ordinary empirical knowledge (knowledge obtained through direct observation and in productive labor) and scientific empirical knowledge (knowledge obtained by conducting scientific experiments). These two types of knowledge can be complementary, and can enrich one other.

Theoretical consciousness is the indirect, abstract, systematic level of perception in which the nature and laws of things and phenomena are generalized and abstracted.

Empirical consciousness and Theoretical consciousness are two different cognitive stages but they have a dialectical relationship with each other. In this dialectical relationship, empirical consciousness is the basis of theoretical consciousness; it provides theoretical consciousness with specific, rich material [i.e., knowledge]. Empirical consciousness is linked closely to practical activities [since practical activity in the material world is the chief method of gathering knowledge through empirical consciousness], and forms the basis for checking, correcting, and supplementing existing theories and summarizing, and generalizing them into new theories. However, empirical consciousness is still limited in that empirical consciousness stops at the description and classification of data obtained from direct observation and experimentation. Therefore, empirical consciousness only brings understanding about the separate, superficial, discrete aspects of observed subjects, without yet reflecting the essence of those subjects nor the underlying principles or laws which regulate those subjects.

Therefore, empirical consciousness, alone, is not sufficient for determining the scientific laws of nature and society. To determine such laws and abstractions, theoretical consciousness must be applied. So, theoretical consciousness does not form spontaneously, nor directly from experience, although it is formed from the summation of experiences.

Annotation 217

The knowledge we gain from our daily activity often inspires scientific inquiry and more systematic observation, which can yield scientific knowledge which will enrich and improve our daily practice and allow us to experience daily life with a deeper understanding of what we’re experiencing. Thus, the ordinary knowledge we gain through daily practice can enrich and yield scientific knowledge (and vice versa).

Empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship with each other in which empirical consciousness provides the basis for theoretical consciousness. Theoretical consciousness attempts to derive general abstractions and governing principles from empirical knowledge which is gained through empirical consciousness. Once theoretical principles, generalities, and abstractions are determined, they are then tested against reality through empirical consciousness (i.e., practical observation and systematic experimentation) to determine if the theory is sound.

Empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship with one another. Our observations of the material world lead to conscious activity which we then test in reality through conscious activity, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of dialectical development.

For example, a farmer may notice that plants grow better in locations where manure has been discarded — an act of empirical consciousness. The farmer might then form the theory that adding manure to the soil will help plants grow — an act of theoretical consciousness. This theory could then be tested against reality by mixing manure into the soil and observing the results, which would be another act of empirical consciousness. The farmer may then theorize that more manure will help plants grow even more — another act of theoretical consciousness — continuing the cycle of testing and observing.

This dialectical relationship between ordinary and theoretical consciousness is what allows human beings to develop and improve knowledge through practical experience, observation, and theoretical abstraction and generalization of knowledge.

Theoretical consciousness is relatively independent from empirical consciousness. Therefore, theories can precede expectations and guide the formation of valuable empirical knowledge. Theoretical consciousness is what allows human beings to sort and filter knowledge so as to best serve practical activities and contribute to the transformation of human life. Through this process, knowledge is organized and therefore enhanced, and develops from the level of specific, individual, and solitary knowledge to a higher form of generalized and abstract knowledge [what we might call theoretical knowledge].

Annotation 218

Knowledge which comes from empirical observations (empirical consciousness) is empirical knowledge. Theoretical knowledge is a product of theoretical consciousness. Over time, as repeated and varied observations are made through theoretical consciousness activities, knowledge becomes more generalized and abstract; this general and abstract knowledge is what we call theoretical knowledge.

Note that empirical and theoretical knowledge can be ordinary or scientific in nature; if the knowledge arises passively from daily life activities, it will be ordinary knowledge, regardless of whether or not it is empirical or theoretical in nature. If, on the other hand, the knowledge arises from methodological measurement and/or systematic observation, then it is scientific knowledge.vSo far, we have discussed ways of understanding consciousness based on the criteria of directness vs. abstractness. Next, we will discuss another way of looking at consciousness, based on the criteria of passiveness vs. activeness.

Ordinary consciousness refers to perception that is formed passively and directly from the daily activities of humans. Ordinary consciousness is a reflection of things, phenomena, and ideas, with all their observed characteristics, specific details, and nuances. Therefore, ordinary consciousness is rich, multifaceted, and associated with daily life. Therefore, ordinary consciousness has a regular and pervasive role in governing the activities of each person in society.

Scientific consciousness refers to perception formed actively and indirectly from the reflection of the characteristics, nature, and inherent relationships of research subjects. This reflection takes place in the form of logical abstraction. These logical abstractions include scientific concepts, categories, and laws. Scientific consciousness is objective, abstract, general, and systematic, and must be grounded in evidence.

Scientific consciousness utilizes systematic methodologies to profoundly describe the nature of studied subjects as well as the principles which govern them. Therefore, scientific consciousness plays an increasingly important role in practical activities, especially in the modern age of science and technology.

Annotation 219

Logical abstraction refers to an understanding of the underlying rules which govern things, phenomena, and ideas which underly objective processes, relationships, and characteristics. Logical abstraction is the result of scientific inquiry. Over time, our understanding of the rules which govern the things, phenomena, and ideas in our lives become more reliable and applicable in practical activities. This attainment of understanding and practical ability through scientific practice is scientific consciousness.

Ordinary and scientific consciousness are two different qualitative steps of cognitive processes which, together, allow humans to discover truth about our world. Ordinary and scientific consciousness have a strong dialectical relationship with each other. In this relationship, ordinary consciousness precedes scientific consciousness, as ordinary consciousness is a source of material for the development of scientific consciousness.

Although it contains the seeds of scientific knowledge, ordinary consciousness mainly stops at the reflection of superficial details, seemingly random events, and non-essential phenomena [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]. Ordinary consciousness, therefore, cannot transform effortlessly into scientific consciousness. To develop ordinary consciousness into scientific consciousness, we must go through the process of accurate summarizing, abstracting, and generalization using scientific methods. Likewise, once scientific consciousness has been developed, it impacts and pervades ordinary consciousness, and therefore develops ordinary consciousness. Scientific consciousness therefore enhances our everyday passive perception of the world.

Ordinary consciousness refers to the passive observation of reality which takes place in our daily lives. Scientific consciousness refers to the systematic application of consciousness to solve specific problems in a methodological manner.

Annotation 220

For example, before developing scientific consciousness of farming, a farmer might go through daily life having no idea what makes plants grow to be larger and more healthy and might have no idea how to avoid common problems such as pests. After developing scientific consciousness of farming through scientific experimentation and other systematic methodologies, the farmer will look at things differently in daily life activities. They may see signs of pest infestation and immediately recognize it for what it is, and they may see other indications that plants are unhealthy and know exactly what to do to remedy the situation.

In this way, scientific consciousness enhances ordinary consciousness. Meanwhile, ordinary consciousness — passive observation of the world during daily activities — will lead to scientific consciousness by inspiring us to actively seek understanding of the world through scientific consciousness.

c. The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness

Praxis serves as the basis, driving force, and purpose of consciousness. Praxis serves as the criterion of truth by testing the truthfulness of our thoughts. [See Annotation 230, p. 226]

Praxis is able to serve these roles because reality is the direct starting point of consciousness; it sets out the requirements, tasks, and modes of consciousness, as well as the movement and development tendencies of consciousness. Humans have an objective and inherent need to explain the world and to transform it.

Annotation 221

Remember that the material world defines consciousness while consciousness allows us to impact the material world through conscious activity [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88]. Consciousness itself arose from the physical needs of the material world [see The Source of Consciousness, p. 64], and these physical needs continue to serve as the basis and driving force for all conscious activities, as we must act consciously to survive.

Our inherent need to explain the world and to transform it arises from our material needs to eat, seek shelter, cure and prevent disease, and so on. These physical needs, which stem from the material world, drive conscious activity and lead to the development of consciousness and knowledge.

Therefore, humans must necessarily impact things in the material world through our practical activities in order to survive. The impacts of our practical activities on the world cause things and phenomena to reveal their different properties, including their internal and external relationships [for example, hitting a rock will tell you properties about the rock; attempting to build something out of wood will provide data about the wood, etc.]. In this manner, praxis produces data for consciousness to process, and also helps consciousness to comprehend nature and the laws of movement and development which govern the world.

Scientific theories are formed on the basis of the dialectical relationship between practical activity and consciousness. For example: mathematics developed to allow us to count and measure things for practical activities such as agriculture, navigation, and building structures. Marxism also arose in the 1840’s from the practical activities of the struggles of the working class against the capitalist class at that time. Even recent scientific achievements arise from practical needs and activities. For example, the discovery and decoding of the human genome map was born from practical activities and needs, such as the need to develop treatments for incurable diseases. In the end, there is no field of knowledge that is not derived from reality. Ultimately, all knowledge arises from and serves practice. Therefore, if we were to break from reality or stop relying on reality, consciousness would break from the basis of reality that nurtures our growth, existence and development. Also, the cognitive subject cannot have true and profound knowledge about the world if it does not follow reality.

Practice also serves as the basis, driving force, and purpose of consciousness because, thanks to practical activities, our human ability to measure and observe reality improves increasingly over time; our logical thinking ability is constantly strengthened and developed; cognitive means become increasingly developed. All of these developments “extend” the human senses in perceiving the world [for example, by developing new tools to measure, perceive, and sense the world such as telescopes, radar, microscopes, etc.].

Reality is not only the basis, the driving force, and the purpose of discovering truth but also serves as the standard of truth. Reality also serves as the basis for examining the truthfulness of the cognitive process [i.e., we can test whether our thoughts match material reality through experimentation and practice in the real world]. This means that practice is the measure of the value of the knowledge we gain through perception. At the same time, practice is constantly supplementing, adjusting, correcting, developing, and improving human consciousness. Marx said: “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.”^[110]

Thus, practice is not only the starting point of consciousness and a decisive factor for the formation and development of consciousness, it is also a target where consciousness must always aim to test the truth. To emphasize this role which practice plays, Lenin said: “The standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge.”^[111]

The role of practice in consciousness requires that we always grasp the practical point of view. This point of view requires that we derive our ideas from practice, our ideas must be based on practice, and our ideas must deeply explore practice. In our conscious activities, we must attach a lot of importance to the summarization of practice [i.e., developing theoretical knowledge through theoretical consciousness which reflects practical experience]. Theoretical research must be related to practice, and learning must go hand in hand with practicing. If we diverge from practice, it will lead to mistakes of subjectivism, idealism, dogmatism, rigidity, and bureaucracy.

Annotation 222

Subjectivism occurs when one centers one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test one’s own perceptions against material and social reality. Subjectivists tend to believe that they can independently reason their way to truth in their own minds without practical experience and activity in the material world. Related to subjectivism is solipsism, a form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. As Marxist ethicist Howard Selsam wrote in Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World: “If I believe that I alone exist and that you and all your arguments exist only in my mind and are my own creations then all possible arguments will not shake me one iota. No logic can possibly convince [the] solipsist.”

Idealism has a strong connection with a failure to incorporate practical activity into theoretical consciousness, since idealism holds that conscious activity is the sole basis of discovering truth.

Dogmatism occurs when one only accounts for commonalities and considers theory itself as the sole basis of truth rather than practice [see Annotation 239, p. 235]. Dogmatists ignore practical experience and considering pre-established theory, alone, as unalterable truth. This results in a breakdown of the dialectical relationship between theoretical consciousness and empirical consciousness, which arrests the development process of knowledge and consciousness.

Rigidity is an unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.

Bureaucracy arises when theory becomes overly codified and formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory. Bureaucracy can be avoided by incorporating practical experience and observations continuously into the development of practical systems and methodologies so that theory and practice become increasingly aligned over time to continuously improve efficiency and effectiveness of practical activities in the material world.

On the contrary, if the role of practice is absolutized [to the exclusion of conscious activity], it will fall into pragmatism and empiricism.

Annotation 223

In this context, pragmatism refers to a form of subjectivism [see Annotation 222, above] in which one centers one’s own immediate material concerns over all other considerations. For example, workers may place their own immediate needs and desires above the concerns of their fellow workers as a whole. This may offer some temporary gains, but in the long run their lack of solidarity and class consciousness will be detrimental as workers collectively suffer from division, making all workers more vulnerable to exploitation and ill treatment by the capitalist class.

Empiricism is a faulty form of materialism in which only sense experience and practical experience are considered sources of truth. This is opposed to the dialectical materialist position that the material determines consciousness, while consciousness impacts the material world through conscious labor activity. [See The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88]

Thus, the principle of the unification of practice and theory must be the basic principle in practical and theoretical activities. Theory without practice as its basis and criterion for determining its truthfulness is useless. Vice versa, practice without scientific and revolutionary theory will inevitably turn into blind practice. [As Ho Chi Minh once said: “Study and practice must always go together. Study without practice is useless. Practice without study leads to folly.”]

2. Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth

a. Opinions of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin about the Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth

Annotation 224

The section below outlines and explains the Universal Law of Consciousness, which holds that consciousness is a process of dialectical development in which practical activity leads to conscious activity, which then leads back to practical activity, in a continuous and never-ending cycle, with a tendency to develop both practical and conscious activity to increasingly higher levels.

In his Philosophical Notebook, Lenin generalized the dialectical path towards the realization of truth as development from vivid visualization to abstract thinking, and then from abstraction back to practice. This process, according to Lenin, is the dialectical path towards the realization of truth, and the realization of objective reality.

According to this generalization, the dialectical path towards the realization of truth (“truth,” here, referring to a correct and accurate reflection of objective reality) is a process. It is a process that starts from “vivid visualization” (emotional consciousness) to “abstract thinking” (rational consciousness).

Annotation 225

Given that consciousness has a material basis, and that practical activities are the driving force of consciousness [see Annotation 230, p. 226], it follows that we must strive to align our conscious thoughts and ideas with the material world. The more accurately we can reflect reality in our consciousness, the more effectively and efficiently our practical activities can become.

For example, through learning more about the mechanical, material, and physical processes which take place inside of an automobile engine, the more we can improve engines to make them more efficient and effective for practical applications.

Lenin explained that consciousness develops from “emotional consciousness” to “rational consciousness.” Thought about a subject begins at a base level of consciousness that is rooted in emotional and sense-oriented conscious activity, i.e, “vivid visualization,” which then leads to rational, abstract reflection.

By “vivid visualization,” Lenin is referring to the active, real-time experience of seeing (and hearing, smelling, and otherwise sensing) things and phenomena in the world.

When a person experiences something through practical activity, the first conscious activity will tend to occur at the emotional and sensory level — in other words, the conscious activities which occur simultaneously along with practical activities. Only after this initial period of emotional consciousness will one be able to reflect on the experience on a more rational and abstract level.

For example, if a zoologist in the field sees a species of bird they have never encountered before, their first conscious activity will be at the sensory-emotional level: they will observe the shape, coloration, and motion of the bird. They may feel excitement, happiness, and other emotions. This is emotional conscious activity.

This emotional conscious activity will then develop into rational conscious activity, as the zoologist may begin to consider things more abstractly, attempting to interpret and understand this experience through reason and rational reflection, asking such questions as: “Where does this bird nest? What does it feed on? Is this a new discovery?” and so on.

Such abstractions are not the end point of a cognitive cycle, because consciousness must then continue to develop through practice. It is through practice that perception tests and proves its own correctness so that it can then continue on to repeat the cycle.

This is also the general rule of the human perception of objective reality.

Annotation 226

Thus there is a dialectical relationship between emotional consciousness (linked to practical activity) and rational consciousness (linked to purely conscious activity).

This dialectical relationship is a cycle, in which one engages in practical activity, which leads to emotional consciousness, which leads to rational consciousness, which then leads back to practical activity to test the correctness of the conclusions of rational conscious activity.

We call this cycle of development of consciousness the cognitive process.

The cognitive process is a continuous cycle which describes the dialectical development of consciousness and practical activity.

The cognitive process is explained in more detail below.

- Development From Emotional Consciousness to Rational Consciousness

Emotional consciousness is the lower stage of the cognitive process. In this stage of cognitive development, humans use — through practical activity — use our senses to reflect objective things and phenomena (with all their perceived specific characteristics and rich manifestations) in human consciousness. During this period, consciousness only reflects the phenomena [i.e, phenomena, as opposed to essence — see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156] — the external manifestations — of the perceived subject. At this stage, consciousness has not yet reflected the essence — the nature, and/or the regulating principles — of the subject. Therefore, this is the lowest stage of development of the cognitive process. In this stage, consciousness is carried out through three basic phases: sensation, conception, and symbolization.

Human sensation of an objective thing or phenomenon is the simplest, most primitive phase of the emotional consciousness stage of the cognitive processes, but without it there would not be any perception of objective things or phenomena. Every human sensation of objective things and phenomena contains objective content [see Content and Form, p. 147], even though it arises as subjective human conscious reflection. Sensation is the subjective imagining of the objective world. It is the basis from which the next phase of emotional consciousness — conception — is formed.

Conception is a relatively complete reflection within human consciousness of objective things and phenomena. Conception is formed on the basis of linking and synthesizing sensational experiences of things and phenomena [i.e., sensation]. Compared with sensation, conception is a higher, fuller, richer form of consciousness, but it is still a reflection of the outward manifestations of objects. Conception does not yet reflect the essence, nature, and regulating principles of the perceived subject.

Symbolization is the representation of an objective thing or phenomenon that has been reflected by sensation and conception. It is the most advanced and most complex phase of the stage of emotional consciousness. At the same time, it also serves as the transitional step between emotional consciousness and rational consciousness. The defining characteristic of symbolism is the ability to reproduce symbolic ideas of objective things and phenomena within human consciousness. Symbolization describes the act of recreating the outward appearances of material things and phenomena within human consciousness, which is the first step of abstraction, and thus the first step towards rational consciousness.

Annotation 227

Here is an example of the three phases of the emotional consciousness stage of the cognitive process:

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1. Sensation: Jessica senses a cake in the window of a bakery. She sees the frosting, the shape of the cake, and the decorations which adorn the cake. She smells the cake. During this phase, objective data about the cake is received into her consciousness, developing into an immediate and subjective sense perception of the cake. The beginnings of this cognitive activity will be purely sensory in nature; she may have been thinking of other things as she walked by the bakery, but the sight and smell of the cake, upon registering in her mind, will lead to the beginning of a new cognitive process cycle.

2. Conception: Jessica begins to conceive of the cake in her mind more fully. She will associate the immediate sense experiences of seeing and smelling the cake with other experiences she has had with cake, and a complete mental image and concept of the cake will form in her mind.

3. Symbolization: The word “cake” may now form in her mind, and she may begin thinking of the cake more abstractly, as “food,” as a “temptation,” and in other ways. This is the beginning of abstraction in Jessica’s mind, which will then lead to rational conscious activities.

Note that all of these phases of emotional consciousness activity may take place very quickly, perhaps in a fraction of a second, and may coincide with other conscious activity (i.e., Jessica may simultaneously be thinking of a meeting she’s running late to and any number of other things). At this point, Jessica will transition to the rational consciousness stage of the cognitive process, which is explained in more detail below.

By the end of the emotional stage of the cognitive process, consciousness has not yet reflected the essence — the nature, regulating principles, etc. — of the perceived subject. Therefore, at the emotional stage, consciousness is not yet able to properly interpret the reflected subject. That is to say, emotional conscious activity does not meet the cognitive requirements to serve practical activities, including the need to creatively transform the objective world. To meet these requirements, emotional consciousness must develop into rational consciousness.

Rational consciousness is the higher stage of the cognitive process. It includes the indirect, abstract, and generalized reflection of the essential properties and characteristics of things and phenomena. This stage of consciousness performs the most important function of comprehending and interpreting the essence of the perceived subject. Rational consciousness is implemented through three basic phases: definition, judgment, and reasoning.

Definition is the first phase of rational consciousness. During this phase, the mind begins to interpret, organize, and process the basic properties of things and phenomena at a rational level into a conceptual whole. The formation of definition is the result of the summarization and synthesis of all the different characteristics and properties of the subject, and how the subject fits into the organized structure of knowledge which exists in the mind. Definition is the basis for forming judgments in the cognitive process.

Judgment is the next phase of rational consciousness, which arises from the definition of the subject — the linking of concepts and properties together — which leads to affirmative or negative ideation of certain characteristics or attributes of the perceived subject.

According to the level of development of consciousness, judgment may take one of three forms: unique judgment, general judgment, and universal judgment [see Annotation 105, p. 107]. Universal judgment is the form of judgement that expresses the broadest conception of objective reality.

Reasoning is the final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject. Before reasoning can take place, judgments must be transformed into knowledge. A judgment can be transformed into knowledge through one of two logical mechanisms: deductive inference (which extrapolates the general from the specific), and inductive inference (which extrapolates the specific from the general).

Annotation 228

Here is an example of the three phases of the rational consciousness stage of the cognitive process, continuing from our previous example of the emotional consciousness stage [see Annotation 227, p. 222].

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1. Definition: Jessica’s conception of the cake will transition into the rational conscious activity of definition. Jessica will begin to define the concept of the cake more wholly and concretely, summarizing and synthesizing all of the features and characteristics of the cake into a cohesive mental reflection of the cake. The word “cake” may become more pronounced and defined in Jessica’s consciousness, prompting her to think of the object which she defines as a “cake” more fully and rationally.

2. Judgment: Jessica will begin to form basic judgments about the cake. “That cake looks good,” “that cake smells good,” and so on. Next, these judgments will begin to transform into knowledge through inductive or deductive inferences. An inductive inference might be: “I generally enjoy eating cakes, therefore, I might enjoy eating this cake!” An example of a deductive inference might be: “This cake looks very delicious, therefore, there might be other delicious things in this bakery!”

3. Reasoning: Processes of inductive and/or deductive inference will begin to transform Jessica’s judgments into the form of knowledge. For instance, she may now possess such knowledge as: “This bakery has delicious looking cakes, this is a cake I would like to eat,” and so on. With this newly acquired knowledge, Jessica can begin reasoning; that is to say, she can begin making rational conclusions and decisions. She might conclude: “I will go into this bakery and buy that cake.”

Note that this is not the “end” of the cognitive process, because the final phase of the reasoning stage of the cognitive process (reasoning) will lead directly into a new cycle of the cognitive process. In this example, Jessica might engage in the practical activity of checking her watch to see the time, which will begin a new cycle of cognitive process, beginning with the sensation phase of the emotional stage as the visual sense data of her watch and carrying through to the final reasoning phase of the rational stage, and so on.

It should also be noted that this is merely an abstraction of the cognitive process; in reality, the human mind is incredibly complex, capable of carrying out a variety of cognitive processes simultaneously. At any given moment, a person might be considering various different subjects, and each different subject might be at a different stage of the cognitive process. This abstract model of the cognitive process is presented to help us comprehend the component functions of consciousness more easily in the wider context of dialectical materialist philosophy.

Specifically, this model of the cognitive process is intended to help us understand how human consciousness leads to “truth.” And “truth,” here, refers to the alignment of human consciousness with the material world, so that our perceptions and understanding of the world is accurate and representative of actual reality.

- The Relationship Between Emotional Consciousness, Rational Consciousness, and Reality

Emotional consciousness and rational consciousness are stages that make up the cognitive cycle. In reality, they are often intertwined within the cognitive process, but they have different functions. If emotional consciousness is associated with reality, and with the impact of sense data received from observing the material world, and is the basis for cognitive reason, then rational consciousness, based on higher cognitive understanding and abstraction, allows us to understand the essence, nature, regulating principles, and development processes of things and phenomena. Rational consciousness helps direct emotional consciousness in a more efficient and effective direction and leads to more profound and accurate emotional consciousness.

Annotation 229

In other words, considering a subject at the level of rational consciousness allows us to then view the same subject, at an emotional consciousness level, with more depth and awareness.

For example, the more time we have spent rationally considering something like a bicycle, the more quickly and accurately we can examine a bicycle at the level of emotional consciousness. If someone is looking at a bicycle for the first time, they might not be able to distinguish its component parts or functions. On the other hand, if someone has spent more time considering bicycles at the level of rational consciousness, they may be able to immediately and rapidly understand and process a bicycle at the emotional conscious level, so that they can perceive and comprehend the different parts of a bicycle, as well as their functions, immediately and at the emotional-sensory level.

However, if we stop at rational consciousness, we will only have knowledge about the subjects we perceive, but we still won’t really know if that knowledge is truly accurate or not. In order to be useful in practical activity, we must consciously determine whether knowledge is truth [i.e., whether the knowledge accurately reflects reality]. In order to determine the truth of knowledge, consciousness must necessarily return to reality. Consciousness must use reality as a criterion — a measurement — of the authenticity of knowledge gained through purely cognitive processes. In other words, all consciousness is ultimately derived from practical needs, and must also return to serve practical activities.

Annotation 230

The dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activities means that conscious activities develop practical activities, and vice versa, in a continuous feedback loop.

One of the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism is that the material determines the ideal, and the ideal impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness]. The fact that the material determines consciousness is reflected in the fact that material needs led to the development of consciousness, and conscious activity stems from material needs [see Social Sources of Consciousness].

The fact that the ideal impacts the material is reflected in the fact that consciousness must always return to the service of practical activities; as our consciousness develops (along with knowledge), our ability to impact and transform the material world becomes more efficient and effective.

The dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activity is what drives the development of humanity. We imagine better ways of doing things, then test those ideas against reality through practical activity.

This dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activity is thus cyclical. Conscious activity arises from practical activity, and returns to practical activity, in an endless process of developing both conscious ability as well as practical ability.

Therefore, it can be seen that the general, cyclical nature of the process of movement and development of consciousness develops from practice to consciousness — from consciousness to practice — from practical activity to the continued process of cognitive development, and so on. This process is repeated continuously, without end. The development level of consciousness and practice in the next cycle are often higher than in the previous cycle, and the cognitive process gradually develops more and more accuracy, as well as fuller and deeper knowledge about objective reality.

The universal law of consciousness [see Annotation 224, p. 219] is also a concrete and vivid manifestation of the universal laws of materialist dialectics, including: the law of negation of negation, the law of transformation between quantity and quality and the law of unity and contradiction between opposites. The process of cognitive motion and development, governed by these general laws, is the process of human progress towards absolute truth [see Annotation 232, p. 228].

Annotation 231

The universal law of consciousness is governed by the three universal laws of materialist dialectics:

The Law of Negation of Negation dictates that the new will arise from the old, but will carry forward characteristics from the old. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness in that conscious activity arises from practical activity. This conscious activity then develops into improved practical activity, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of development. Throughout this development process, characteristics of previous cycles of cognitive and practical activities are carried forward and transferred on to newer cycles of cognitive and practical activities.

The Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality recognizes that quantity changes develop into changes in quality, and vice versa. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness in the development of both conscious and practical activities. Conscious development also develops from quantitative changes to quality changes, and vice versa. For example, once a person accumulates a certain quantity of knowledge, the quality of their knowledge will change. For example, once a person has learned the function of every component part of a car engine, they will have a quality shift in their understanding of car engines — they will now have competency of the functioning of the engine as a whole. This is also true of practical activities. A quantity of practical experience will lead to quality shifts in practical ability. For example, once a person has practiced riding a bicycle enough that they can reliably ride the bicycle without falling, we would say that the person “knows how to ride a bicycle,” which represents a quality shift from the state of “learning how to ride a bicycle.”

The Law of Unity and Contradiction Between Opposites states that all things, phenomena, and ideas are defined by internal and external contradictions. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness by the fact that practical needs serve as the basis for conscious activity, and that cognitive processes serve, in essence, to negate contradictions between consciousness and material reality through practical experience. In other words, the cognitive process is defined by a never-ending process of contradiction between the material and the ideal, as human beings seek to negate contradictions between our conscious understanding of the world and our practical experiences in search of truth - the accurate alignment of consciousness with the material world.

b. Truth, and the Relationship Between Truth and Reality

- Definition of Truth

All cognitive processes lead to the creation of knowledge, which is what we call human understanding of objective reality. But not all knowledge has content consistent with objective reality, because consciousness exists as the subjective reflection of objective reality in the human mind. The collective cognitive practice of all of humanity throughout history, as well as the cognitive practice of each individual human being, has demonstrated that the knowledge which people have gained and are gaining is not always consistent with objective reality. On the contrary, there are many cases of misalignment between consciousness and reality, and even complete contradiction between human thought and objective reality.

Within the theoretical scope of Marxism-Leninism, the concept of truth is used to refer to knowledge which is aligned with objective reality. This alignment is tested and proven through practice. In this sense, the concept of truth is not identical with the concept of “knowledge,” nor with the concept of “hypothesis.” According to Lenin: “The coincidence of thought with the object is a process: thought (= man) must not imagine truth in the form of dead repose, in the form of a bare picture (image), pale (matte), without impulse, without motion…”^[112]

Annotation 232

Here, Lenin is dispelling Hegel’s conception of “absolute truth,” which is not to be confused with Lenin’s concept of “absolute truth” as “objective truth” which aligns consciousness with objective reality [see Annotation 58, p. 56]. For Hegel, “absolute truth” was the idea that there will eventually be some end point to the process of rational consciousness at which we will finally arrive at some final stage of knowledge and consciousness. This rational end point of consciousness, at which the dialectic ends and all contradictions are negated, is Hegel’s “absolute truth.”

Lenin is also pushing back against the metaphysical conception that all “truths” exist as static categories of information which do not change. Instead, Lenin points out that seeking truth — i.e., aligning consciousness with material reality — is a never-ending process, in particular because reality is constantly developing and changing. Thus, the alignment of consciousness with reality — the pursuit of truth — is a living and dynamic process which will never end, since the development of reality will never end.

- The Properties of Truth

All truths are objective, relative, absolute, and concrete.

The objectivity of truth is the independence of its content from the subjective will of human beings. The content of knowledge must be aligned with objective reality, not vice versa. This means that the content of accurate knowledge is not a product of pure subjective reasoning. Truth is not an arbitrary human construct, nor is truth inherent in consciousness. On the contrary, truth belongs to the objective world, and is determined by the objective world. The affirmation of the objectivity of truth is one of the fundamental points that distinguishes the concept of absolute truth of dialectical materialism from the concept of absolute truth of idealism and skepticism — the doctrines that deny the objective existence of the physical world and deny the possibility that humans are able to perceive the world.

Annotation 233

The Dialectical Materialist conception of objective truth stands in contrast to idealism, which states that conscious reasoning alone leads to truth, and that the subjective ideal determines material reality [see Annotation 7, p. 8].

This objectivity of truth also refutes skepticism, which states that truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality [see Annotation 32, p. 27].

Distinction must also be drawn between the concept of absolute truth as it is understood in dialectical materialist philosophy and the conception of absolute truth in Hegel’s idealist dialectics. Dialectical materialism defines absolute truth as “objective truth;” that is to say: a complete alignment between objective reality and human consciousness (as compared to relative truth, which is a partial alignment between consciousness and objective reality).

Hegel, on the other hand, views absolute truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe (see Annotation 232, p. 228) with the ideal serving as the first basis and primary mechanism for bringing absolute truth to fruition.

Truth is not only objective, but also absolute and relative. Absolute truth [see Annotation 58, p. 56] refers to truth which reflects a full and complete alignment of consciousness and reality. Theoretically, we can reach absolute truth. This is because, in the objective world, there exists no thing nor phenomenon which human beings are completely incapable of accurately perceiving. The possibility of acquiring absolute truth in the process of the development of conscious understanding is theoretically limitless. However, in reality, our conscious ability to reflect reality is limited by the specific material conditions of each generation of humanity, of practical limitations, and by the spatial and temporal conditions of reflected subjects. Therefore, truth is also relative.

Annotation 234

Dialectical materialist philosophy recognizes that it must be theoretically possible to know everything there is to know about a given subject, since we are theoretically capable of accurately perceiving, sensing, and measuring all data which pertains to a subject. However, dialectical materialism also recognizes the practical limitations of human beings. As Engels writes in Anti-Dühring:

If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.
But are there any truths which are so securely based that any doubt of them seems to us to be tantamount to insanity? That twice two makes four, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, that Paris is in France, that a man who gets no food dies of hunger, and so forth? Are there then nevertheless eternal truths, final and ultimate truths.
Certainly there are. We can divide the whole realm of knowledge in the traditional way into three great departments. The first includes all sciences that deal with inanimate nature and are to a greater or lesser degree susceptible of mathematical treatment: mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry. If it gives anyone any pleasure to use mighty words for very simple things, it can be asserted that certain results obtained by these sciences are eternal truths, final and ultimate truths; for which reason these sciences are known as the exact sciences. But very far from all their results have this validity. With the introduction of variable magnitudes and the extension of their variability to the infinitely small and infinitely large, mathematics, usually so strictly ethical, fell from grace; it ate of the tree of knowledge, which opened up to it a career of most colossal achievements, but at the same time a path of error. The virgin state of absolute validity and irrefutable proof of everything mathematical was gone forever; the realm of controversy was inaugurated, and we have reached the point where most people differentiate and integrate not because they understand what they are doing but from pure faith, because up to now it has always come out right. Things are even worse with astronomy and mechanics, and in physics and chemistry we are swamped by hypotheses as if attacked by a swarm of bees. And it must of necessity be so. In physics we are dealing with the motion of molecules, in chemistry with the formation of molecules out of atoms, and if the interference of light waves is not a myth, we have absolutely no prospect of ever seeing these interesting objects with our own eyes. As time goes on, final and ultimate truths become remarkably rare in this field.

Relative truth is truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment between human knowledge and the reality which it reflects. To put it another way, relative truth represents knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. In relative truth, there is only partial alignment — in some (but not all) aspects — between consciousness and the material world.

Annotation 235

False consciousness is consciousness which is incorrect and misaligned from reality. Discovering and rooting out false consciousness is one of the primary concerns of dialectical materialism, as false consciousness can be a serious impediment to human progress. The term “false consciousness” was first used by Friedrich Engels in a personal letter to Franz Mehring in 1893 (a decade after the death of Karl Marx), and in this letter Engels uses the term interchangeably with the word “ideology”* to describe conscious thought processes which do not align with reality:

Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines false or apparent motives. Because it is a process of thought he derives both its form and its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere thought material which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, he does not investigate further for a more remote process independent of thought; indeed its origin seems obvious to him, because as all action is produced through the medium of thought it also appears to him to be ultimately based upon thought. The ideologist who deals with history (history is here simply meant to comprise all the spheres – political, juridical, philosophical, theological – belonging to society and not only to nature), the ideologist dealing with history then, possesses in every sphere of science material which has formed itself independently out of the thought of previous generations and has gone through an independent series of developments in the brains of these successive generations. True, external facts belonging to its own or other spheres may have exercised a co-determining influence on this development, but the tacit pre-supposition is that these facts themselves are also only the fruits of a process of thought, and so we still remain within that realm of pure thought which has successfully digested the hardest facts.

Although the term “false consciousness” is not found in writing until after Marx’s death, the concept underlying the term “false consciousness” is found often in the works of Marx and Engels. For instance, in The Holy Family, Marx and Engels explain how communist, class conscious workers have been able to break free of false consciousness of capitalist society:

They (the communist workers) are most painfully aware of the difference between being and thinking, between consciousness and life. They know that property, capital, money, wage-labor and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement.

This allusion to “the difference between being and thinking” recurs again and again in the works of Marx and Engels.

* Lenin also discussed the concept of false consciousness extensively, and argued that dialectical materialism was the key to negating the false consciousness of the working class, writing in What the “Friends of the People” Are:

It never has been the case, nor is it so now, that the members of society conceive the sum-total of the social relations in which they live as something definite, integral, pervaded by some principle; on the contrary, the mass of people adapt themselves to these relations unconsciously, and have so little conception of them as specific historical social relations that, for instance, an explanation of the exchange relations under which people have lived for centuries was found only in very recent times. Materialism removed this contradiction by carrying the analysis deeper, to the origin of man’s social ideas themselves; and its conclusion that the course of ideas depends on the course of things is the only one compatible with scientific psychology. Further, and from yet another aspect, this hypothesis was the first to elevate sociology to the level of a science.

Note that this convention of using the word “ideology” to mean “false consciousness” has never been common, and Marx and Engels both used the word “ideology” more often in its more usual sense of “a system of ideas,” but it is still occasionally encountered in socialist literature, as Joseph McCarney explains in Marx Myths and Legends:

Marx never calls ideology ‘false consciousness’. Indeed, he never calls anything ‘false consciousness’, a phrase that does not occur in his work... The noun is almost always accompanied by an epithet such as ‘German’, ‘republican’, ‘political’ or ‘Hegelian’, or by a qualifying phrase, as in ‘the ideology of the bourgeoisie’ or ‘the ideology of the political economist’. More typical in any case is the adjectival usage in which such varied items as ‘forms’, ‘expressions’, ‘phrases’, ’conceptions’, ‘deception’, and ‘distortion’ are said to have an ‘ideological’ character. Even more distinctive is the frequency, amounting to approximately half of all references in the relevant range, of invocations of the ‘ideologists’, the creators and purveyors of the ideological forms.

“Relative truth” and “absolute truth” do not exist separately, but have dialectical unity with each other. On the one hand, “absolute truth” is the sum of all “relative truths.” On the other hand, in all relative truths there are always elements of absolute truth.

Lenin wrote that “absolute truth results from the sum-total of relative truths in the course of their development; [...] relative truths represent relatively faithful reflections of an object existing independently of man; [...] these reflections become more and more faithful; [...] every scientific truth, notwithstanding its relative nature, contains an element of absolute truth.”^[113]

Correct realization of the dialectical relationship between relative and absolute truth plays a very important role in criticizing and overcoming extremism and false consciousness in perception and in action. If we exaggerate the absoluteness of the truth of knowledge which we possess, or downplay its relativity, we will fall into the false consciousness of metaphysics, dogmatism, conservativism, and stagnation.

Annotation 236

Intentional or unintentional exaggeration of the absoluteness of truth — i.e., considering our knowledge to be more complete and/or aligned with reality than it actually is — leads to incorrect viewpoints and mindsets, including:

Metaphysics is a philosophical system which seeks truth through the systematic categorization of knowledge [see Annotation 8, p. 8]. This is a flawed method of seeking knowledge because it considers truth to be essentially static and unchanging, and upholds the erroneous notion that truth can be systematically broken down into discrete, isolated categories. In addition to being fundamentally incorrect about the nature of truth and knowledge, it leads to the incorrect presumption that such static categorization of knowledge can lead to truth at all. Metaphysics fails to see truth and consciousness as a process, and instead sees truth as a static assembly of categorized facts and data.

Dogmatism occurs when one only accounts for commonalities and considers theory itself as the sole basis of truth. Dogmatism inherently overstates the absoluteness of knowledge, as dogmatic positions uphold certain theoretical principles as complete, inviolable, and completely developed. This explicitly denies the continuously developing process of advancing knowledge and consciousness.

Conservativism includes any position that seeks to prevent change, or to undo change to return to an earlier state of development. Such positions deny the continuous development of consciousness, knowledge, and practice, and incorrectly assert incorrect positions; or mistake relative truth for absolute truth.

Stagnation is an inability or unwillingness to change and adapt consciousness and practice in accordance with developing material conditions. Stagnation can stem from, or cause, overstatement of absolute truth in theory and forestall necessary development of both consciousness and practical ability.

On the contrary, if we exaggerate the relativity of the truth of knowledge which we possess, or downplay its absoluteness, we will fall into relativism, thereby leading to subjectivism, revisionism, sophistry, and skepticism.

Annotation 237

Relativism is the belief that human consciousness can only achieve relative understanding of the world, and that truth can therefore never be objectively discovered. Relativism is, thus, the overstatement of the relative nature of truth and the denial of the existence of absolute truth. Relativism leads to such incorrect viewpoints and mindsets as:

Subjectivism: which occurs when one centers one’s own self and one’s own conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test their own perceptions against material and social reality [see Annotation 211, p. 205]. This position denies that truth can be discovered in the external material world, falsely believing that absolute truth stems only from conscious activity.

Revisionism: a failure to recognize and accept commonalities in conscious activity, focusing only on the private [see Private and Common, p. 128]. Revisionism leads to constant and unnecessary reassessment and reevaluation of both knowledge and practice. Revisionism, thus, is a position which overstates the relativity of truth and ignores truths which are more fully developed towards absoluteness.

Sophistry: the use of falsehoods and fallacious arguments to deceive [see Annotation 116, p. 118]. Sophistry is, thus, the intentional denial of truth and the intentional mischaracterization of truths as either overly relative or as not truths at all.

Skepticism: the belief that truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality [see Annotation 200, p. 192]. By denying that truth is discoverable at all, skepticism explicitly rejects absolute truth and declares that all truth is relative and unreliable.

In addition to objectivity, absoluteness, and relativity, truth also has concreteness. The concreteness of truth refers to the degree to which a truth is attached to specific objects, in specific conditions, at a specific point in time. This means that all accurate knowledge always refers to a specific situation which involves specific subjects which exist in a specific place and time. The content of truth cannot be pure abstraction, disconnected from reality, but it is always associated with certain, specific objects and phenomena which exist in a specific space, time, and arrangement, with specific internal and external relationships. Therefore, truth is associated with specific historical conditions. This specificity to time, place, relations, etc., is what we call concreteness.

Knowledge, if detached from specific historical conditions, will fall into pure abstraction. Therefore, it will not be accurate — it will not align with reality — and such knowledge cannot be considered truth. When emphasizing this property, Lenin wrote: “Truth is always concrete, never abstract.”^[114] Mastering the principle of the concreteness of truth has an important methodological significance in cognitive and practical activities. It is required that consideration and evaluation of all things and phenomena must be based on a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. In developing and applying theory, we must be conscious of specific historical conditions. According to Lenin, Marxism’s nature, its essence, lies in the concrete analysis of specific situations; Marx’s method is, above all, to consider the objective content of the historical process in a specific time.

Annotation 238

In other words, Marxism is rooted in seeking truth by examining reality from a historical and comprehensive viewpoint. For more information, see Annotation 114, p. 116.

- The Role of Truth in Reality.

In order to survive and develop, humans must conduct practical activities. These activities involve transforming the environment, nature, and human society. At the same time, through these activities, humans perform — knowingly or unknowingly — the process of perfecting and developing our conscious and practical abilities. It is this process that helps human cognitive activities develop. Practical activities can only be successful and effective once humans apply accurate knowledge of objective reality to our practical activities. Therefore, truth is one of the prerequisites that ensure success and efficiency in practical activities.

The relationship between truth and practical activities is a dialectical relationship which serves as the basis for the movement and development of both truth and practical activity: truth develops through practice, and practice develops through the correct application of truth which people have gained through practical activities.

Annotation 239

Truth and Practical Activities have a dialectical relationship in which truth develops through practice, and practice develops through the correct application of truth.

Practice only develops when truth about the universe is consciously applied to practical activities. For example, farm output increases as we learn more truth about the way crops grow and how land can be properly managed. Simultaneously, truth can only be developed through practical activity, as all ideas and knowledge must be tested through methodological observation, experimentation, and other forms of practical activity.

A theory is an idea or system of ideas intended to explain an aspect, characteristic, or tendency of objective reality. Theories are not inherently truthful; holding incorrect theories constitutes false consciousness. Practice (or praxis) is purposeful conscious activity which improves our understanding of the world. Theory and practice have a dialectical relationship with one another which, if understood, helps us to discover truth.

Truth and practical activities mutually develop one another over time.

This dialectical relationship between theory and practical activities means that we must never favor theory over practice, nor practice over theory, but that we must rather balance development of theoretical understanding as we engage in practical activities to test our knowledge against reality and to develop our practice with ever-advancing understanding of the world. As practice and theory develop one another, our understanding of objective reality comes closer and closer to truth.

In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx summarizes the relationship between theory and practice, writing:

The problem of the external world is here put as the problem of its transformation: the problem of the cognition of the external world as an integral part of the problem of transformation: the problem of theory as a practical problem.

Here, Marx explains that theory is concerned with solving the “problem” of transforming the external world through practice, and that “cognition of the external world” is required to solve the “problem of transformation. In other words, we must improve our theory in order to improve our practical ability to transform our world, and we learn about the world (thus improving our theory) through those practical activities.

Marx also writes in Theses on Feuerbach that:

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory, but it is a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power... of his thinking.

This point is key for understanding the dialectical relationship between practice and theory: in order to be useful, theory must be proven through practice. Thus, we must seek to develop our practice through theory, and our theory through practice.

Engels summarizes these ideas a bit more colorfully in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

Before there was argument there was action... In the beginning was the deed ... And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Engels wrote in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy of the uselessness of what might be called “pure theory,” divorced from practice, and the sort of radical skepticism which refutes that any practical knowledge can ever really be obtained by human beings:

There is yet a set of different philosophers — those who question the possibility of any cognition, or at least of an exhaustive cognition of the world... The most telling refutation of this (scepticism and agnosticism) as of all other philosophical crotchets, is praxis, namely experiment and industry.

It is practice, according to Engels, which proves the merit and utility of theory.

Through experiment and industry — through practical activities in the material world — we can test our ideas and dialectically develop both theory and practice. Lenin built upon these ideas in his own work, writing in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism:

The materialist theory, the theory of the reflection of objects by our mind, is here presented with absolute clarity: things exist outside us. Our perceptions and ideas are their images. Verification of these images, differentiation between true and false images, is given by practice.

Here, Lenin explains how only a proper understanding and application of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice can lead to the negation of false consciousness [see Annotation 235, p. 231] and the dialectical development of both practice and theory. Simply arguing and debating about ideas without relating them directly to practice will never lead to truth, nor will such pure-theory argumentation develop theory or practice in any meaningful way.

This brings to mind another line from Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach:

The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

The philosophy of dialectical materialism and the system of materialist dialectics are designed specifically to produce action and to avoid such “scholastic questions” and “pure-theory argumentation.”

Ho Chi Minh summarized these ideas perhaps most clearly and precisely of all in the very title of his article: Practice Generates Knowledge, Understanding Advances Theory, Theory Leads to Practice:

Knowledge comes from practice. And through practice, knowledge becomes theory. That theory, again, has to be put into practice. Knowledge advances not just from thought to theory, but, above all, from applying theory to revolutionary practice. Once the world’s law is fully grasped as theory, it is critical to put that theory into practice by changing the world, by increasing production, and by practicing class struggle and struggling for national self-determination. This is a continuous process of obtaining knowledge.

“If Uncle Ho says we will win, we will win!” — Propaganda poster from the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1984).

Afterword

If it seems that this book has come to an end somewhat abruptly, it’s because this is really just the first of four major sections of the full volume from which this text is drawn. If you are reading this afterword after reading the entirety of the preceding contents, then congratulations, you have completed the equivalent to a full semester’s coursework for a class on dialectical materialist philosophy which all Vietnamese college students are required to take!

The next sections in this curriculum, each covered in the original full volume, include:

Part 2: Historical Materialism

This section covers the definition and basic principles of historical materialism, which is the field of work dedicated to applying dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to human history and human society. In the West, historical materialism and dialectical materialism are often conflated, but this is in error. Historical materialism is an applied field of dialectical materialist philosophy and materialist dialectical methodology which is used in the pursuit of understanding and interpreting human history.

Part 3: Political Economy

This section condenses the three cardinal volumes of Capital by Karl Marx and covers three primary doctrines:

1. The doctrine of value.

2. The doctrine of surplus value.

3. The doctrines of monopolist capitalism and state monopolist capitalism.

Political Economy, in this course, can be considered the application of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to the analysis and understanding of the capitalist mode of production from the perspective of the socialist revolutionary movement.

Part 4: Scientific Socialism

This section relies on an established understanding of dialectical materialism, historical materialism, and political economy as a foundation for developing socialist revolution. The three chapters of this section on Scientific Socialism are:

1. The Historical Mission of the Working Class and the Socialist Revolution

2. The Primary Social-Political Issues of the Process of Building a Socialist Revolution 3. Realistic Socialism and Potential Socialism

Moving Forward

We are already working on the translation of Part 2 of this curriculum, and we hope to complete it as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we believe this book provides the reader with enough of a foundation to continue studying and to begin applying the principles of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics in political struggle.

We highly discourage readers from self-study in isolation, just as we discourage individual political action. The best way to study socialism is alongside other socialists.

Depending on where you live, you may be able to find political education resources provided by communist parties, socialist book clubs, or other organizations. If such resources aren’t available, it should be fairly easy to find study groups, workshops, and affinity groups online where you can study with like-minded comrades. Of course, socialist revolution requires more than just study, as we hope this book has thoroughly explained. Theory must be coupled with practice. As Ho Chi Minh wrote: “If you read a thousand books, but you fail to apply theory into practice, you are nothing but a bookshelf.”

To avoid atrophying into the proverbial bookshelf, we encourage you to go out into the world and apply these ideas creatively and collectively with other socialists. Dialectical materialism is a philosophy that was developed from the ground up for application in the real world. Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics provide a functional model of reality, a way of looking at highly complicated systems, with all their dynamic internal and external relations. Dialectical materialist philosophy demands that we see human systems as processes in motion. In order to fully comprehend such dynamic processes, we must engage with them, which is why Ho Chi Minh taught that “we are not afraid to make mistakes; we would only be afraid of making mistakes if we were not determined to correct them.”^[115]

As we mentioned in the foreword, many socialists in the West suffer from a lack of practical engagement. Far too many socialists fall into utopianism, idealism, and social chauvinism and we believe this largely stems from failures to test ideas against reality through praxis. We hope that this book has impressed upon the reader that simply arguing about pure theory is a useless and futile pursuit. Indeed, sparring verbally over such “scholastic questions,” as Marx described them, is counter-productive. Marx and Engels defined such failure to engage in theory as “critical criticism” — that is to say, criticism for the sake of criticism. As Marx and Engels wrote in The Holy Family, such critical criticism is futile, as we will never think our way to revolution:

According to Critical Criticism, the whole evil lies only in the workers’ “thinking”. It is true that the English and French workers have formed associations in which they exchange opinions not only on their immediate needs as workers, but on their needs as human beings. In their associations, moreover, they show a very thorough and comprehensive consciousness of the “enormous” and “immeasurable” power which arises from their co-operation. But these mass-minded, communist workers, employed, for instance, in the Manchester or Lyons workshops, do not believe that by “pure thinking” they will be able to argue away their industrial masters and their own practical debasement. They are most painfully aware of the difference between being and thinking, between consciousness and life. They know that property, capital, money, wage-labour and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement and that therefore they must be abolished in a practical, objective way for man to become man not only in thinking, in consciousness, but in mass being, in life. Critical Criticism, on the contrary, teaches them that they cease in reality to be wage-workers if in thinking they abolish the thought of wage-labour; if in thinking they cease to regard themselves as wage-workers and, in accordance with that extravagant notion, no longer let themselves be paid for their person. As absolute idealists, as ethereal beings, they will then naturally be able to live on the ether of pure thought.

Engels expressed his frustration with such endless, utopian, idealist debates in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.

Engels concludes by punctuating why he and Marx had developed dialectical materialism as a praxis-oriented philosophical foundation for scientific socialism: “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.” We hope that the readers of this text will seek out real bases for your development in theory and praxis, and we trust that you will quickly discover that developing practice develops theory, and vice-versa.

Remember that Marx and Engels, themselves, were not just theorists who scribbled down their thoughts in an “scholarly” vacuum. They were revolutionists themselves, highly engaged in political struggle and, in so struggling, they risked their lives and freedom over the course of many decades. This struggle is what led to the change and development of their ideas over time. The same can be said for every other successful socialist revolutionary in history.

Vo Nguyen Giap, the great general who led Vietnam’s military forces through resistance wars against fascist Japan, colonialist France, and the imperialist USA, describes how he applied such principles on the battlefield in his book People’s War, People’s Army:

During the Resistance War, owing to constant fighting, the training of our troops could not be carried out continuously for a lengthy period but only between battles or campaigns. We actively implemented the guiding principles ‘To train and to learn while we fight.’ After the difficult years at the beginning of the Resistance War, we succeeded in giving good training to our army. The practical viewpoint in this training deserves to be highlighted. The content of training became most practical and rich. Training was in touch with practical fighting: the troops were trained in accordance with the next day’s fighting, and victory or defeat in the fighting was the best gauge for the control and assessment of the result of the training. On the basis of gradual unification of the organisation and its equipment, the content of training in the various units of the regular army was also systematised step by step.

Here, Vo Nguyen Giap has provided a concrete example of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, and their inseparability. This fundamental aspect of dialectical materialist philosophy demands that we think and act like scientists to change the world, rather than simply speculating and imagining ineffectually like armchair philosophers. As Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” We encourage you to apply what you learn in this and other books to change the world.

Advice on Further Study

As you advance in your studies of socialist literature and theory, we offer the following advice:

First, you must recognize that the specific language used by revolutionary leaders and thinkers may vary widely across time and around the world. Fashions in language develop over time, and many contributions — like the text you’ve just read — come to us through translation from countless languages. This is why we believe it critical to develop an understanding of the spirit of the ideas of any particular text, and not to get bogged down in semantics and terminology. Liberal ideologists have done much to distract and divert intellectual energy with endless metaphysical altercation over the “proper” usage of this or that word. We caution strongly against this attitude, which makes us susceptible to sophistry, opportunism, and the sewing of undue conflict and division amidst the working class. We have pointed out various instances where Marx, Engels, and Lenin used different language to describe the same concepts. We also offer the reminder that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were writing in different languages at different times, just as socialists around the world have different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As socialism is an international movement, we must stress the importance of avoiding linguistic barriers by engaging with one another in good faith and testing conflicting ideas and interpretations of theory against one another through practice instead of getting bogged down with “critical criticism.”

Next, we encourage students of socialist philosophy to always keep in mind that the doctrines and philosophies of revolutionary figures are products of the times and places in which they were conceived. It would be a mistake to view the works of any revolutionary figure as a road map or a set of instructions to follow by rote. Even Marx and Engels changed and developed their own ideas over the decades they were active, as they addressed in the 1872 preface to The Communist Manifesto:

The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’ s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.”

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Ho Chi Minh also frequently took pains to point out that their revolutionary theories were devised specifically to suit the particular objective conditions of their own respective times and places. For example, in What is to be Done, Lenin discusses the question of secrecy in revolutionary activity. Lenin recognizes that secrecy is not always necessary, such as in the more liberal social democracies which existed in Europe in his era. In Russia, however — with its autocratic monarchy — material conditions called for more covert activity:

In countries where political liberty exists the distinction between a trade union and a political organisation is clear enough, as is the distinction between trade unions and Social-Democracy. The relations between the latter and the former will naturally vary in each country according to historical, legal, and other conditions; they may be more or less close, complex, etc. (in our opinion they should be as close and as little complicated as possible); but there can be no question in free countries of the organisation of trade unions coinciding with the organisation of the Social-Democratic Party. In Russia, however, the yoke of the autocracy appears at first glance to obliterate all distinctions between the Social-Democratic organisation and the workers’ associations, since all workers’ associations and all study circles are prohibited, and since the principal manifestation and weapon of the workers’ economic struggle — the strike — is regarded as a criminal (and sometimes even as a political!) offence.”

Ho Chi Minh was even more explicit about the requirement to tailor theory to current and local material conditions in a speech to the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1950:

Studying Marxism-Leninism is not just a matter of repeating the slogan ‘workers of the world, unite’ like a parrot. We must unify Marxism-Leninism with the reality of Vietnam’s revolution. Talking about Marxism-Leninism in Vietnam is talking about the specific guidelines and policies of the Communist Party of Vietnam. For example, our priority now is: great solidarity!

In a 2001 document, the Communist Party of Vietnam explained how Ho Chi Minh tailored lessons learned from prior revolutionaries to the specific material conditions of revolutionary Vietnam:

Ho Chi Minh’s thought is... the creative application and development of Marxism-Leninism to the specific conditions of our country. Ho Chi Minh learned profound lessons from Lenin and the Russian October Revolution, but he did not simply use those lessons as a template, nor did he just copy that foundation. Instead, he absorbed the spirit of Marxism-Leninism. Lenin’s thesis allowed Ho Chi Minh to see what was necessary for the Vietnamese people — the path of national liberation. Ho Chi Minh had creative arguments that contributed to enriching Marxism-Leninism in the issue of national liberation revolution, building a new democratic regime and the transitional path to socialism in an Eastern, semi-feudal colony which was still very backward: Vietnam.

As you find your own revolutionary path, you must carefully examine the objective conditions of your own time and place, and work collectively and collaboratively with your fellow revolutionists to decide how theory and lessons gleaned from history apply to your own circumstances. And, of course, you must test the validity of your conclusions against reality through practice.

Creative Application of Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics

Finally, we implore you to apply dialectical materialism creatively. Don’t look at this (or any other) book as a set of static instructions. Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics are living, breathing systems of thought which benefit from the ideas and imagination of comrades working and struggling together. Seek the spirit of these ideas, study revolutionary theory and history, then apply what you learn in your daily life. Combat dogmatism and avoid arguments over pure theory. Determine what works and what doesn’t through activity in the real world, and apply what you learn from practical experience to your theoretical development. Over time, you will begin to see how practice and theory impact and develop one another. When you are struggling with a particular problem in revolutionary practice, you will find yourself reading theory in a new light, discovering information and ideas which might be applicable to your immediate circumstances. And as you study theory, you will find that it also impacts your practice, giving you tools and perspective and methodologies for action which you might never have imagined on your own.

We have tried to make this book a useful companion for further study. We have also made the digital version available for free online. If you have found it useful, we hope you will share it freely and widely.

In Closing

One last time we would like to thank Dr. Vijay Prashad and Dr. Taimur Rahman for their wonderful insights on our translation, and to acknowledge the monumental work of the Vietnamese scholars who wrote and revised the original text from which this volume is drawn. We also want to recognize once more the donors and supporters who have given us the precious resource of time to translate and annotate this work. Finally, we want to thank the teams at the Iskra Books and The International Magazine, who have provided invaluable editing and peer review services, promotion, and guidance. You can find all their publications, respectively, at:

IskraBooks.org

InternationalMagz.com

If you would like to download the free digital version of this book, support future translation work, or if you would like to get in touch, you can visit our website:

BanyanHouse.org

We will leave you, now, with the immortal words of the Manifesto:

Workers of the world, unite!

You have nothing to lose but your chains.

In Solidarity,

- Luna Nguyen, Translator & Annotations

- Emerican Johnson, Editor, Illustrator, & Annotations

“Marxism-Leninism — Long Live the Victories” — a demonstration to welcome the liberation army in the South of Vietnam on April 30, 1975.

[Appendices]

Appendix A: Basic Pairs of Categories Used in Materialist Dialectics

This is a summary of the basic pairs of universal categories and their characteristics which are discussed in depth starting on p. 126.

Private	Common
A specific item, event, or process.	The properties that are shared between Private things, phenomena, and ideas.

Private is commonly referred to in literature as Special/Specific while Common is commonly called General. Note: When an aspect or characteristic is not held in common with anything else in existence, it is considered Unique. The Unique can become Common, just as the Common can become Unique. Example: a Unique design for an object may be replicated, making it Common. A type of item that is Common may gradually disappear until there is only one example left, making it Unique. See p. 128.

Reason	Result
Mutual impact between things, phenomena, or ideas which causes each to change.	The change caused by a Reason.

Reason and Result may be referred to as Cause and Effect, respectively, though this should lead to confusion with metaphysical conceptions of cause and effect. Note: Reasons can be Direct or Indirect. See p. 138

Obviousness	Randomness
Refers to events that always and predictably happen due to factors of internal material structure.	Events caused by external impacts and interactions which are thus not completely predictable.

Obvious may be referred to as Necessary, while Randomness may be referred to as Accidental. See p. 145.

Content	Form
What something is made of.	The shape that contains content.

Ways in which Content and Form are discussed and perceived can can vary wildly depending on the subject being discussed and the viewpoint from which the subject is being considered. See p. 145.

Essence	Phenomena
Features that make something develop a certain way.	The expression of the essence in certain conditions.

See p. 156.

Possibility	Reality
What may happen, or might exist, in the future, if certain developments take place.	What is happening, or what exists, at the present moment.

See p. 160.

Appendix B: the Two Basic Principles of Dialectical Materialism

The Principle of General Relationships This principle states that:

“Materialist dialectics upholds the position that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in mutual relationships with each other, regulate each other, transform into each other, and that nothing exists in complete isolation.”

From this Principle, we find the characteristics of Diversity in Unity and Unity in Diversity; the basis of Diversity in Unity is the fact that every thing, phenomenon, and idea contains many different relationships; the basis of Unity in Diversity is that many different relationships exist — unified — within each and every thing, phenomenon, and idea.

The Characteristic of Diversity in Unity is derived from the fact that there exist an infinite number of diverse relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas, but all of these relationships share the same foundation in the material world.

The Characteristic of Unity in Diversity is derived from the fact that when we examine the universal relationships that exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity.

The Principle of Development This principle states that:

“Development is a process that comes from within the thing-in-itself; the process of solving the contradictions within things and phenomena. Therefore, development is inevitable, objective, and occurs without dependence on human will.”

The Characteristic of Objectiveness of Development stems from the origin of motion. Since motion originates from mutual impacts which occur between external things, objects, and relationships, the motions themselves also occur externally (relative to all other things, phenomena, and objects). This gives motion itself objective characteristics.

The Characteristic of Generality of Development stems from the fact that development occurs in every process that exists in every field of nature, society, and human thought; in every thing, every phenomenon, and every process and stage of these things and phenomena.

The Characteristic of Diversity of Development stems from the fact that every thing, phenomenon, and idea has its own process of development that is not totally identical to the process of development of any other thing, phenomenon, or idea.

Appendix C: the Three Universal Laws of Materialist Dialectics

The Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality

The law of transformation between quantity and quality is a universal law which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought. The law was formulated by Friedrich Engels in Dialectics of Nature, and states that:

“In nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion.” See more on p. 163.

The Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites

The law of unification and contradiction between opposites is the essence of dialectics. It states, as formulated by V. I. Lenin in Summary of Dialectics:

“The fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradiction which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas.” See more on p. 175.

The Law of Negation of Negation

The law of negation of negation describes the fundamental and universal tendency of movement and development to occur through a cyclical form of development through what is termed “negation of negation.” Formulated by Friedrich Engels in Anti-Dühring, it states:

“The true, natural, historical, and dialectical negation is (formally) the moving source of all development--the division into opposites, their struggle and resolution, and what is more, on the basis of experience gained, the original point is achieved again (partly in history, fully in thought), but at a higher stage.” See more on p. 185.

Appendix D: Forms of Consciousness and Knowledge

Consciousness refers to the self-aware, productive, and creative motion and activity of the human brain. Practical activity is the most direct basis, motive, and purpose of consciousness, and is the criterion for testing truth. See: The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness, p. 216.

Knowledge is the content of consciousness. Knowledge includes data about the world, such as ideas, memories, and other thoughts which are derived by direct observation and practical activities in the material world, through scientific experiments, or through abstract reflection of practical and scientific activities which occur within consciousness.

Consciousness and Knowledge have a dialectical relationship with one another: knowledge is developed within consciousness, and consciousness develops to higher levels as knowledge is accumulated and tested against reality (which also develops knowledge itself). In this manner, consciousness and knowledge develop into higher forms over time in individual consciousness and human society. Thus, consciousness and knowledge can be considered as existing in various forms which represent stages of development in dialectical processes of development.

Note that the development processes of knowledge and consciousness are dialectical in nature, not linear. For example, after empirical consciousness develops into theoretical consciousness, theoretical consciousness will then impact empirical consciousness, developing empirical consciousness into a higher stage of development. This is true for all development processes related to empirical and theoretical consciousness. These development processes and forms of consciousness and knowledge are explained in more detail in Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, starting on page 204.

Forms of Consciousness

Consciousness is a process of the development of knowledge through a combination of human brain activity and human practical activity in the physical world (i.e., labor). The development of consciousness can be considered on the criteria of concrete/abstract and of passive/active. For more information, see Annotation 216, p. 210.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-99.png

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-100.png

The Cognitive Process

The Cognitive Process is a model developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin which represents the dialectical path of consciousness to truth. For more information, see Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth on page 219.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-101.png

Forms of Knowledge

For more information see Annotation 218, p. 214.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-102.png

Appendix E: Properties of Truth

Truth is the alignment of consciousness with objective reality. All truths are objective, relative, absolute, and concrete. Truths also have characteristics of concreteness and abstractness.

Objectivity: The content of truth is external to the subjective will of human beings. The content of knowledge must be aligned with objective reality, not vice versa. This means that the content of accurate knowledge is not a product of pure subjective reasoning but is objective in nature.

Absoluteness: Absolute truth^[116] is derived from the complete alignment between objective reality and human consciousness. The possibility of acquiring absolute truth in the process of the development of conscious understanding is theoretically limitless. However, in reality, our conscious ability to reflect reality is limited by the specific material conditions of each generation of humanity, of practical limitations, and by the spatial and temporal conditions of reflected subjects. Therefore, truth is also relative.

Relativity: Relative truth is truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment. To put it another way, relative truth represents knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. In relative truth, there is only partial alignment — in some (but not all) aspects — between consciousness and the material world.

Dialectical Relationship Between Absolute and Relative Truth: Relative truth and absolute truth do not exist separately, but have dialectical unity with each other. On the one hand, “absolute truth” is the sum of all “relative truths.” On the other hand, in all relative truths there are always elements of absolute truth.

Concreteness: The concreteness of truth refers to the degree to which a truth is attached to specific objects, in specific conditions, at a specific point in time. This means that all accurate knowledge always refers to a specific situation which involves specific subjects which exist in a specific place and time. The content of truth cannot be pure abstraction, disconnected from reality, but it is always associated with certain, specific objects and phenomena which exist in a specific space, time, and arrangement, with specific internal and external relationships. Therefore, truth is associated with specific historical conditions. This specificity to time, place, relations, etc., is concreteness.

Abstractness: Abstract knowledge is knowledge which is not attached (or less attached) to specific times, places, relations, etc. Some degree of abstraction is necessary to develop theoretical understanding of general laws and the nature of objective reality, but care should be taken knowledge does not become completely detached from specific historical conditions, as this will result in pure abstraction. Knowledge which is purely abstract will not align with reality, and such knowledge cannot be considered truth.

Appendix F: Common Deviations From Dialectical Materialism

Throughout the history of the development of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics, there have been many philosophical and methodological deviations which have derived from incorrect analysis, interpretation, and a failure to properly link theory and practice. Below are descriptions of some of the more common deviations which the reader should be aware of.

Bureaucracy: An expression of dogmatism which arises when theory becomes overly formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory.

Conservativism: A mindset which seeks to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Dogmatism: A breakdown of the dialectical relationship between theoretical consciousness and empirical consciousness, which arrests the development process of knowledge and consciousness. Usually the result of: failure to seek commonalities; considering theory itself as the sole basis of truth rather than practice; ignoring practical experience and considering pre-established theory, alone, as unalterable truth.

Eclecticism: An approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject; the philosophical error of inconsistently applying different theories and principles in different situations. Empiricism: A broad philosophical position which holds that only experience (including internal experience) can be held as a source of knowledge or truth. Though nominally opposed to idealism, it is considered a faulty (or naive) form of materialism, since it sees the world as only unconnected, static appearances and ignores the reality of dialectical (changing) relationships between objects.

Idealism: A philosophical position which holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within human consciousness. Idealists believe that relying on human reason exclusively or as a first basis is the best way to seek truth. Various forms of idealism exist, broadly broken down into subjective idealism, which denies the existence of an external objective world, and objective idealism, which accepts that an external objective world exists, but denies that knowledge can be reliably gained about it through sense perception.

Opportunism: A system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, no coherent viewpoint, leaning on whatever is beneficial for the opportunist in the short term.

Revisionism: A failure to recognize and accept commonalities in conscious activity, focusing only on the private. Revisionism leads to constant and unnecessary reassessment and reevaluation of both knowledge and practice. Revisionism, thus, is a position which overstates the relativity of truth and ignores truths which are more fully developed towards absoluteness.

Rigidity: An unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.

Skepticism: The belief truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality. By denying that truth is discoverable at all, skepticism explicitly rejects absolute truth and declares that all truth is relative and unreliable. Solipsism: A form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. As Marxist ethicist Howard Selsam wrote in Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World: “If I believe that I alone exist and that you and all your arguments exist only in my mind and are my own creations then all possible arguments will not shake me one iota. No logic can possibly convince [the] solipsist.”

Sophistry: The use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.

Subjectivism: The centering of one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test one’s own perceptions against material and social reality. Subjectivists tend to believe that they can independently reason their way to truth in their own minds without practical experience and activity in the material world.

Utilitarianism: An ethical philosophical theory founded by Jeremy Bentham which seeks to maximize “utility,” which is considered to be a metaphysical property embodying “benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness.” Karl Marx dismissed utilitarianism as overly abstract, in that it reduces all social relationships to the single characteristic of “utility.” He also viewed utilitarianism as metaphysically static and tied to the status quo of current society, since utilitarianism does not address class dynamics and views all relations in the current status quo of society, making utilitarianism an essentially conservative theory. Marx also pointed out that Utilitarianism essentially views individuals as private individuals, not as social individuals, and seeks to work out solutions to the practical problems of human society through reasoning alone without examining material conditions and processes, and without taking into consideration practice and development, writing:

“The whole criticism of the existing world by the utility theory was... restricted within a narrow range. Remaining within the confines of bourgeois conditions, it could criticise only those relations which had been handed down from a past epoch and were an obstacle to the development of the bourgeoisie... the economic content gradually turned the utility theory into a mere apologia for the existing state of affairs, an attempt to prove that under existing conditions the mutual relations of people today are the most advantageous and generally useful.”

[Back Matter]

Glossary & Index

Absolute Truth	Absolute Truth can refer to: 1. The recognition that objective and accurate truth can be drawn from sense perception of the material world along with labor and practice activities in the material world. The opposite of this position is Relativism. See p. 56, 94, 194, 228–229, 232–234. 2. Hegel’s notion of Absolute Truth: that there will eventually be some end point of to the process of rational consciousness at which point humanity will arrive at a final stage of knowledge and consciousness. See p. 228. See also: Relative Truth, Relativism, Stagnation, Truth.
Absolutization	To hold a belief or supposition as always true in all situations and without exception. See p. 49.
Abstract Labor	The abstract conception of expenditure of human energy in the form of labor, without taking into account the value of labor output. When the value of labor output is taken into consideration, it is referred to as concrete labor. See p. 15, 17.
Adam Smith	(1723–1790) British logic professor, moral philosophy professor, and economist. Along with David Ricardo, Adam Smith was one of the founders of political economy, which Marx both drew from and critiqued in his analysis and critique of capitalism. See p. 14, 155.
Ahistoric Perspective	A perspective which considers aspects of human society without due consideration of historical processes of development. For example, Adam Smith and David Ricardo viewed political economy ahistorically, viewing capitalism as a static, universal, and eternal product of natural law rather than seeing capitalism as a product of historical processes of development which would change and develop over time. See p. 116.
Base	Also known as: Economic Base; Economic Basis. The material processes which humans undertake to survive and transform our environment to support our ways of living. In the dialectical relationship between base and superstructure, the base refers to the relationship which humans have with the means of production, including the ownership of the means of production and the organization of labor. See p. 23. See also: Superstructure.
Biological Motion	One of the five basic forms of motion described by Engels in Dialectics of Nature. Biological motion refers to changes and development within living objects and their genetic structure. See p. 61.
Biological Reflection	A complex form of reflection found within organic subjects in the natural world and expressed by excitation, induction, and reflexes. See p. 65.
Bourgeoisie	The owners of the means of production and the ruling class under capitalism; also known as the capitalist class. See p. 3, 23, 30, 41, 50, 63, 96. See also: Proletariat, Petty Bourgeoisie.
Bureaucracy	An expression of dogmatism which arises when theory becomes overly formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory. See p. 217–218. C→→M→→C C = A Commodity M = The Money Commodity The mode of circulation described by Marx as occurring under pre-capitalist economies of simple exchange, in which the producers and consumers of commodities have a direct relationship to the commodities which are being bought and sold. The sellers have produced the commodities with their own labor, and they directly consume the commodities which they purchase. See also: M→C→M’ Marx called this mode of circulation “simple commodity production.” See p. 16.
Capitalism	The current stage of human political economy, defined by private ownership of the means of production. Referenced throughout.
Capitalist Class	See: Bourgeoisie
Capitalist Commodity Production	The capitalist mode of production which utilizes the M→C→M’ mode of circulation, in which capitalists own the means of production and pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor, which is used to produce commodities. Capitalists then sell these commodities for profits which are not shared with the workers who provided the labor. See p. 15.
Category	The most general grouping of aspects, attributes, and relations of things, phenomena, and ideas. Different specific fields of inquiry may categorize things, phenomena, and/or ideas differently from one another. See p. 126.
Category Pair	A pair of philosophical categories within materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics tend to focus on universal category pairs which can be used to examine the characteristics, relations, and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Examples of category pairs include: private and common; content and form; reason and result; essence and phenomena. See p. 127.
Characteristics	The features and attributes that exist internally — within — a given thing, phenomena, or idea. See p. 115.
Chemical Motion	Changes of organic and inorganic substances in processes of combination and separation. See p. 61.
Chemical Reflection	The reflection of mechanical, physical, and chemical changes and reactions of inorganic matter (i.e., changes in structures, position, physical-chemical properties, and the processes of combining and dissolving substances). See p. 65–66.
Circulation	The way in which commodities and money are exchanged for one another. See p. 16.
Commodity	In Marxist political economy, commodities include anything which can be bought and sold, with both a use value (i.e. it satisfies a need of any kind) and a value-form (aka. ‘Exchange value’ and understood as the average socially necessary labour time needed to produce this object). Under capitalism, more and more human activity and production is ‘commodified’ (mediated through market exchange). See p. 15, 87, 133.
Common	See: Private and Common
Common Laws	Laws (of nature and/or human society) that are applicable to a broader range of subjects than private laws, and which impact many different subjects. For instance: the law of preservation of mass, the law of preservation of energy, etc. See p. 162.
Comprehensive Viewpoint	A viewpoint which seeks to consider the internal dialectical relationships between the component parts, factors, and aspects within a thing or phenomenon, and which considers external mutual interactions with with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Dialectical materialist philosophy demands a comprehensive basis in order to fully and properly understand things and phenomena in order to effectively solve problems in real life and develop humanity towards communism. See p. 115, 172, 235.
Conception	A relatively complete reflection within human consciousness of objective things and phenomena. See p. 221–22.
Concrete Labor	The production of a specific commodity with a specific value through labor. When labor is considered without the consideration of output value, it is referred to as abstract labor. See p. 15, 17.
Conditioned Reflex	Conditioned reflexes are reactions which are learned by organisms. These responses are acquired as animals associate previously unrelated neural stimuli with a particular reaction. See p. 66, 68.
Consciousness	The dynamic and creative reflection of the objective world in human brains; the subjective image of the objective world which is produced by the human brain. See p. 68–69, 70.
Content	See: Content and Form.
Content and Form (Category Pair)	Content is the philosophical category which refers to the sum of all aspects, attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from. The Form category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Form thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas. Content and Form have a dialectical relationship with one another, in which content determines form and form impacts back on content. See p. 115, 147155, 166.
Contradiction	A contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose one another, leading to mutual development. See p. 123, 159, 163, 169, 175–191.
Consciousness	The self-aware, productive, creative motion and activity of the human brain. See p. 216, 249.
Conservativism	Also referred to as Prejudice; a mindset which seeks to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 125, 233.
David Hume	(1711 — 1776) Scottish philosopher who developed radical skepticism as a philosophy of empiricist rejection of human knowledge. See p. 11, 29, 56, 7273.
David Ricardo	(1772 — 1823) British economist who, along with Adam Smith, was one of the key figures in the development of Political Economy which was a basis for much of the work of Marx and Engels. See p. 14, 18, 155.
Deductive Inference	Logical inference which extrapolates from the general to the specific. See p. 224.
Definition	The first phase of rational consciousness. During this phase, the mind begins to interpret, organize, and process the basic properties of things and phenomena at a rational level into a conceptual whole. See p. 224.
Development	The change and motion of things, phenomena, and ideas with a forward tendency: from less advanced to more advanced; and/or from a less complete to a more complete level. See p. 38, 45–46, 52, 55, 61, 65, 76–96, 105–107, 114118, 119–127, 131–132, 138–140, 143, 147, 154, 155–165, 169–175, 177–181, 183–207, 210, 213, 216–223, 225–229, 233, 235–237.
Development Viewpoint	A viewpoint which considers that, in order to perceive or solve any problem in real life, we must consider all things, phenomena, and ideas with their own forward tendency of development taken in mind.
Dialectic; Dialectical; Dialectics	In Marxism-Leninism, the term dialectic (adjective: dialectical) refers to regular and mutual relationships, interactions, transformations, motions, and developments of things, phenomena, and processes in nature, society and human thought. “Dialectics” refers to a dialectical system. See p. 3, 9–11, 47.
Dialectical Materialism	A universal philosophical and methodological system which forms the theoretical core of a scientific worldview. Dialectical Materialism was first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with the express goal of achieving communism. Dialectical Materialism has since been defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as many others. See: p. 3, 6, 1011, 19–21, 27–30, 33, 38, 45–47, 48–97, 101, 104, 204, 209, 226, 228, 230–232, 237.
Dialectical Negation	A stage of development in which a new subject arises from a contradiction between two previous subjects; dialectical negation is never an endpoint of development, as every dialectical negation creates conditions for further development and negation. See p. 123, 175–176, 183, 185–195, 197–202, 227.
Dialectical Relationship	A relationship in which two things, phenomena, or ideas mutually impact one another, leading to development and negation. See p. 47, 51, 62.
(Characteristic of) Diversity	The characteristic which all things, phenomena, and ideas share, dictating that no two subjects (and no two relationships between any two subjects) are exactly the same, even if they exist between very similar things, phenomena, and ideas and/or in very similar situations. See p. 114–115, 125.
Diversity in Unity	The universal principle which states that even though all relationships are diverse and different from one another, they also exist in unity, because all relationships share a foundation in the material world. See p. 109–110, 125, 130.
Dogmatism	An inflexible adherence to ideals as incontrovertibly true while refusing to take any contradictory evidence into consideration. Dogmatism stands in direct opposition to materialist dialectics, which seeks to form opinions and conclusions only after careful consideration of all observable evidence. See p. 136–137, 174, 217–218, 233.
Duality of Labor	The Marxist economic concept which recognizes labor as having two intrinsic and inseparable aspects: abstract labor and concrete labor. See p. 15.
Dynamic and Creative Reflection	The most advanced form of reflection, which only occurs in matter that has the highest (known) level of structural complexity, such as the human brain. See p. 68–69, 79.
Eclecticism	An approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject; the philosophical error of inconsistently applying different theories and principles in different situations. See p. 32–33, 101, 118, 192, 194.
Economic Base	See: Base
Economism	Economism is a style of political activism, typified by the ideas of German political theorist Eduard Bernstein, which stresses directing the struggle towards short-term political/economic goals (such as higher wages for workers) at the expense of the larger socialist revolutionary project. See p. 30.
Eduard Bernstein	(1850 — 1932) German political theorist who rejected many of Marx’s theories. See p. 30, 174.
Emotional Consciousness	The lower stage of the cognitive process. In this stage of cognitive development, humans, through practical activities, use our senses to reflect objective things and phenomena (with all their perceived specific characteristics and rich manifestations) in human consciousness. See p. 219224.
Empirical Consciousness	Empirical consciousness is the stage of development of consciousness in which perceptions are formed via direct observations of things and phenomena in the natural world, or of society, or through scientific experimentation and systematic observation. Empirical Consciousness results in Empirical Knowledge. See p. 210–214.
Empirical Knowledge	Knowledge which results from processes of empirical consciousness and which is characterised by rich and detailed, but still incomplete, understanding of phenomena. It can be utilized for practical ends, but still falls short of full theoretical analysis and comprehension. See p. 212–214.
Empiricism	A broad philosophical position which holds that only experience (including internal experience) can be held as a source of knowledge or truth. Though nominally opposed to idealism, it is considered a faulty (or naive) form of materialism, since it sees the world as only unconnected, static appearances and ignores the reality of dialectical (changing) relationships between objects. See p. 9–12, 29, 94, 96–97, 100, 218.
Empirio-criticism	A more developed form of empiricism, proposed by Ernst Mach, which holds that sense data and experience are the sole sources of knowledge and that no concrete knowledge of the external material world can ever be obtained due to the limitations of human senses. See p. 26–29, 32, 54, 55–57, 68.
Epistemology	The theoretical study of knowledge. It primarily deals with the philosophical question of: “how do we know what we know?” See p. 45, 98, 204.
Ernst Mach	(1838 — 1916) Austrian physicist who attempted to build a philosophy of natural science based on the works of German philosopher Richard Avenarius’ philosophical system of Empirio-Criticism. See p. 27–29, 32, 52, 72, 193.
Equilibrium	A state of motion in which one or more subjects are not undergoing changes in position, form, and/or structure. Equilibrium is only ever a temporary stasis of development which will eventually yield to motion, development, and/or negation. See p. 62–63, 122–123, 181.
Essence	See: Essence and Phenomena
Essence and Phenomena (Category Pair)	The Essence category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion and development of things and ideas. The Phenomena category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions. Essence always determines which phenomena appear, but phenomena do not always accurately reflect essence in human perception; in other words, it is possible to misinterpret phenomena, leading to a misunderstanding of essence, or to mistake phenomena for essence. See p. 156–160.
Exchange Value	A quantity relationship which describes the ratios of exchangeability between different commodities, with Marx’s famous example of 20 yards of linen being equivalent in exchange value to one coat. Through analysis Marx shows that in reality the thing being compared is the amount of socially necessary labour required to make the commodities being compared. See p. 15, 18.
Excitation	Reactions of simple plant and animal life-forms which occur when they change position or structure as a direct result of physical changes in their habitat. See p. 66, 68.
External Contradictions	See: Internal and External Contradictions.
False consciousness	Forms of consciousness (ideas, thoughts, concepts, etc.) which are incorrect and misaligned from reality. Equated with ‘ideology’ by Engels, it refers to an idealistic, dogmatic perspective which will inevitably result in errors of analysis and therefore practice. See p. 231–233, 237.
First International	Also known as the International Workingmen’s Association; was founded in London and lasted from 1864–1876. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were key figures in the foundation and operation of this organization, which sought better conditions and the establishment of rights for workers. See p. 35
(Basic) Forms of Motion	Engels broke motion down into five basic forms which are dialectically linked; the different forms of motion differ from one another, but they are also unified with each other into one continuous system of motion. Understanding this dialectical relationship between different forms of motion helped to overcome misunderstandings and confusion about motion and development. See p. 61–62.
Form	See: Content and Form.
Form of existence of matter	The ways in which we perceive the existence of matter in our universe; specifically, matter in our universe has the form of existing in space and time. See p. 59.
Form of Value	See: Value-Form
Forward Tendency of Motion	The tendency for things, phenomena, and ideas to move from less advanced to more advanced forms through processes of motion and development. See p. 197.
Friedrich Engels	(1820–1895) a German theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, & co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx. Referenced throughout.
Fundamental and Non-Fundamental Contradictions	A fundamental contradiction defines the essence of a relationship. Fundamental contradictions exist throughout the entire development process of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction exists in only one aspect or attribute of a thing, phenomenon, or idea. A nonfundamental contradiction can impact a subject, but it will not control or decide the essential development of the subject. See p. 178–179.
(Characteristic of) Generality	A universal characteristic which holds that all things, phenomena, and ideas interact and mutually transform one another. See p. 108–109, 111, 114, 124125.
General Relationship	Relationships which exist broadly across many things, phenomena, and ideas. General relationships can exist both internally, within things, phenomena, and ideas, and externally, between things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 106–110, 114.
Generality (of relationships)	Relationships can exist with across a spectrum of generality; this spectrum ranges from the least general relationships (unique relationships — which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas) to the most general relationships (universal relationships — which occur between or within all things/phenomena/ideas). See p. 109.
George Berkeley	(1685 — 1753) An Anglo-Irish philosopher whose main philosophical achievement was the formulation of a doctrine which he called “immaterialism,” and which later came to be known as “Subjective Idealism.” This doctrine was summed up by Berkeley’s maxim: “Esse est percipi” — “To be is to be perceived.” See p. 11, 27, 29.
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel	(1770 — 1831) German philosophy professor & objective idealistic philosopher; developed the system of idealist dialectics which Marx and Engels used as a basis for developing materialist dialectics. See p. 8–11, 29, 69–71, 97, 98, 100–105, 132, 157, 165, 182, 192, 193–194, 209, 228.
Historical Materialism	The application of materialist dialectics and dialectical materialism to the study of human history. See p. 21–23, 27, 36, 38, 45, 80.
Historical Viewpoint	A viewpoint which demands that subjects be considered in their current stage of motion and development, while also taking into consideration the development and transformation of the subject over time. See p. 116–118, 125–126, 143, 185, 234.
Idealism	A philosophical position which holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within human consciousness. Idealists believe that human reason exclusively or as a first basis is the best way to seek truth. See p. 8–12, 26–29, 48–51, 53, 56–58, 69–70, 96, 101–102, 104, 157, 174, 209, 218, 228.
Immanuel Kant	(1724 — 1804) German philosopher who developed a system of idealist dialectics which were later completed by Hegel and whose metaphysical philosophies of epistemology and rationalism served as the basis for later empiricists such as Bacon and Hume. See p. 20, 29, 56, 72–74, 100–102, 205.
Induction	The reaction of animals with simple nervous systems which can sense or feel their environments. Induction occurs through unconditioned reflex mechanisms. See p. 66, 68.
Inductive Inference	Logical inference which extrapolates from specific observations to general conclusions. See p. 223–224.
Intelligibility	The human cognitive capacity to accurately perceive the external material world. See p. 48.
Internal Contradictions	See: Internal and External Contradictions.
Internal and External Contradictions	Internal contradictions are contradictions which exist within the internal relations of a subject, while external contradictions exist between two or more subjects as external relations. See p. 178–179.
Judgment	The phase of rational consciousness which arises from the definition of the subject — the linking of concepts and properties together — which leads to affirmative or negative ideation of certain characteristics or attributes of the perceived subject. See p. 223.
Karl Marx	(1818–1883) German theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, and leader of the international working class. Referenced throughout.
Knowledge	The content of consciousness; data about the world, such as: ideas, memories, and other thoughts which are derived through direct observation and practical activities in the material world, through scientific experiments, or through abstract reflection of practical and scientific activities which occur within consciousness.
Labor Value	The amount of value which workers produce through labor. See p. 14, 17–18, 23.
Law of Negation of Negation	A universal law of materialist dialectics which states that the fundamental and universal tendency of motion and development occurs through a cycle of dialectical negation, wherein each and every negation is, in turn, negated once more. See p. 163, 185, 195, 198, 200, 201, 202, 227.
Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality	The universal law of dialectical materialism which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought, which states that qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of the quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and, ideas, and, vice versa, quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 163–165, 172–173, 227.
Law of Unification Contradiction Between Opposites	and The universal law of dialectical materialism which states that the fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradictions which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 163, 175, 181.
Law of Development of Capitalism	Also known as Theory of Accumulation and Theory of Surplus Value. The dynamic through which the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. See p. 18.
Laws	In dialectical materialism, laws are the regular, common, obvious, natural, objective relations between internal aspects, factors, and attributes of a thing or phenomenon or between things and phenomena. See p. 162.
Laws of Nature	Laws that arise in the natural world, including within the human body (and are never products of human conscious activities). Such law includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and other natural phenomena which govern the material world. See p. 162, 213.
Laws of Society	Laws of human activity in social relations; such laws are unable to manifest beyond the conscious activities of humans, but they are still objective. See p. 162–163.
Laws of Human Thought	Laws which govern the intrinsic relationships between concepts, categories, judgments, inference, and the development process of human rational awareness. See p. 163.
Life-Process	Processes of motion and change which occur within organisms to sustain life. See p. 69–72, 79, 88.
Ludwig Feuerbach	(1804 — 1872) German philosophy professor, materialist philosopher; Marx and Engels drew many of their ideas from the works of Feuerbach (whom they also criticized). See p. 8, 11–13, 21, 55, 74, 80, 114, 205, 237.
M→→C→→M’	The mode of circulation described by Marx as existing under capitalism, in which capitalists spend money to buy commodities (including the commodified labor of workers), with the intention of selling those commodities for more money than they began with. The capitalist has no direct relationship to the commodity being produced and sold, and the capitalist is solely interested in obtaining more money. See p. 16. See also: C→M→C
Machism	See: Empirio-Criticism.
Manifestation	How a given thing, phenomenon, or idea is expressed externally in the material world. See p. 115.
Marxism-Leninism	A system of scientific opinions and theories focused on liberating the working class from capitalism and achieving a stateless, classless, communist society. The core ideas of this system were first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, then defended and further developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. See. p. 1.
Material Conditions	The material external environment in which humans live, including the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See p. 6, 22, 40–42, 70–72, 80–81, 87, 92–95, 116–118, 161, 174, 179, 181, 206–207, 210, 229.
Material Production Activity	Material production activity is the first and most basic form of praxis. In this form of praxis activity, humans use tools through labor processes to influence the natural world in order to create wealth and material resources and to develop the conditions necessary to maintain our existence and development. See p. 206–208.
Materialism	A philosophical position that holds that the material world exists outside of the mind, and that human ideas and thoughts stem from observation and sense experience of this external world. Materialism rejects the idealist notion that truth can only be sought solely through reasoning and human consciousness. See p. 10–13, 48.
Materialist Dialectics	A scientific system of philosophy concerned with motion, development, and common relationships, and with the most common rules of motion and development of nature, society, and human thought. See p. 10, 21, 45–47, 98202, 227, 237.
Matter	A philosophical category denoting things and phenomena, existing in objective external reality, which human beings access through our sense perceptions. See p. 26, 27, 32, 48, 51–52, 53–69, 72, 88–95, 97, 103, 164–165.
Means of Production	Physical inputs and systems used in the production of goods and services, including: machinery, factory buildings, tools, equipment, and anything else used in producing goods and services. See p. 2–3, 7, 14–16.
Mechanical Motion	Changes in positions of objects in space. See p. 61.
Mechanical Philosophy	A scientific and philosophical movement popular in the 17^th century which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices, resulting in a belief that all things — including living organisms — were built as (and could theoretically be built by humans as) mechanical devices.
Mental Reflection	Reactions which occur in animals with central nervous systems. Mental reflections occur through conditioned reflex mechanisms through learning. See p. 65, 68, 224.
Metaphysical Materialism	Metaphysical materialism was strongly influenced by the metaphysical, mechanical thinking of mechanical philosophy, which was a scientific and philosophical movement which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices. Metaphysical materialists believed that all change can exist only as an increase or decrease in quantity, brought about by external causes.
Metaphysics	A branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the fundamental nature of reality. Metaphysical philosophy has taken many forms through the centuries, but one common shortcoming of metaphysical thought is a tendency to view things and ideas in a static, abstract manner. Generally speaking, metaphysics presents nature as a collection of objects and phenomena which are isolated from one another and fundamentally unchanging. See p. 52.
Methodology	A system of reasoning: the ideas and rules that guide humans to research, build, select, and apply the most suitable methods in both perception and practice. Methodologies can range from very specific to broadly general, with philosophical methodology being the most general scope of methodology. See p. 44.
Mode	The way or manner in which something occurs or exists. See p. 19–20.
Mode of Existence of Matter	Refers to how matter exists in our universe; specifically, matter exists in our motion in a mode of motion. See p. 59.
Motion	Also known as “change;” motion/change occurs as a result of the mutual impacts which occur between two things, phenomena, or ideas in relation with one another. See p. 23, 47, 59–63. 74, 106–107, 122–127, 145, 163–165, 169-173-186, 197, 201–202.
Motion in Equilibrium	Motion in equilibrium is motion that has not changed the positions, forms, and/or structures of things. Motion in Equlibrium is only ever temporary in nature; all motion will eventually lead to changes in position, form, and/or structure. See p. 62.
Narodnik	Agrarian socialist movement of the 1860s and 70s in the Russian Empire, composed of peasants who rose up in a failed campaign against the Czar. See p. 29–30.
Natural law	See: Laws of Nature.
Natural Science	Science which deals with the natural world, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, etc. See p. 13, 19, 26, 103.
Negation	The development process through which two contradicting objects mutually develop one another until one is overtaken by the other. In dialectical materialism, negation takes the form of dialectical negation. See p. 123, 175176, 183, 185–202.
New Economic Policy	Also known as the NEP; this early Soviet policy was devised as Vladimir Illyich Lenin to be a temporary economic system that would allow a market economy and capitalism to exist within Russia, alongside state-owned business ventures, all firmly under the control of the working-classdominated state. See p. 33–34.
Objective Dialectics	The dialectical processes which occur in the material world, including all of the motion, relationships, and dynamic changes which occur in space and time. See p. 98, 102–103, 182.
Objective Existence	Existence which manifests outside of and independently of human consciousness, whether humans can perceive it or not. See p. 50, 58, 228.
Objective Idealism	A form of idealism which asserts that the ideal and consciousness are the primary existence, while also positing that the ideal and consciousness are objective, and that they exist independently of nature and humans. See p. 50.
Objectiveness	An abstract concept that refers to the relative externality of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every thing, phenomena and idea exists externally to every other thing, phenomena, and idea. This means that to each individual subject, all other subjects exist as external objects. See p. 111–114, 124.
Obviousness	See: Obviousness and Randomness
Obviousness and Randomness (Category Pair)	The philosophical category of Obviousness refers to events that occur because of the essential internal aspects of a subject which become reasons for certain results in certain conditions: the obvious has to happen in a certain way, it can’t happen any other way. The Randomness category refers to things that happen because of external reasons: things that happen, essentially, by chance, due to impacts from many external relations. A random outcome may occur or it may not occur, and may occur in many different ways. Obviousness and Randomness have a dialectical relationship with one another. See p. 144–146.
Opportunism	A system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, and/or no coherent viewpoint, focusing on whatever actions or decisions might be beneficial for the opportunist in the short term. See p. 174.
Opposites	Such aspects, properties and tendencies of motion which oppose one another, yet are, simultaneously, conditions and premises of the existence of one another. See p. 61, 175–179, 181, 184, 190, 227.
Ordinary Consciousness	Perception that is formed passively, stemming from the daily activities of humans. See p. 210–216.
Period of Motion	Development which occurs between two quality shifts, including the quality shifts themselves. See p. 170.
Perspective	See: Viewpoint.
Petty Bourgeoisie	Semi-autonomous merchants, farmers, and so on who are self-employed, own small and limited means of production, or otherwise fall in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Also called the petite bourgeoisie. See p. 3–6.
Petty Commodity Production	See: Simple Commodity Production.
Phenomena	Anything that is observable by the human senses. See p. 156. See also: Essence and Phenomena.
Physical Motion	Motion of molecules, electrons, fundamental particles, thermal processes, electricity, etc., in time and space. See p. 61.
Physical Reflection	Reflection which occurs any time two material objects interact and the features of the objects are transferred to one other. See p. 67–68.
Point of View	See: Viewpoint.
Populism	The political philosophy of the Narodnik movement; this political philosophy was focused on bringing about an agrarian peasant revolution led by intellectuals with the ambition of going directly from a feudal society to a socialist society built from rural communes. Populism overtly opposed Marxism and dialectical materialism and was based on subjective idealist utopianism. See p. 30.
Positivism	The belief that we can test scientific knowledge through scientific methods, and through logic, math, etc.; positivism tends to overlap significantly with empiricism in theory and practice. See p. 32, 209.
Possibility	See: Possibility and Reality.
Possibility and Reality (Category Pair)	The philosophical category of Possibility refers to things that have not happened nor existed in reality yet, but that would happen, or would exist given necessary conditions. The philosophical category of Reality refers to things that exist or have existed in reality and in human thought. See p. 160–162.
Practice	See: Praxis.
Pragmatism	Pragmatism refers to a form of subjectivism in which one centers one’s own immediate material concerns over all other considerations. See p. 218.
Praxis	Conscious activity which improves our understanding, and which has purpose and historical-social characteristics. Used interchangeably with the word “practice” in this text. See p. 205–206, 235.
Prejudice	See: Conservatism.
Primary and Secondary Contradictions	In the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, there are many development stages. In each stage of development, there will be one contradiction which drives the development process. This is what we call the primary contradiction. Secondary contradictions include all the other contradictions which exist during that stage of development. Determining whether a contradiction is primary or secondary is relative, and it depends heavily upon the material conditions and the situation being analyzed. See p. 178–179.
Primary Existence	Existence which precedes and determines other existences; materialists believe that the external material world is the primary existence which determines the ideal, while idealists believe that human consciousness (“the ideal”) is the primary existence from which truth is ultimately derived. See p. 50–51.
Primitive Materialism	An early form of materialism which recognizes that matter is the primary existence, and holds that the world is composed of certain elements, and that these were the first objects — the origin — of the world, and that these elements are the essence of reality. This was later developed into Metaphysical Materialism and, later, Dialectical Materialism. See p. 52.
Principle of General Relationships	A principle of dialectical materialism which states that all things, phenomena, and ideas are related to one another, and are defined by these internal and external relationships. See p. 106–107, 110, 114.
Private	See: Private and Common
Private and Common (Category Pair)	The Private philosophical category encompasses specific things, phenomena, and ideas; the Common philosophical category defines the common aspects, attributes, factors, and relations that exist in many things and phenomena. Private and Common are relative in nature and have a dialectical relationship with one another. See p. 128–138.
Private Laws	Laws which apply only to a specific range of things and phenomena, i.e.: laws of mechanical motion, laws of chemical motion, laws of biological motion, etc. See p. 162.
Production Force	The combination of the means of production and workers within human society. See p. 6, 23, 36.
Proletariat	The people who provide labor under capitalism; the proletariat do not own their own means of production, and must therefore sell their labor to those who do own means of production; also called the Working Class. See also: Bourgeoisie, Petty Bourgeoisie. See p. 1–8, 22–23, 25–26, 29–31, 33–35, 40–41, 63, 231.
Quality	The unity of component parts, taken together, which defines a subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. See p. 119–121.
Quality Shift	A change in quality which takes place in the motion and development process of things, phenomena, and ideas, occurring when quantity change meets a certain perceived threshold. See p. 124, 153, 164, 168–174.
Quantity	The total amount of component parts that compose a subject. See p. 119–121.
Quantity range	The range of quantity changes which can accumulate without leading to change in quality related to any given thing, phenomenon, or idea. See p. 168–171.
Quintessence	Original Vietnamese word: tinh hoa. Literally, it means “the best, highest, most beautiful, defining characteristics” of a concept, and, unlike the English word quintessence, it has an exclusively positive connotation. See p. 8, 21, 43, 45, 52.
Randomness	See: Obviousness and Randomness.
Rational Consciousness	The higher stage of the cognitive process, which includes the indirect, abstract, and generalized reflection of the essential properties and characteristics of things and phenomena. This stage of consciousness performs the most important function of comprehending and interpreting the essence of the perceived subject. See p. 219–225.
Reason	See: Reason and Result
Reality	See: Possibility and Reality.
Reason and Result (Category Pair)	The Reason philosophical category is used to define the mutual impacts between internal aspects of a thing, phenomenon or idea, or between things, phenomena, or ideas, that bring about changes. The Result philosophical category defines the changes that were caused by mutual impacts which occur between aspects and factors within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, or externally between different things, phenomena, or ideas. Not to be confused with the metaphysical concept of “cause and effect,” which attributes a single cause to any given effect. See p. 138–144.
Reasoning	The final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject. See p. 223–225, 228–229.
Reflection	The re-creation of the features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction. See p. 64–75, 79–80, 90–92, 103, 165, 208–211, 214–215, 219–224, 228, 232, 237.
Relative and Absolute	“Absolute” and “Relative” are philosophical classifications which refer to interdependence: That which is absolute exists independently and with permanence. That which is relative is temporary, and dependent on other conditions or circumstances in order to exist. See p. 56, 233. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative Truth, Relativism, Truth.
Relative Truth	Truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment between human knowledge and the reality which it reflects; knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. See p. 230, 232. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative and Absolute, Relativism, Truth.
Relativism	A position that all truth is relative and that nothing can ever be absolutely, objectively known; that only Relative Truth can be found in our existence. See p. 56–58, 233–234. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative and Absolute, Relative Truth, Truth.
René Descartes	(1596 — 1650) French metaphysical philosopher who developed early methods of scientific inquiry. See p. 20, 53.
Result	See: Reason and Result.
Richard Avenarius	(1843 — 1896) German-Swiss philosopher who developed a system of subjective idealism known as “Empirio-Criticism.” See p. 27–29.
Rigidity	An unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness. See p. 217–218.
Robert Owen	(1771 — 1858) Wealthy Welsh textile manufacturer who tried to build a better society for workers in New Hampshire, Indiana, in the USA by purchasing the town of New Harmony in 1825. Owen’s vision failed after two years, though many other wealthy capitalists in the early 19^th century were inspired by Owen to try similar plans, which also failed.
Scientific	An adjective which describes methodologies, approaches, and practices of gaining knowledge and insight which are methodological and/or systematic in nature. See p. 1–2.
Scientific Consciousness	Conscious activities which actively gather information from the methodological and/or systematic observations of the characteristics, nature, and inherent relationships of research subjects. Scientific consciousness is considered indirect because it takes place outside of the course of ordinary daily activities. See p. 58, 210, 212, 215–216.
Scientific	Experimental Human activities that resemble or replicate states of nature and society
Activity	in order to determine the laws of change and development of subjects of study. This form of activity plays an important role in the development of society, especially in the current historical period of modern science and technological revolution. See p. 206–208.
Scientific Materialist Viewpoint	A perspective which begins analysis of the world in a manner that is both scientifically systematic in pursuit of understanding and firmly rooted in a materialist conception of the world. See p. 105.
Scientific Socialism	A body of theory and knowledge (which must be constantly tested against reality) focused on the practical pursuit of changing the world to bring about socialism through the leadership of the proletariat. See p. 1–2, 21, 37–39.
Scientific Worldview	A worldview that is expressed by a systematic pursuit of knowledge that generally and correctly reflects the relationships of things, phenomena, and processes in the objective material world, including relationships between humans, as well as relationships between humans and the world. See p. 3839, 44–45, 48.
Second International	Founded in Paris in 1889 to continue the work of the First International; it fell apart in 1916 because members from different nations could not maintain solidarity through the outbreak of World War I. See p. 35, 174.
Self-motion	In the original Vietnamese, the word “tự vận động.” Literally meaning: “it moves itself.” See p. 59–60, 124.
Sensation	The subjective reflection of the objective world in human consciousness as perceived through human senses. See p. 27, 56–58, 68–69, 72, 85, 221–222.
Sensuous Human Activity; Sensuous Activity	A description of human activity developed by Marx which acknowledges that all human activity is simultaneously active in the sense that our conscious activity can transform the world, as well as passive in the sense in that all human thoughts fundamentally derive from observation and sense experience of the material world. See p. 13.
Simple Commodity Production	What Marx called the “C→M→C” mode of circulation. See p. 16–18.
Simple Exchange	When individual producers trade the products they have made directly, themselves, for other commodities. See p. 16–17.
Social Being	The material existence of human society, as opposed to social consciousness. See also: Base. See p. 24, 54–55.
Social Consciousness	The collective experience of consciousness shared by members of a society, including ideological, cultural, spiritual, and legal beliefs and ideas which are shared within that society, as opposed to social being. See p. 22, 24, 32, 54–55, 80. See also: Superstructure.
Social Motion	Changes in the economy, politics, culture, and social life of human beings. See p. 61–62.
Socialization	The idea that human society transforms labor and production from a solitary, individual act into a collective, social act. In other words, as human society progresses, people “socialize” labor into increasingly complex networks of social relations: from individuals making their own tools, to agricultural societies engaged in collective farming, to modern industrial societies with factories, logistical networks, etc. See p. 6, 36.
Socialized Production Force	A production force which has been socialized — that is to say, a production force which has been organized into collective social activity. See p. 6.
Socio-Political Activity	Praxis activity utilized by various communities and organizations in human society to transform political-social relations in order to promote social development. See p. 206–208.
Solipsism	A form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. See p. 218.
Sophistry	The use of misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s’ dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. See p. 32–33, 56, 118, 182, 194.
Stage of Development	The current quantity and quality characteristics which a thing, phenomenon, or object possesses. Every time a quality change occurs, a new stage of development is entered into. See p. 24, 39, 125, 173–174, 179, 190, 196–197, 200, 212, 221.
Stagnation	An inability or unwillingness to change and adapt consciousness and practice in accordance with developing material conditions. Stagnation can stem from, or cause, overstatement of absolute truth in theory and forestall necessary development of both consciousness and practical ability. See p. 125, 218, 233. See also: Rigidity.
Struggle of Opposites	The tendency of opposites to eliminate and negate each other. See p. 61, 181, 184.
Subjective Factors	Factors which, from the perspective of a given subject, that same subject is capable of impacting. See p. 162–163, 175, 202.
Subjective Dialectics; Dialectical Thought	A system of analysis and organized thinking which aims to reflect the objective dialectics of the material world within human consciousness. Dialectical thinking has two component forms: dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics. See: p. 98–99, 103.
Subjective Idealism	Subjective idealism asserts that consciousness is the primary existence and that truth can be obtained only or primarily through conscious activity and reasoning. Subjective idealism asserts that all things and phenomena can only be experienced as subjective sensory perceptions, with some forms of subjective idealism even explicitly denying the objective existence of material reality altogether. See also: Empirio-Criticism, Objective Idealism. See p. 26–27, 50.
Subjectivism	A philosophical position in which one centers one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test their own perceptions against material and social reality. See p. 56, 182, 217–218, 233–234.
Suitability	The applicability of a subject for a specific application or role. See p. 154.
Superstructure	The ideal (non-material) components of human society, including: media institutions, music, and art, as well as other cultural elements like religion, customs, moral standards, and everything else which manifests primarily through conscious activity and social relations. See p. 23. See also: Base.
Surplus Value	The extra amount of value a capitalist is able to secure by exploiting wagelabourers (by paying workers less than the full value of their labour). Workers will spend part of their workday reproducing their own labourpower (through earning enough to eat, secure shelter and other cultural needs) and the rest of the time will be spent producing surplus value which is then appropriated by the capitalist as profit. See p. 18, 22–23, 39.
Symbolization	The representation of an objective thing or phenomenon in human consciousness which has been reflected by sensation and conception. See p. 221–222.
Systematic Structure	A structure which includes within itself a system of component parts and relationships. See p. 114.
Theoretical Consciousness	The indirect, abstract, systematic level of perception in which the nature and laws of things and phenomena are generalized and abstracted. See p. 210–214, 217–218.
Theoretical Knowledge	Knowledge which is abstract and generalized, resulting from theoretical conscious activities which include repeated and varied observations. See p. 214, 217.
Theory	An idea or system of ideas intended to explain an aspect, characteristic, or tendency of objective reality. See p. 235.
Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value	See: Law of Development of Capitalism.
Thing-in-Itself	The actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness, as it exists outside of our consciousness. See p. 72–74, 101, 158.
Third International	Also known as the Communist International (or the ComIntern for short); founded in Moscow in 1919, its goals were to overthrow capitalism, build socialism, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was dissolved in 1943 in the midst of the German invasion of Russia in World War II. See p. 35.
Three Component Parts	The three essential elements of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, first identified of Marxism-Leninism by Lenin in The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism. 1. The Philosophy of Marxism. 2. The Political Economy of Marxism. 3. Scientific Socialism.See p. 21, 32, 34, 38.
Threshold	The amount, or degree, of quantity change at which quality change occurs. Truth is primarily discovered through labor and practice in the physical world. See p. 120, 168–169, 171, 173.
Truth	A correct and accurate conscious reflection of objective reality. See p. 9–10, 49, 56, 70, 75, 94–96, 194, 204, 209, 215–219, 225–237. See also: Labor, Practice.
Unconditioned Reflex	Reactions which are not learned, but simply occur automatically based on physiological mechanisms occurring within an organism, characterized by permanent connections between sensory perceptions and reactions. See p. 66, 68.
Unilateral Consideration	The consideration of a subject from one side only. See p. 49.
Unintelligibility	A philosophical position which denies the human cognitive capacity to accurately perceive the external material world. See p. 48.
Unique Relationship	The least general form of relationship, which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas. See p. 109, 130.
Unity in Diversity	A concept in materialist dialectics which holds that within universal relationships exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity. See p. 42, 110–111, 114, 125, 130.
Universal Law of Consciousness	A universal law which holds that consciousness is a process of dialectical development in which practical activity leads to conscious activity, which then leads back to practical activity, in a continuous and never-ending cycle, with a tendency to develop both practical and conscious activity to increasingly higher levels. See p. 219.
Universal Laws	Laws that impact every aspect of nature, society, and human thought. Materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws. See p. 15, 162–163, 227.
Universal Relationship	The most general kind of relationship; relationships that exist between and within every thing and all phenomena; along with development, universal relationships are one of the two primary subjects of study of materialist dialectics. See p. 80, 108, 109, 111, 165.
Use Value	A concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics which refers to tangible features of a commodity (a tradable object) that can fulfill some human requirement or desire, or which serve a useful purpose. See p. 15–18, 95.
Utopianism	1. A political and philosophical movement which held the belief that “a New Moral World” of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity could be created through education, science, technology, and communal living. See p. 18. 2. The idealist philosophical concept which mistakenly asserts that the ideal can determine the material, and that ideal forms of society can be brought about without regard for material conditions and development processes. See p. 8, 17–18, 30, 94.
Value-Form	Also known as “form of value;” the social form of a commodity. Under capitalism, through the exchange of qualitatively different commodities, the money form of value is established as the general equivalent which can functionally be exchanged for all other values; money is therefore the most universal value-form under capitalism. See p. 15, 17, 155.
Viewpoint	Also known as point of view or perspective; the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking from which phenomena and problems are considered. See p. 12, 20–21, 23, 25, 26, 30, 32–33, 38–39, 5559, 62, 64, 89, 93–94, 105, 111, 114–120, 122, 125–126, 130, 143, 147, 150, 172, 185–188, 195, 200–201, 233–235. See also: Comprehensive Viewpoint, Historical Viewpoint.
Viewpoint Crisis	A situation in which a specific viewpoint can’t be settled on, found, or agreed upon. See p. 26, 32–33.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin	(1870 -1924) A Russian theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Bolsheviks, the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class. Referenced throughout.
Working Class	See: Proletariat
Worldview	The whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in the world. See p. 1, 11, 37–39, 44–45, 48, 52, 96, 138, 201, 208–209, 218, 234. See also: Scientific Worldview.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-2.png

For centuries, the banyan tree has been the symbol of communal life in Vietnam.

Traditionally, the entrance to a village is graced by a large and ancient banyan tree. It is in the shade of these trees that villagers gather to socialize, draw water from wells, and make collective decisions together. The drooping accessory trunks represent the longevity of villagers — and of the village itself — while the arching canopy represents the safety and protection of the village. The shape of the banyan tree is seen in the full moon, which casts peaceful light across the Earth to guide travelers in the dark of night.

Vietnam’s revolution against Japanese fascism and French colonialism began in 1945 beneath the cover of the Tân Trào Banyan Tree, which still stands in the city of Tuyên Quang.

It is in this deep-rooted, humanistic spirit of collective action that we founded Banyan House Publishing. We hope to deliver volumes which will inspire action and change throughout the village that is our world.

Visit us at:
BanyanHouse.org

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-103.png

↑ Karl Marx, 1818–1883 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, leader of the international working class.
↑ Friedrich Engels, 1820–1895 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx.
↑ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1870–1924 (Russian): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class.
↑ Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See Annotation 79, p. 81.
↑ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 — 1831 (German): Philosophy professor, an objective idealistic philosopher — representative of German classical philosophy.
↑ Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804 — 1872 (German): Philosophy professor, materialist philosopher.
↑ The Holy Family is a book co-written by Marx and Engels which critiqued the Young Hegelians, including Feuerbach.
↑ Adam Smith, 1723 — 1790 (British): Logic professor, moral philosophy professor, economist.
↑ David Ricardo, 1772 — 1823 (British): Economist.
↑ Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint Simon, 1760 — 1825 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.
↑ Charles Fourier, 1772 — 1837 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.
↑ Robert Owen, 1771 — 1858 (British): Utopianist activist, owner of a cotton factory.
↑ The Law of Development of Capitalism referenced here is the Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value, which holds that the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. Over time, this deepens the contradictions of capitalism. This concept is related to the M→C→M mode of circulation, discussed in Annotation 14, p. 16, and is discussed in detail in Part 3 of the book this text is drawn from (Political Economy) which we hope to translate in the future.
↑ Das Kapital: Karl Marx’s most important contribution to political economy. It is composed of four volumes. It is the work of Marx’s whole career and an important part of Engels’ career, as well. Marx started writing Das Kapital in the 1840s and continued writing until he died (1883). Das Kapital I was published in 1867. After Marx’s death, Engels edited and published the second volume in 1885 and the third volume in 1894. The Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the USSR edited and published Das Kapital IV, also known as Theories of Surplus-Value, in the 1950s, long after the death of Marx and Engels.
↑ Populist faction: A faction within the Russian revolution which upheld an idealist capitalist ideology with many representatives such as Mikhailovsky, Bakunin, and Plekhanov. Populists failed to recognise the important roles of the people, of the farmers and workers alliance, and of the proletariat. Instead, they completely centered the role of the individual in society. They considered the rural communes as the nucleus of “socialism.” They saw farmers under the leadership of intellectuals as the main force of the revolution. The populists advocated individual terrorism as the primary method of revolutionary struggle.
↑ Delegate Document of the 11^th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
↑ Delegate document of the 9^th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
↑ Delegate document of the 10^th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
↑ See Annotation 6, p. 8.
↑ The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.
↑ Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
↑ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels, 1886.
↑ According to the Samkhya school, Pradhana is the original form of matter in an unmanifested,indifferentiated state; Prakriti is manifested matter, differentiated in form, which contains potential for motion.
↑ Thales, ~642 — ~547 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, politician.
↑ Anaximene, ~585 — ~525 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher.
↑ Heraclitus, ~540 — ~480 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, founder of ancient dialectics.
↑ Democritus, ~460 — ~370 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, naturalist, a founder of atom theory.
↑ Francis Bacon, 1561 — 1626 (British): Philosopher, novelist, mathematician, political activist.
↑ Rene Descartes, 1596 — 1650 (Fench): Philosopher, mathematician, physicist.
↑ Thomas Hobbes, 1588 — 1679 (British): Political philosopher, political activist.
↑ Denis Diderot, 1713 — 1784 (French): Philosopher, novelist.
↑ Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, 1845–1923 (German): Physicist.
↑ Henri Becquerel, 1852–1908 (French): Physicist.
↑ Sir Joseph John Thomson, 1856–1940 (British): Physicist, professor at London Royal Institute.
↑ In the original Vietnamese, the word tự vận động is used here, which we roughly translate to the word self-motion throughout this book. Literally, tự vận động means: “it moves itself.”
↑ Source: “Food for Thought: Was Cooking a Pivotal Step in Human Evolution?” by Alexandra Rosati, Scientific American, February 26, 2018.
↑ Written by Professor Tracy L. Kivell and published in The Royal Society.
↑ Stone Tools Helped Shape Human Hands by Sara Reardon, published in New Scientist Magazine.
↑ The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1846.
↑ See Annotation 3, p. 2 and Annotation 29, p. 24.
↑ For a discussion of the material basis of social laws, see Annotation 10, p. 10, Annotation 78, p. 80, and Annotation 79, p. 81.
↑ See: Annotation 72, p. 68.
↑ See: Annotation 90, p. 88.
↑ See: The Role of Matter in Consciousness, p. 89.
↑ See: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.
↑ See:Annotation 68, p. 65.
↑ See: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.
↑ See: Annotation 93, below.
↑ See: Annotation 10, p. 10.
↑ For discussion of the meaning of methodology, see Methodology, p. 44.
↑ See: Nature of Consciousness, p. 79.
↑ See: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.
↑ See: Annotation 211, p. 205.
↑ See: Annotation 114, p. 116.
↑ See: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.
↑ See: Annotation 222, p. 218.
↑ See: The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues, p. 48.
↑ See: Annotation 10, p. 10.
↑ See: Annotation 232 and The Properties of Truth, on p. 228.
↑ See: Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness, p. 204.
↑ Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
↑ See Annotation 9, p. 10.
↑ Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels, 1883.
↑ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels, 1880.
↑ The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
↑ The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
↑ Kant’s “transcendental dialectic” was used to critique rationalism and pure reason, but was not a fully developed dialectical system of thought. Hegel’s idealist dialectics were more universal in nature. See Annotation 9, p. 10.
↑ The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, On Dialectics, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin, 1914.
↑ Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, Karl Marx, 1873.
↑ Anti-Dühring, The 1885 Preface, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
↑ See p. 107.
↑ Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels, 1883.
↑ See Annotation 117, p. 119.
↑ The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.
↑ See Annotation 98, p. 100.
↑ See Private and Common, p. 128; Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156.
↑ See Annotation 117, p. 119.
↑ See Annotation 190, p. 181.
↑ See Annotation 108, p. 112.
↑ See p. 108.
↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.
↑ See: Annotation 108, p. 112.
↑ See: Annotation 106, p. 109.
↑ See: Annotation 107, p. 110.
↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921. See also: Mode and Forms of Matter, p. 59.
↑ See Annotation 62, p. 59.
↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.
↑ On the Question of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.
↑ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels, 1880.
↑ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels, 1886.
↑ See Annotation 10, p. 10 and Annotation 108, p. 112.
↑ Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.
↑ Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.
↑ To N. D. Kiknadze, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, written after November 5, 1916.
↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
↑ See Annotation 108, p. 112.
↑ See Annotation 207, p. 202.
↑ Summary of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1877.
↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.
↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.
↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.
↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.
↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
↑ Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
↑ Theses On Feuerbach, Karl Marx, 1845.
↑ Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.
↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
↑ Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.
↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.
↑ Revolutionary Ethics, Ho Chi Minh, December 1958.
↑ Note: Absolute Truth in dialectical materialist philosophy should not be confused with Hegel’s conception of Absolute Truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe.

[1] Karl Marx, 1818–1883 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, leader of the international working class.

[2] Friedrich Engels, 1820–1895 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx.

[3] Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1870–1924 (Russian): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class.

[4] Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See Annotation 79, p. 81.

[5] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 — 1831 (German): Philosophy professor, an objective idealistic philosopher — representative of German classical philosophy.

[6] Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804 — 1872 (German): Philosophy professor, materialist philosopher.

[7] The Holy Family is a book co-written by Marx and Engels which critiqued the Young Hegelians, including Feuerbach.

[8] Adam Smith, 1723 — 1790 (British): Logic professor, moral philosophy professor, economist.

[9] David Ricardo, 1772 — 1823 (British): Economist.

[10] Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint Simon, 1760 — 1825 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.

[11] Charles Fourier, 1772 — 1837 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.

[12] Robert Owen, 1771 — 1858 (British): Utopianist activist, owner of a cotton factory.

[13] The Law of Development of Capitalism referenced here is the Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value, which holds that the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. Over time, this deepens the contradictions of capitalism. This concept is related to the M→C→M mode of circulation, discussed in Annotation 14, p. 16, and is discussed in detail in Part 3 of the book this text is drawn from (Political Economy) which we hope to translate in the future.

[14] Das Kapital: Karl Marx’s most important contribution to political economy. It is composed of four volumes. It is the work of Marx’s whole career and an important part of Engels’ career, as well. Marx started writing Das Kapital in the 1840s and continued writing until he died (1883). Das Kapital I was published in 1867. After Marx’s death, Engels edited and published the second volume in 1885 and the third volume in 1894. The Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the USSR edited and published Das Kapital IV, also known as Theories of Surplus-Value, in the 1950s, long after the death of Marx and Engels.

[15] Populist faction: A faction within the Russian revolution which upheld an idealist capitalist ideology with many representatives such as Mikhailovsky, Bakunin, and Plekhanov. Populists failed to recognise the important roles of the people, of the farmers and workers alliance, and of the proletariat. Instead, they completely centered the role of the individual in society. They considered the rural communes as the nucleus of “socialism.” They saw farmers under the leadership of intellectuals as the main force of the revolution. The populists advocated individual terrorism as the primary method of revolutionary struggle.

[16] Delegate Document of the 11^th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

[17] Delegate document of the 9^th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

[18] Delegate document of the 10^th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

[19] See Annotation 6, p. 8.

[20] The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.

[21] Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[22] Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels, 1886.

[23] According to the Samkhya school, Pradhana is the original form of matter in an unmanifested,indifferentiated state; Prakriti is manifested matter, differentiated in form, which contains potential for motion.

[24] Thales, ~642 — ~547 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, politician.

[25] Anaximene, ~585 — ~525 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher.

[26] Heraclitus, ~540 — ~480 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, founder of ancient dialectics.

[27] Democritus, ~460 — ~370 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, naturalist, a founder of atom theory.

[28] Francis Bacon, 1561 — 1626 (British): Philosopher, novelist, mathematician, political activist.

[29] Rene Descartes, 1596 — 1650 (Fench): Philosopher, mathematician, physicist.

[30] Thomas Hobbes, 1588 — 1679 (British): Political philosopher, political activist.

[31] Denis Diderot, 1713 — 1784 (French): Philosopher, novelist.

[32] Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, 1845–1923 (German): Physicist.

[33] Henri Becquerel, 1852–1908 (French): Physicist.

[34] Sir Joseph John Thomson, 1856–1940 (British): Physicist, professor at London Royal Institute.

[35] In the original Vietnamese, the word tự vận động is used here, which we roughly translate to the word self-motion throughout this book. Literally, tự vận động means: “it moves itself.”

[36] Source: “Food for Thought: Was Cooking a Pivotal Step in Human Evolution?” by Alexandra Rosati, Scientific American, February 26, 2018.

[37] Written by Professor Tracy L. Kivell and published in The Royal Society.

[38] Stone Tools Helped Shape Human Hands by Sara Reardon, published in New Scientist Magazine.

[39] The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1846.

[40] See Annotation 3, p. 2 and Annotation 29, p. 24.

[41] For a discussion of the material basis of social laws, see Annotation 10, p. 10, Annotation 78, p. 80, and Annotation 79, p. 81.

[42] See: Annotation 72, p. 68.

[43] See: Annotation 90, p. 88.

[44] See: The Role of Matter in Consciousness, p. 89.

[45] See: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.

[46] See:Annotation 68, p. 65.

[47] See: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.

[48] See: Annotation 93, below.

[49] See: Annotation 10, p. 10.

[50] For discussion of the meaning of methodology, see Methodology, p. 44.

[51] See: Nature of Consciousness, p. 79.

[52] See: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.

[53] See: Annotation 211, p. 205.

[54] See: Annotation 114, p. 116.

[55] See: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.

[56] See: Annotation 222, p. 218.

[57] See: The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues, p. 48.

[58] See: Annotation 10, p. 10.

[59] See: Annotation 232 and The Properties of Truth, on p. 228.

[60] See: Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness, p. 204.

[61] Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[62] See Annotation 9, p. 10.

[63] Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels, 1883.

[64] Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels, 1880.

[65] The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[66] The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[67] Kant’s “transcendental dialectic” was used to critique rationalism and pure reason, but was not a fully developed dialectical system of thought. Hegel’s idealist dialectics were more universal in nature. See Annotation 9, p. 10.

[68] The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, On Dialectics, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[69] Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin, 1914.

[70] Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, Karl Marx, 1873.

[71] Anti-Dühring, The 1885 Preface, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[72] Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[73] See p. 107.

[74] Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels, 1883.

[75] See Annotation 117, p. 119.

[76] The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.

[77] See Annotation 98, p. 100.

[78] See Private and Common, p. 128; Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156.

[79] See Annotation 117, p. 119.

[80] See Annotation 190, p. 181.

[81] See Annotation 108, p. 112.

[82] See p. 108.

[83] Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.

[84] See: Annotation 108, p. 112.

[85] See: Annotation 106, p. 109.

[86] See: Annotation 107, p. 110.

[87] Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921. See also: Mode and Forms of Matter, p. 59.

[88] See Annotation 62, p. 59.

[89] Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.

[90] On the Question of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.

[91] Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels, 1880.

[92] Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels, 1886.

[93] See Annotation 10, p. 10 and Annotation 108, p. 112.

[94] Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.

[95] Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.

[96] To N. D. Kiknadze, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, written after November 5, 1916.

[97] Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[98] See Annotation 108, p. 112.

[99] See Annotation 207, p. 202.

[100] Summary of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[101] Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1877.

[102] On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.

[103] On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.

[104] On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.

[105] On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.

[106] Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[107] Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[108] Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[109] Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[110] Theses On Feuerbach, Karl Marx, 1845.

[111] Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.

[112] Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[113] Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.

[114] Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.

[115] Revolutionary Ethics, Ho Chi Minh, December 1958.

[116] Note: Absolute Truth in dialectical materialist philosophy should not be confused with Hegel’s conception of Absolute Truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe.

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@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{clear}}
+'''CURRICULUM OF'''<br />
-[[Image:cover.jpg.png|center]]
+'''THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM-LENINISM'''<br />
+'''PART 1'''
-= X =
+'''THE WORLDVIEW AND PHILOSOPHICAL METHODOLOGY OF MARXISM-LENINISM'''
-== X ==
+''For University and College Students''
-=== [Front Matter] ===
+''Not Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought''
-==== Table of Contents ====
+'''FIRST ENGLISH EDITION'''
-[[#Topofcoverhtml|Cover]]
+Translated and Annotated by Luna Nguyen
-[[#Topoftitlehtml|Title Page]]
+Foreword by Dr. Vijay Prashad
-[[#Topofcopyhtml|Copyright Page]]
+Introduction by Dr. Taimur Rahman
-[[#Topofdedihtml|Dedication]]
+Edited, Annotated, and Illustrated by Emerican Johnson
-[[#Topofch01html|The Word for Woman is Wilderness]]
+Proofread by David Peat
-[[#Topofch02html|How to Convey Invisible Death]]
+Additional Contributions and Editorial Support by Iskra Books
-[[#Topofch03html|The Receding Horizon]]
+Published in association with ''The International Magazine''
-[[#Topofch04html|Into the Wildness]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-2.png]]
-[[#Topofch05html|My Mountain My Moon]]
+=== License ===
-[[#Topofch06html|How to say Goodbye]]
+This work is licensed under a<br />
+Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
-[[#Topofackhtml|Acknowledgements]]
+You are free to:
-[[#Topofbm01html|Also from Serpent’s Tail]]
+'''Share''' — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
-==== [Title Page] ====
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-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
-[[Image:9781782833802.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{anchor|Topoffm01html}} [[Image:fm.jpg.png|top]]</div>
+Under the following terms:
-==== [About the Author] ====
+'''Attribution''' — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
-Abi Andrews was born in 1991 in the Midlands, and now lives and works in South East London. She studied English and creative writing at Goldsmiths, and her work has been published in ''The Dark Mountain Project, Tender, Five Dials'' and ''The Bohemyth'', amongst others.
+'''NonCommercial''' — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
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-==== {{anchor|Topofcopyhtml}} [Copyright] ====
+'''No additional restrictions''' — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Serpent’s Tail, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd</div>
+The full text of this license is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">3 Holford Yard</div>
+<br />
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">Bevin Way</div>
+<blockquote>
+“Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.”
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">London</div>
+''- Ho Chi Minh''
+</blockquote>
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">WC1X 9HD</div>
+=== Support for This Work ===
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">[http://www.serpentstail.com www.serpentstail.com]</div>
+Translating, annotating, and typesetting this book has taken three years, which would not have been possible without the support of our supporters on GoFundMe. GoFundMe is also the reason we are able to make the digital version of this entire text available for free online. We would therefore like to recognize all of our supporters:
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">Copyright © 2018 Abi Andrews</div>
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+|
+|}
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">The moral right of the author has been asserted.</div>
+There is still plenty of work to be done to complete the translation of this entire curriculum. If you would like to financially support our efforts, you can support us at:
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.</div>
+BanyanHouse.org
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.</div>
+=== Dedication and Gratitude ===
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library</div>
+This book is dedicated to all the backers of the GoFundMe campaign that raised the funds to allow me to translate this text. What I initially believed would be a straightforward three-month process of translating ended up taking over three ''years'' of not just translation but also research, study, review, annotation, editing, proofreading, peer review, and more — with the incredible support of a full team of talented comrades — in order to make sure that everything would be digestible and intelligible for audiences outside of Vietnam. So, sincerely, thank you to everyone who backed this project for your patience, support, and encouragement.
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">eISBN 978 1 78283 380 2</div>
+Thank you to my husband and comrade, Emerican Johnson, who helped me throughout the translation process, and who did such a fantastic job editing, annotating, and illustrating this text. He was my constant dialectical companion as we grappled together with the spirit and meaning of the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Engels that are the bedrock of this text.
-==== {{anchor|Topofdedihtml}} dedicated to ====
+Thank you, also, to Iskra Books for the absolutely vital work they have done in helping us to edit this book and hold it to a high standard. We literally could not have done it without you. In particular, thank you to Ben Stahnke for organizing and cheerleading us through to the end, and to David Peat, for the painstaking, meticulous, and no-doubt frustrating work of proofreading our very, very, very imperfect writing!
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">''Tilikum (Tilly) the whale''</div>
+Thanks also to ''The International Magazine'', who have provided guidance and suggestions throughout the process of developing this translation. I have had the opportunity to work with ''The International Magazine'' on various projects and I can recommend no better monthly periodical for internationalist communists to learn about socialist movements around the world.
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">''who perhaps had his own name in whale dialect''</div>
+We owe a great deal of gratitude to Dr. Vijay Prashad and Dr. Taimur Rahman for taking the time to read through our translation and, in addition to providing their feedback and encouragement, also taking the time to write the foreword and introduction to the text. I know that you are both extremely busy with your own important literary, academic, and political work, so this assistance is so very much appreciated.
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.004cm;">''1981–2017''</div>
+Finally, I would like to thank the Vietnamese intellectuals and experts who have done such an amazing job at taking hundreds of texts and distilling them down into the original volume which I have translated here. The elegance and precision with which they have been able to capture the essence of Marxism-Leninism is a monumental contribution to the workers of the world, and I only hope my translation does their work justice.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{anchor|Topoffm02html}} [[Image:fvii-01.jpg.png|top]]</div>
+March, 2023<br />
+Luna Nguyen
-=== {{anchor|Topofch01html}} THE WORD FOR WOMAN IS WILDERNESS ===
+=== Foreword ===
-==== PASSING THROUGH THE HELIOPAUSE ====
+In December 1998, Fidel Castro addressed the Young Communist League’s 7<sup>th</sup> Congress in Havana, Cuba. The Soviet Union and the Communist state system in Eastern Europe had collapsed, which greatly weakened the cause of socialism. Not only was Cuba hit hard by the loss of its major trading partners and political ally, but socialists in general were penalised by the lethal argument made by the imperialist sections that “socialism had been defeated.” After 1991, Fidel revived the phrase “Battle of Ideas,” which was had been used in The German Ideology by Marx and Engels. To the Young Communists, Fidel said:
-The space probe Voyager 1 left the planet in 1977. Any month, day, minute, second now it will enter interstellar space and become the furthest-reaching man-made object, and the first to leave the heliosphere. This will be one of the biggest moments in scientific history and we will never know exactly when it happened. Three things would signify that Voyager 1 had crossed the border of the heliopause: an increase in galactic cosmic rays, reversal of the direction of the magnetic field, and a decrease in the temperature of charged particles. Voyager 1 reports show a 25 per cent increase per month of cosmic rays. But its signals take seventeen hours to travel back to Earth at the speed of light.
+<blockquote>
+We must meet, in the heat of the battle, with the leading cadres to discuss, analyse, expand on, and draft plans and strategies to take up issues and elaborate ideas, as when an army’s general staff meets. We must use solid arguments to talk to members and non-members, to speak to those who may be confused or even to discuss and debate with those holding positions contrary to those of the Revolution or who are influenced by imperialist ideology in this great battle of ideas we have been waging for years now, precisely in order to carry out the heroic deed of resisting against the most politically, militarily, economically, technologically and culturally powerful empire that has ever existed. Young cadres must be well prepared for this task.
+</blockquote>
-When did my journey begin? At the moment of its conception? When I left home in a delivery van with a friend of my dad’s who was going north with some furniture? My parents waved me off with the dog; I filmed it, my mum cried. That felt like a beginning. Or was it the moment the freighter pulled away into the mopbucket waters off Immingham on a grey day in March?
+Bourgeois ideology had tried to sweep aside its most fundamental critique – namely Marxism – by saying that “socialism had been defeated” and that Marxism was now obsolete. Marxist criticisms of the “casino of capitalism” – as Fidel called it – were being set aside both inside and outside the academy, with neoliberal policy confident enough to ignore each and every criticism. Fidel argued that young communists must learn the fundamentals of Marxism – including both dialectical and historical materialism – and must learn this in a way that was not religious thinking but would allow them to become “new intellectuals” of the movement, not those who repeat dogma but who learn to understand the conjuncture and become “permanent persuaders” for socialism (the two phrases in quotations are from Gramsci’s prison notebooks). The general ideological confidence of the cadre was not clear, and that confidence and their clarity needed to be developed in a project that Fidel called the Battle of Ideas.
-It came about like this: I was watching a film about a runaway called Chris McCandless, who ditched his ivy-league-trust-fund life and travelled all across America to get to Alaska and live the Jack London dream, where he ate some poisonous potatoes and died. This was 1992, the year before I was born. I cried and promised myself I would start a savings account to fund a trip to Alaska, where I too could live in the wilderness in total solitude. Then I went through the film step by step and analysed how it would have been different if the guy had been a girl.
+During this period, communists around the world conceded that the demise of the Soviet Union had created a serious dilemma for the left. Not only were we penalised by the argument that “socialism has been defeated,” but our own arguments to explain the turbo-charged drive toward globalisation and neoliberalism and to make the case for a socialist alternative were not strong enough. One indication of that weakness was the 2001 World Social Forum meeting held in Brazil, which promoted the slogan – Another World is Possible, a weak slogan in comparison to a more precise slogan, such as – Socialism is Necessary. Young people drifted into our ranks in this decade, angered by the wretched social conditions created by the permanent austerity of neoliberalism, but bewildered about how to transform the political environment. The lack of Marxist political education was felt by socialist forces across the world, which is why many parties around the world began to revive a conversation about internal political education for cadre and active engagement with other social forces regarding the pressing issues of our time. Fidel called these two processes – internal education for the Party and external engagement on the dilemmas of humanity – the Battle of Ideas.
-Really, it would have been a completely different film. Not just in the sense that there were situations in it that would likely have different outcomes for the different sexes (e.g. when he got beaten up by a conductor who finds him stowing away on his freight train) but more fundamentally because a girl wanting to shun modern society and go AWOL into the wilderness to live by killing and eating small animals and scavenged plants would just be considered unsettling.
+In line with this broad direction, the government of Vietnam worked with the national publishing house Sự Thật (The Truth) to develop a curriculum for universities and colleges in the country. They developed this order of study along five subject areas: Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, Scientific Socialism, Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Ho Chi Minh Thought. This project worked to educate an entire population that would be able to understand the world in a rational and factual manner, outside the illusions of bourgeois ideology. Four years later, Communist Party of Vietnam adopted a resolution to take this work forward, and – under the leadership of Professor Nguyễn Viết Thông – produced this textbook that brought together the many themes of Marxism into focus for the introductory student and cadre. A book such as this is never easy to create, since it must introduce a form of thought that is critical of the foundations of bourgeois ideology – so it is a critique – but at the same time it provides a worldview to understand the actual world in which we live – so it is a science. The text must, therefore, show how bourgeois thought is partial and at the same time how socialist thought, creatively applied, will allow one to have a firmer grip of reality and be able to participate in fighting to transcend the obstinate facts of human indignity that are reproduced by capitalism. No manual such as this is without its flaws and without its limitations, but no education can start without a manual such as this one. The Vietnamese comrades have done a great service to the left movement by producing a text such as this, which can be used for study and then used as a model to develop similar texts in different parts of the world.
-Wood-cutting mystic Henry David Thoreau shares some of the blame for this. He said things like ‘chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it’, as though even having sex with a woman would ruin your transcendentalism. ‘Man’ is used to refer to humanity as a whole. When ‘Man’ is pitted against nature in a dynamic of conquest, nature is usually ‘she’.
+Ho Chi Minh, whose interpretation of Marxism and whose ideas about the Vietnamese Revolution, are all over this text once said: “Study and practice must always go together. Study without practice is useless. Practice without study leads to folly.” There can be no better injunction to get to work, to study and develop one’s theoretical armour and to use that theory as the guide to one’s work in the Battle of Ideas and in the battle for the streets, because this unity between theory and action is indeed praxis (thực tiễn), not just practice, but conscious human activity. That is what Fidel encouraged in his lectures on the Battle of Ideas.
-Wildness in women does not mean autonomy and freedom; their wildness is instead an irrational fever. Simultaneously, in survivalist terms we are the weaker sex and cannot prosper individually outside of the social sphere or without the protection of a manly man. Women both are excluded from, and banished to, nature.
+Dr. Vijay Prashad.<br />
+March 2023<br />
+Caracas, Venezuela.
-Even on those documentary channels that do programmes on whole families homesteading in the wilderness the woman is always Mountain Man’s wife, never, ever Mountain Woman, just an annexe of the Mountain Man along with his beard, pipe and gun. ''In Coming into the Country: Travels in Alaska'', the writer John McPhee describes lots of Mountain Men in careful detail and a few mountain women in passing comments. One of the Mountain Men tells John McPhee that he wanted to be utterly and totally alone, cut off deep in the country, with only three daughters and one wife, or his ‘womenfolks’, as he liked to call them.
+=== Preface to the First English Edition ===
-There are exceptions to the invisibility spell, of course. There is Calamity Jane the cowgirl. Nellie Bly, who did a trip around the world in seventy-two days. Freya Stark, the travel writer of the Middle East. Mary Kingsley the explorer, and that old lady who went over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel. But the problem is exactly that there are exceptions. It is as though there is something significant to learn in the wild but it can only be accessed by men. In the wild, men carve out their individual and manly selves, as though women are not allowed individual and authentic selves. The story has the exact same plot, but ‘a woman alone in wilderness’ means something totally inverted. So I had this idea for a journey to Alaska.
+The text of this book constitutes part one of a four-part curriculum on Marxism-Leninism developed and published by the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam. This curriculum is intended for students who are not specializing in the study of Marxism-Leninism, and is intended to give every Vietnamese student a firm grounding in the political philosophy of scientific socialism.
-Maybe I have read too many ''Lord of the Rings'' quest-type fantasies, but I cannot shift the notion that to be deserving of a destination that is really far away you should have undergone some sort of expedition to get there, like how people make a pilgrimage out of piety. So the other element of its ethos came from an aversion to aeroplanes, a combination of carbon-footprint guilt and a suspicion towards the paradox of crossing time zones in a matter of hours to exist suddenly and indifferently in a place you should not naturally be. Not just flying to a place and kind of congregating like these ‘all-inclusive sun, sand, sea, collect your tokens in the ''Daily Mail''’ package holidays.
+The entire curriculum consists of:
-We were one of those families that always went abroad, apart from years when Dad was out of work. By the time I left home I had travelled to nine different countries. If asked to describe those countries I could have told you that beaches in Spain are busier than beaches in Greece, that in the Caribbean you are advised against going onto beaches that are not owned and segregated by your hotel, and that Disneyworld is too far away from the shore to go to the beach but you can go to a pretend beach at the parks anyway and one even has a slide that is a tube going underwater through a tank with dolphins in it.
+Part 1: Dialectical Materialism (this text)
-Living in a technological era means that in an abstract sense the other side of the world is just a few clicks away. Everywhere on Earth has been explored and put in an encyclopaedia. And the internet has brought all of those encyclopaedias together and ordered them into a messy but functional directory. There are no more enigmas. But it also means that passage of travel has become a lot less elitist. I can utilise the internet in the same way that a man of old might have clutched a quill-written recommendation allowing him passage on his father’s tobacco-merchant friend’s ship.
+Part 2: Historical Materialism
-It is very easy to feel nowadays that humanity has saturated everything; that we have conquered the world. If you were to watch a time-lapse of Earth from the beginning of its history up to the present day, for a very, very long time not a lot would happen. The continental land masses would gradually drift, asteroids would impact intermittently, and you might catch an erupting supervolcano, tiny button mushrooms of smoke diffusing. Earth would remain a relatively tranquil marble, its atmosphere pearly eddies and swirls. Then, in the eighteenth century AD, you would see a metamorphosis: cities growing like bruises, fertile soil turning to desert, debris gradually accumulating in a dull metallic orbital constellation.
+Part 3: Political Economy
-There are now satellites in the sky that will far outlive us, as big as football fields, suspended in the Clarke Belt, 35,786 miles above sea level, at a distance that means they rotate in geosynchronous orbit. They experience little to no atmospheric drag and because of this they will not ever be pulled back to Earth. They might cease to exist only when everything in proximity to Earth is swallowed by our expanding sun. Until then these will be one of humankind’s longest-lasting artefacts, and a legacy of the twenty-first century. Our civilisation will be immortalised by these grey exoskeletons, usurping the Egyptians, the Mayans, the Māori, etc.
+Part 4: Scientific Socialism
-Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. Anything that is living on it 6 billion years from now will be vaporised when the sun dies and will be as far from us as we are from those little fish that jumped out of the sea. But we are myopic. In the scheme of things, the rate of change over the past one hundred years is just a blink to the universe, and yet ''shit'', it took so long for me to get to nineteen years. I want the trip to remind me that I am small and getting smaller. (I am stood on a dot on a balloon, all the dots are evenly spaced, as the balloon gets bigger the other dots seem to get further away but it’s only because I am standing on a dot.)
+In Vietnam, each part of the curriculum encompasses one full semester of mandatory study for all college students. Each part builds upon the previous, meaning that this text is the foundation for all political theory education for most college students in Vietnam.
-Alaska is the place to feel this. It figures in the collective psyche as the Land of the Mountain Men, the Last Great Wilderness. It is big and vast and mostly unpeopled. The British Isles would fit inside it seven times and about a seventh of Alaska is set aside as protected wilderness. Its entire population is ten times smaller than London’s.
+However, it is important to note that this is not the first encounter with dialectical materialism which Vietnamese students wil have had with these ideas, because Vietnamese students also study dialectical materialism, historical materialism, political economy, and scientific socialism from primary school all the way through high school.
-I saved up £2000, the approximate cost of a return plane ticket to Alaska, after a few months of working full-time post-A-levels and living scrupulously. This is to be used for travel expenses only, and must get me from the UK to Iceland to Greenland to Canada and across into Alaska. Any money I need to exist will be made along the way. All of the above will be summarised in a tasteful voiceover on top of some sort of video montage of all the places I go looking mysterious and cloudy.
+As such, the text of this book — in and of itself — would probably seem overwhelmingly condensed to most foreign readers who are new to studying dialectical materialism. Therefore, we have decided to extensively annotate and illustrate this text with the information which would have been previously obtained in a basic Vietnamese high school education and/or provided by college lecturers in the classroom.
-Travelling by sea and land, it will be an Odyssean epic, only with me, a girl, on a female quest for ''authenticity''.
+It is our desire that these annotations will be helpful for students who hope to learn these principles for application in political activity, but we should also make it clear to academic researchers and the like that our annotations and illustrations are ''not'' present in the original Vietnamese work.
-==== HAUNTED BY THOUGHTS OF AN ELSEWHERE ====
+We hope that this book will be useful in at least three ways:
-I have a cabin on a corridor with all the other cabins; each cabin has two bunks, two lamps, two lockers and a porthole. The cabin doors do not have locks and next door keeps walking into my cabin mistaking it for his. From what I gather he works in shifts, engineering things. Most of the employees are Icelandic but speak at least partial English. I get by with a kind of pidgin formed from their rudimentary vocab and my pocket phrase book.
+* As a comprehensive introductory textbook on dialectical materialism and for selfstudy, group study, classroom use, cadre training, etc.
+* As a quick and easy to reference handbook for reviewing the basic concepts of dialectical materialism for students of theory who are already familiar with dialectical materialism.
+* As a companion book for further reading of theory and political texts rooted in dialectical materialist philosophy.
-There are also two students: Kristján and Urla, a guy and a girl from Manchester and Leeds Universities who use the freighter to travel home to Iceland cheaply in the uni holidays. They live in different cities and only met on their first trip. They now make their trips home coincide so they can keep each other company, and they have a rapport with the regular employees. Everyone seems to be under the impression that they are, or are to be, in love.
+Also, please note: because this book is intended to be used as a quick reference and handbook for further study, there are many instances where we duplicate references, quotations, and other such information. We hope that this repetition may be an aid for study by reinforcing important concepts and quotations.
-I am trying to capture the ‘essence’ of life on board ''Blárfoss'' for the documentary. Can I do that by filling a memory card with pictures and videos of every inch of the ship, enough to make a 3D mosaicked replica? As though to get at the essence of something is to cover its every angle, like a method of scientific inquiry, exhausting its possibilities? Probably not, because the memory card is nearly a quarter full already. I have also interviewed just about every English speaker afloat. Urla especially thinks the documentary is ‘totally cool’. Everyone was taking part as a way of alleviating boredom but it has evolved into some strange kind of fame-ritual, because in the tiny world of the ship the interviewee becomes something akin to a celebrity. At first I was worried about this tainting the documentary, but I suppose I can make it a case in point.
+This book — Part 1 of the curriculum, which focuses on the universal philosophical system of dialectical materialism — serves as the foundation of all political theory and practice in the Vietnamese educational system as well as in the Communist Party of Vietnam and other organizations such as the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, the Women’s Union, the Farmer’s Union, the Worker’s Union, etc. Dialectical materialism is the framework for theory and practice as well as the common lens through which Vietnamese socialists relate, communicate, and work together.
-The ship’s interior is functional and plain, with dull and unengaging shapes and cold pastel colours that work to intensify the inside of the lounge, the colours of the board games and the humming of the heaters. Aside from the ubiquity of the ship’s engine, which can be felt more than heard, outside the lounge there is rarely any sound apart from the intermittent tannoy presence of our captain (who we have nicknamed Capt. Oz). We have all found ourselves taking an unusual interest in food and meal times, which are almost always the same. ''Plokkfiskur'', it is called: fish stew, in all its variants. Then underpinning the whole experience is a feeling that I would tentatively call weariness or dreaminess or, combining both, dreariness. A kind of suspension, being both still and unstill, wonky, caused by the weird sensation of movement when nothing visible is moving, the force of gravity contending with the swell of the ocean. Being on an object that is floating makes you more conscious of gravity. With time to think about this, I have come to an arbitrary decision as to what zero gravity might feel like.
+This book focuses almost exclusively on the written works of three historical figures:
-In outer space I figure you develop a stronger sense of proprioception, which is the sense of the body parts in relation to each other. (I read this in one of the only English magazines from the lounge, ''Pro Bodybuilding Weekly''.) The brain can adapt the senses to compensate each other, so a blind person might hear and feel better. In outer space, with minimal stimuli of sound, sight, smell, taste and touch, perhaps proprioception becomes enhanced. Weightlessness makes any body movement effortless. Forces would radiate from the inside of your body, your pulse would throb through your limbs and you would feel ‘embodied’ in the most literal sense. This is all just boredom-speculation. I also like to think I can imagine what it would feel like to not have an arm, or to have a third arm, or a penis.
+''Karl Marx'' and ''Friedrich Engels''... who initially developed the universal philosophy of dialectical materialism by synthesizing various pre-existing philosophical, political, economic, and historical tendencies including the idealist dialectical system of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the political economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the materialist positions of Ludwig Feuerbach, and countless others.
-==== LAND OF THE ICE-QUEENS ====
+''...and Vladimir Illyich Lenin'', who further developed and defended dialectical materialism, expanded the analysis of imperialism, demonstrated how to apply dialectical materialism to local material conditions specific to Russia at the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, and made many other important contributions to dialectical materialist theory and practice.
-Every star is a sun. Every sun has its own planets. Every planet has its own constellations. The 3D world is a hologram of a 2D world projected from the edge of a black hole.
+Obviously, there are countless other writers, revolutionaries, philosophers, and scientists who have contributed to dialectical materialism and scientific socialism. This book focuses primarily on Marx, Engels, and Lenin, because these figures laid the foundations and formulated the basic principles of the philosophy of dialectical materialism and the methodology of materialist dialectics which are most universally applicable in all endeavors.
-'''OUTER'''
+It is our desire that translating this important work into English will lead to further study, understanding, and appreciation of dialectical materialism as an applied philosophy which socialists can find value in returning to periodically. At the end of the book, we offer a glossary of terms which doubles as an index, appendices with summaries of important concepts and principles, and an afterword, in which we offer advice for further study and application of dialectical materialism.
-'''SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE'''
+At the time of publication, we are already in the process of translating and annotating Part 2 of this curriculum, which focuses on historical materialism, with the hopes of eventually releasing the full curriculum. Once it is complete, it will also be made available at ''BanyanHouse.org'' — where we also invite questions, constructive feedback, and suggestions.
-We do not make enough of outer space. The only remaining frontier and it is no longer of much interest to most of the public. I suppose that is a good thing, and practical. Things would be trickier if everyone was ultra-conscious of their infinitesimality. My mum does not believe in space. I asked her once when I was young if she believed in aliens and she said don’t be silly, Erin. I said it seems far more likely that there are aliens if space goes on for ever. She said she had never really thought about it. I asked a bit more because I wanted to know what was past the blue sky in her head if she did not think about space. She told me to shut up, she had more important things to think about, like working overtime to make money now that Dad had lost his job at the Cadbury factory because it got bought by America.
+=== Introduction ===
-Having busy parents meant spending a lot of summer holidays in kids’ clubs and eating mainly breadcrumbed/fun-shaped frozen foods. Our domestic life was founded on convenience. Remove foil before heating quickedy-quick Micro Chips I feel like Chicken Tonight like Chicken Tonight. Only modern convenience did not bring the liberation they said it would because Mum still had to work a job ''and'' vacuum as well, thank you, Mr Dyson. So really she can be excused for not stopping to think about infinity.
+Just a generation ago, Vietnam was the site of the most brutal war of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. More tonnage of bombs were dropped on the Vietnamese people than were dropped by all sides combined throughout the Second World War. In addition, countless acts of cruelty were used to scorch the very soil of the nation. By the end of Vietnam’s Resistance War Against Imperialist USA (known to the world as “the Vietnam War”), Agent Orange, napalm, and unexploded munitions had left a land deeply scarred and a people traumatised by decades of death and murder. The impression one had was that although Vietnam had won the war, it was so badly devastated that it could not hope to win the peace. But, miraculously, Vietnam is winning this war today, as the Vietnamese economy has become one of the fastest growing in the world and quality of life for the people is improving at a pace which could scarcely have been predicted in 1975.
-I have been standing out on deck and looking out to sea. The sea that goes on unbroken to the horizon. There is nothing, no things but gulls, and you think, how do the gulls fly without tiring? Do they not feel panic that there is nowhere for them to rest their wings apart from actually on the ocean, and here they might get eaten by something big that comes from what to them must seem another dimension? No place to rest their eyes and sleep? The empty space makes me think of a diagram in a physics book of a ball on a plane of Newton’s, a single arrangement of matter rolling on a grid of space, the loneliest object in the world. We are the ball and the sea is the grid. I have only been on an unbroken and empty plane like this on a P&O ferry to France once, and that was only for a matter of hours. By day three I feel like the Ancient Mariner.
+No one could have imagined that Vietnam would turn around so dynamically and rapidly. How did they achieve this economic miracle? How could this nation — so recently devastated by imperialism and war — possibly be able to reconstruct, revive, rejuvenate, and rebuild? That story is now unfolding before our eyes.
-Urla likes to read and we got along quickly. We have formed a kind of two-way book club where we swap and then discuss. We have been dipping into Ursula Le Guin’s ''The Left Hand of Darkness'' and Elizabeth Bishop’s ''Questions of Travel''. Urla says she likes Le Guin; the book’s world Winter reminds her a little of her own icy home, but she is not so keen on Bishop, maybe because some of the intricacies of language are lost on her, maybe because her BA is in Business Studies. I have read a little of her book, ''Lean In'', by her hero Sheryl Sandberg. It is all about how women in business can help themselves to succeed in a male-dominated workplace by learning to be more like men.
+Vietnam’s development has not come without hardship, struggle, setbacks, and mistakes. The people of Vietnam have had to learn hard lessons through struggle and practice to develop and strengthen ideological and theoretical positions. In this manner, the philosophical development of Vietnam deserves study and attention from socialists around the world. To outsiders, Vietnam can appear to be rife with contradictions. As depicted by Western journalists, Vietnam is simultaneously a success story driven by capitalist markets and a failing socialist state. Every victory is chalked up to private enterprise, while every setback is attributed to socialism. In this sense, the media has failed to understand the essential character of the core contradictions which drive the development of Vietnam politically, socially, and economically.
-Part of the trip obviously had to be about personal growth, and I have resolved to take the extended opportunity to make myself a more well-rounded human being. The six-point plan goes like this:
+Luna Nguyen has used social media and played an incredibly important role in helping the English speaking world understand the complexities of such contradictions that beguile so many academics and experts. She has helped to give an insider’s perspective on her own country’s path of development towards socialism.
-– Read lots of insightful books
+Nguyen’s translation of Part 1 of this influential work, ''Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism'', a textbook studied by university and college students across Vietnam, is yet another big step in the direction of making Vietnam’s understanding of their own country’s development available to the English reading world.
-– Know rough history of every place before visiting
+For me, as an outsider, it is fascinating not only to see how deeply Vietnamese society takes an interest in European philosophical development (referencing Hume, Hegel, Descartes, Marx, Engels, and so many other Europeans, almost as if they are figures seated in some ancient monastery in Fansipan), but, even more importantly, how they have assimilated that knowledge into the wider context of their own history, society, and culture. The textbook truly comes alive in all the parts where these ideas are shown to be relevant to Vietnam itself. For instance, the textbook stands out with discussions of Ho Chi Minh’s concept of “proletarian piety,” which artfully blends elements of Vietnamese culture with Marxist concepts of class consciousness, or the story of Chi Pheo, who stands as a sympathetic stand-in for the interpretation of the unique characteristics of the Vietnamese Lumpenproletariat. The book itself is an instance of the dialectic of the universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete.
-– Immerse self in culture of each place
+Just as importantly, it shows that, in Vietnam, Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought are not mere perfunctory rituals that are repeated like a learnt formula for this or that exam; but that although the Vietnamese political economy in its current form certainly contains contradictions which must be negated in the process of building the lower stage of socialism, the government remains seriously committed to the goals, theory, and practice of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.
-– Learn important phrases in each language
+Hence, I highly recommend this book, not merely because it is a well-illustrated and easy-to-read book on the principles of dialectical materialism, but more importantly because it offers an insight into how the Vietnamese government collects and synthesises the philosophical developments that are, on the one hand, the collective legacy of all of humanity, and, on the other hand, the concrete manifestations of a revolutionary theory of (and for the oppressed yearning for) freedom in every corner of the world.
-– Write. Every day
+March, 2023
-Urla’s parents are separated. Her mum is Icelandic but her dad is English. He lives near to her in Leeds and she has split her time between England and Iceland since she was ten. I was planning on staying in a cheap hostel in Reykjavík but Urla’s mum has a spare room that I can stay in for free for as long as it takes me to figure out how to get to Greenland. So instead of having to infiltrate my first foreign city with the blunt ram of a tourist I have Urla to show me around and she has an SUV, so we can even go see the best bits of the landscape of Iceland, something that would have taken some logistics considering my budget. Urla talks like everyone should listen and has a way of draping herself over everything like a languid cat. I think it would be fair to say that I have a girl-crush on Urla, a kind of feeling of affinity and admiration that is completely free from jealousy.
+Dr. Taimur Rahman<br />
-==== WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST CONSPIRACY FROM HELL ====
+=== Editor’s Note ===
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''INT. MESS ROOM – Urla reclining on sofa with dog-eared copy of Moby-Dick in hands – room is large with three sofas arranged in square and coffee table centre with books and magazines – small television with VHR mounted to wall – bookcase with videos, CDs – CD player on top of bookshelf – bookshelf modified with balconied shelves to stop books sliding off with sway – outside wide windows ocean – white ocean birds – wall of ocean rises, falls, rises, falls with motion of boat – one other sofa occupied by two men – legs splayed reading magazines –''</div>
+Working on this project has been one of the most illuminating experiences of my life. In translating this work, Luna has opened a door for English speakers into the wide world of Vietnamese scholarship and pedagogy as it relates to socialist theory and philosophy.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' (BEHIND CAMERA) So maybe you could just talk a little about feminism in Iceland</div>
+Luna and I have done our best to capture the original meaning and spirit of the text. Furthermore, as we have mentioned elsewhere, our annotations and illustrations are intended only to contextualize and expand on the core information of the original text similarly to the class/lecture setting for which the curriculum is intended.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA:''' Okay, sure</div>
+In their lives, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were never able to finish clarifying and systematically describing the philosophy of dialectical materialism which their work was built upon. Engels attempted to structurally define the philosophy in Dialectics of Nature, but unfortunately that work was never completed since he decided to prioritize publishing the unfinished works of Marx after his untimely death.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– sits up and turns to men on adjacent sofa –''</div>
+I believe that this text is a great step forward in that work of systematically describing the philosophical system of dialectical materialism and the methodological system of materialist dialectics. I also believe it’s worth noting how the Vietnamese scholars who crafted this curriculum have embedded the urgent necessity of action — of creative application of these ideas — throughout the text in a way that I find refreshing and reflective of the works of Marx and Engels themselves.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA:''' Do you wanna talk about feminism in Iceland with me?</div>
+As the text will explain, dialectical materialism is a universal system of philosophy which can be utilized to grapple with any and every conceivable problem which we humans might encounter in this universe. In Vietnam, dialectical materialism has been used to delve into matters of art, ethics, military science, and countless other fields of inquiry and endeavor. It is my hope that this book will, likewise, lead to a wider and fuller understanding and (more importantly) application of dialectical materialism in the Western world.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– the men look up from their magazines, shrug –''</div>
+March, 2023
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA:''' They speak little English. So. There are many surveys say Iceland is the best country in the world in which to be a woman. Because it is the best country in the world in which to be a person. We have no army. We run on renewable energy. People are mostly very happy apart from those that get sad of the darkness in winter</div>
+Emerican Johnson
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– the man on the left is reading an Icelandic magazine on 4x4s – he is watching Urla over the brim of the page –''</div>
+=== A Message From ''The International Magazine'' ===
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA:''' Let me think, so, in nineteeeeeen seventy-five 90 per cent of Icelandic women went on strike over equal pay and then they got equal pay. We elected the first female president in Europe in 1980. Finnbogadóttir. She was a divorced single mother like my mum and she was re-elected three times until she retired. And then our prime minister was the world’s first openly gay prime minister and she started out as an air hostess. The state church bishop is a woman. And we are the only country in the world to make strip clubs illegal for feminist reasons</div>
+''The International Magazine'' began in 2020 to connect international socialist movements and to strengthen the voice of oppressed people across the globe. We have been following the work of Vietnamese communists in their unique path towards peace, prosperity, and the construction of socialist values with a keen eye and much interest. It is with this spirit of international solidarity and a deep desire to learn from and share wisdom from our comrades around the world that we celebrate the release of this First English Edition of The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism Part 1: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– 4x4 magazine man makes a semi-discreet ‘humph’ sound – Urla turns to him pointedly – he looks down and flicks the pages of his magazine straight –''</div>
+Ho Chi Minh once said: “In order to build socialism, first and foremost, we need to have socialist people who understand socialist ideology and have socialist values.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Do you think that has to do with nakedness being starker because in the cold climate you have to wear so many layers on a day-to-day basis? Kind of an anonymising of the human figure that might take away some issues of sexualising the body. Like in ''The Left Hand of Darkness'', where cold and androgyny made a society with no misogyny and no war?</div>
+To this end, Vietnamese communists have expended tremendous resources building a curriculum on Marxist-Leninist philosophy and analysis which includes dialectical materialism, materialist dialectics, scientific socialism, historical materialism, and political economy. These topics are taught in primary and secondary schools and are mandatory subjects for all students attending public universities in Vietnam. Beyond that, Vietnam offers free degrees to students who wish to study Marxist theory and philosophy and Ho Chi Minh Thought (defined as the application of Marxist philosophy to the unique material conditions of Vietnam). In this manner, Vietnam has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to developing “socialist people” “with socialist values.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– 4x4 magazine man shakes his head disbelievingly – Urla does not notice – she looks down at her body in high-necked woollen jumper, thick grey joggers tucked into woollen socks –''</div>
+We are, therefore, extremely excited to have worked with Luna Nguyen on the translation and annotation of Part 1 of the Vietnamese university curriculum on the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism into English, which will make this unique perspective of socialist theory available to comrades around the world for the first time.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA:''' I don’t know. Probably (PAUSE) what else. So women do not have to change their surname if they marry. And when a baby is born its parents get equal leave. BUT</div>
+After having read through this volume, which outlines the fundamentals of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics, we find the most important lesson to be the relationship between theory and practice. According to the Vietnamese scholars who authored the original text, Marxist-Leninist philosophy must be considered a living, breathing philosophy which requires application in the real world — through practice — in order to be made fully manifest.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she raises her right index finger in a scholarly manner, holding the book to her chest with her other arm –''</div>
+We hope that readers of this volume will carry forward this guidance through practice which suits your material conditions, wherever you are in the world.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA:''' Even in the best place in the world in which to be a woman it is still better to be a man</div>
+If you would like to learn the perspective of socialists from other nations around the world, we invite you to visit our website at InternationalMagz.com — the home of ''The International Magazine'' online. There, you will find articles written by comrades from a wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities with a clear bias towards anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, and anti-imperialism!
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she looks at 4x4 mag man, who is leafing through his pages with a look of nonchalance –''</div>
+In solidarity,
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Nowhere has completely got rid of gender inequality and the attitude of some people here now is like, Okay, we get it. You have everything you want now. You have it the best in the world so stop being so righteous. Other women don’t have it so great. You can give it a rest now. Although it’s totally cute when you get all angry</div>
+The Editorial Team of ''The International Magazine''
-==== CUT ====
+=== Notes on Translation ===
-==== HOW TO BE A GROWN-UP IN A POST-FEMINIST SOCIETY ====
+Vietnamese is a very different language from English, which has presented many challenges in translating this book. Whenever possible, I have tried to let the “spirit” of the language guide me, without altering the structure, tone, and formatting of the book.
-You are fourteen years old and you have just started your job as a waitress in a small restaurant owned by a family, each member of which fills a role in the kitchen and also deals drugs. Having never had a job you take everything here to be archetypical of the working world. You are not a feminist because feminists are lesbians and hate men and you don’t. You like boys more than girls, girls are lame and preoccupied and bitchy and you’d rather hang out with boys and skate and mess around. The only girls you do like want to be boys too.
+One thing you will likely notice right away: this book is highly condensed! This is because most Vietnamese students are already familiar with these concepts. We have added annotations to try to make the book more digestible for those of you who are new to Marxism-Leninism, and these annotations are explained on the next page.
-Stuart is the father of the family and the manager of the restaurant. He is short, fat, bald, and has buggy eyes. When you are introduced from across the worktop he grabs your hand in his stubby, sweaty hands and kisses you up your arm with his fat wet lips. You squeak and recoil and the other girls laugh at you. When you are outside the kitchen one of the older girls tells you you get used to it.
+I have worked hard to try to make the language in this book consistent with the language used in popular translations of works from Marx, Lenin, etc., that would be familiar to English-language students of Marxism-Leninism. That said, different translators have been translating these texts into English for over a century, such that different word choices have been used to relate the same concepts, and even Marx, Engels, and Lenin used different terms to describe the same concepts in many instances (not to mention the fact that Marx and Engels wrote primarily in German, whereas Lenin wrote primarily in Russian).
-You do get used to it and after a time you manage not to squirm when Stuart strokes your pubescent arse, which is taut in those tight-fitting Tammy Girl trousers he makes you wear because he likes it when you squirm. When he creeps up behind you when you’re standing behind the till counter on the restaurant floor and kisses you on the neck, making a squelchy sound, none of the customers ever say anything and some of them must catch him sometimes.
+As such, I have made it my first priority to keep the language of this translation internally consistent to avoid confusion and, again, to match the spirit of the original text as much as possible. As a result, you may find differences between the translation choices made in this text and other translations, but it is my hope that the underlying meaning of each translation is properly conveyed.
-You watch a seventy-year-old man dine an escort while he strokes the downy hairs at the dip of your back and hips, while you tell yourself ‘the dip of my back and hips is merely the concave of a crescent in an assembly of matter which is a body in which I reside’. When your mum asks how was work you say yeah, fine, because if you told her it’d be embarrassing. She’d call the police or something. None of the other girls have told anyone, the customers never say anything, so what makes you so special you call the police? It’s something you’re mature enough to ignore. It’s a part of being a woman. When Jodie the new girl starts you even get a bit annoyed when she keeps going on about how Stuart likes her because she’s prettier than you.
+March, 2023
-It’s an easy job and you don’t want to lose your job cus then you won’t be able to go to the cinema or anything. If you quit you’d have to come up with a good reason for Mum and you can’t think of one. And you’re lucky to have this job because you’re really shit at it, they tell you that all the time. You do everything wrong and you’re really slow and clumsy and you never smile. And the other girls are always saying he’s good to us, he looks after us, he gives us free food and he’s like a dad really.
+Luna Nguyen
-You let Stuart do it because it turns him on if you don’t. When you are in the cloakroom one time he calls your bluff and puts his fingers all the way down your pants, which are the ones with ducks on. You don’t tell the other girls because they’ll just think that you think that you’re something special. Nobody else is complaining, don’t be such a crybaby. When you close your eyes to sleep you can see clearly the spittle on his fat wet lips.
+=== Guide to Annotations ===
-==== SYMBIOSIS OF ALGAE AND ANIMALS ====
+This book was written as a textbook for Vietnamese students who are not specializing in Marxism-Leninism, and so it is meant to be a simple and condensed survey of the most fundamental principles of dialectical materialism to be used in a classroom environment with the guide of an experienced lecturer. That said, a typical Vietnamese college student will already have been exposed to many of the concepts presented herein throughout twelve years of primary and secondary education. As such, in translating and preparing this book for a foreign audience who are likely to be reading it without the benefit of a lecturer’s in-person instruction, we realized that we would need to add a significant amount of annotations to the text.
-Urla’s mother’s name is Thilda. Her house sits behind Reykjavík and from it you can look out over the backs of all the buildings looking out to the sea. It is spring and the trees and parks are very green and the water and sky very blue. The buildings get so close to the sea that in certain lights, when you can’t see the horizon and the harbours and the lakes are filled with sky, it can look as if the city is sitting on the edge of infinity. The sun sets but seems to sleep just out of sight, and I had to buy a sleep mask to convince my body it was night-time. Although it is getting warm for Iceland it is still cold, and whenever outside I wear my ski jacket.
+These annotations will take the following forms:
-Leaving ''Blárfoss'' had the potential to be emotional, but because for most of the others it was more of a suspension of the experience rather than an end – because most of the others would be repeating the journey again and again with slight variations in crew – it wasn’t. I will have to learn not to get emotionally attached to transitory places, seeing as a journey is entirely transition. Even Urla and Kristján treated their goodbye with admirable stoicism. She says that their relationship is ''Blárfoss'', that they have agreed not to see each other outside of it before university finishes, and she does not think it can even exist independently of it. I think it is very sensible.
+* Short annotations which we insert into the text itself [will be included in square brackets like these].
-She seems to be able to look at their relationship with a manly and objective clarity that I admire. She seems totally indifferent to Kristján, in fact, spending most of her days on the boat with me, aside from joining him in their shared cabin at night. If they were together and I approached them Kristján would make any excuse and leave, which became an ongoing joke to Urla, she would laugh and shout ‘Bye, Kristján!’ after him. I got to feeling really bad about it and started to leave them be, but then Urla took to abandoning him for me.
+-----
-She says as soon as university finishes she wants to do a trip like mine, that the trip is brave and important. She made me swell up, as if with her approval I become a little bit like her. She is sure of herself in a way that I envy, in the way that she talks and holds herself. You can tell she was one of the girls at school that everybody wanted to be friends with, or wanted to at least not to be not-friends with, to be in the focus of her dislike, which I imagine to be conducted with precision and ruthlessness.
+Longer annotations which add further context and background information will be included in boxes like this.
-At school I preferred to be on my own. I would ride my bike places on weekends, with my rucksack – an antidote to the typical feminine handbag – full of practical stuff that I would find use for even when it was tenuous, just for the sake of being able to cut everything neatly with my pocket knife even where I could use my teeth, nursing the smallest of wounds with my first aid kit, using my compass even when I knew the way just for the reassuring comfort I found in knowing exactly where north was, its orderliness and its simple truth, comfortable in apt autonomy like Thoreau.
+-----
-There was one place in particular that I would cycle, an hour by bike, across the river and down empty country lanes, to a tree that I used as a hide that looked out over the top of an abandoned limestone quarry, and it was here that I would sit with my binoculars and bird-watch. Back in the town the only birds you ever saw were little common garden birds like tits and chaffinches and sparrows and wagtails but out in the quarry and away from the town there were birds that prey on other things, other birds, predatory and exciting.
+We have also added diagrams to our annotations, as well as a detailed glossary/index and appendices, which are located in the back of the book. We hope these will resources will also be of use in studying other texts which are rooted in dialectical materialist philosophy.<br />
-I had myself an ''Identification of British Birdlife'' book and would sit still for hours just to collect the sight of them and the sound of the name of them like talismans. There were plentiful buzzards and kestrels that would slip in and out of the area on their hunting routes, sliding on the warm air to hang and observe like snorkellers at the water’s surface, periscoping their necks then locking still before the dive, limiting any movement to the final flurry. Or the thrill of the goshawks that would sometimes weave and dip in and out of the trees either in the valley beyond the quarry or on the opposite ravine. Sometimes the goshawks display-danced, spreading their tail feathers like splayed fingers and falling through the sky like grabbing hands.
+=== Original Vietnamese Publisher’s Note ===
-But what I really held out for were the days when I got to see one or both of the rare pair of peregrine falcons that nested somewhere in the trees around the quarry. They would always fill me up with the magic of hope, their tiny defiant bodies wheeling against the sky so small against the big, so dark against the blue, and so free. In their sky dance they revelled disobediently against their declared local extinction.
+In 2004, under the direction of the Central Government, the Ministry of Education and Training, in collaboration with Sự Thật [Vietnamese for “The Truth,” the name of a National Political Publishing House], published a [political science and philosophy] curriculum for universities and colleges in Vietnam. This curriculum includes 5 subjects: Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, Scientific Socialism, Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Ho Chi Minh Thought. This curriculum has been an important contribution towards educating our students — the young intellectuals of the country — in political reasoning, so that the next generation will be able to successfully conduct national innovation.
-To be able to tell the difference in these birds by their shape and their movements and to point at them and call them by their names has always been to me an affirmation of the solid truth of the natural world as a system that can be described with taxonomy, and a reminder of my place in it. It is also a reassurance; it shows me that these things still exist because I can collect them. That there are still places to watch and be a part of a realer order outside of severed civilisation.
+With the new practice of education and training, in order to thoroughly grasp the reform of the Party’s ideological work and theory, and to advocate for reform in both teaching and learning at universities and colleges in general, on September 18<sup>th</sup>, 2008, the Minister of Education and Training, in collaboration with Sự Thật, have issued a new program and published a textbook of political theory subjects for university and college students who are not specialized in Marxism — Leninism with Associate Professor and Doctor of Philosophy Nguyen Viet Thong as chief editor. There are three subjects:
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism
-[[Image:f0017-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-I do not know if Urla can tell that I was the kind of person to spend my lunchtimes at school in toilet cubicles with my feet up so no one would recognise my shoes. My parents can’t reconcile this sudden bid for independence and shrugging off of domesticity with what they think of as my nature; introverted and docile. They are confused by my surety and think that instead this impulse must stem from some malady; that I overthink things, that I feel too much, that I should not watch the news if it scares me so much that it makes me want to leave what I must see as the train wreck of modern society.
+Curriculum of Ho Chi Minh Thought
-What they could not seem to see was that this limiting aspect of me is in part the drive for my leaving, that I want to learn how to be without it. To prove to myself and everyone else that solitude is as much mine as any Mountain Man’s and that I do not have to be relegated to loneliness and displacement just for being female. It is rational and deliberate and it had always been part of the plan. I have always been obedient, the model daughter. Mum and Dad said finish school and try hard at it so I did. I kept my nose clean and I always ate my vegetables (frozen for goodness).
+Curriculum of the Revolutionary Path of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
-Already I feel something changing. I look at Urla and the way she oozes and I think, does doing this project make her think that of me? Am I that person, even if only from certain angles? Is it having a camera and a plan that gives me that authority? Or actually, just being nineteen and female and travelling alone, does it do that? It is possible that Kris’s discomfort around me came from a place of awe, like the awe he shows for Urla in never talking back to her.
+Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism was compiled by a collective of scientists and experienced lecturers from a number of universities, with Pham Van Sinh, Ph.D and Pham Quang Phan, Ph.D as co-editors. This curriculum has been designed to meet the practical educational requirements of students.
-Yesterday Thilda took us to a geothermal spring. Neither of us remembered to pack swimming things so we had to go in our pants and bras. It did not matter because it was raining so we only saw a few hikers and they weren’t close enough to distinguish underwear from swimwear anyway.
+We hope this book will be of use to you.
-‘The best time to go to the springs is when there is rain, because the tourists like to stay dry. But in Iceland we think, if you are going to get wet, you might as well get wet, okay?’ Thilda had said.
+April, 2016
-We parked the SUV where the off-road terrain offered no more leeway, still a bit of a distance from the pools, whose grey iridescence we could just make out. The sky hung low like the pelt of a sad, wet sheep, the rain fading all outlines into each other like a bleeding watercolour and the mossy ground skirting the rocks and water, luminous in contrast. We took off our clothes and shoes, slammed the doors, and ran towards steaming water laughing and screaming. The rain stung our skin pink.
+NATIONAL POLITICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE — SỰ THẬT
-We fell on our fronts into the hot water, slipping and flailing, trying to submerge every inch from the cold and spitting and coughing and laughing at the water filling our mouths. Then we settled still and quiet with just our eyes and the tops of our heads out of the water, blinking the rain off our lashes and bringing our noses up for air like seals. Thilda started to tell us a story.
+=== Original Vietnamese Preface ===
-‘The famous saga of Eric the Red may be called so but it is really about a ''skörungur'', which is what we call a strong woman hero. Her name was Gudrid the Far-Traveller, his wife, and she lived in the tenth century.’
+To implement the resolutions of the Communist Party of Vietnam, especially the 5<sup>th</sup>
-Iceland is steeped in sagas and mysticism because the landscape is animated as if it is telling its own story. Glaciers walk, the ground moves and magma seeps, and geysers erupt like blowholes on the humped back of some giant. It is as though these are living parts acting out their own narratives. The Icelandic legends are shaped by the elements, because here the elements are all-pervasive.
+Central Resolution on ideological work, theory, and press, on September 18<sup>th</sup>, 2008, The Ministry of Education and Training has issued Decision Number 52/2008/QD-BGDDT, issuing the subject program: The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism for Students Non-Specialised in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. In collaboration with Truth — the National Political Publishing House — we published the Curriculum of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism for Students Non-Specialised in MarxismLeninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.
-And the landscape is volatile and fierce. Like Thilda says, the Icelandic women are strong because they are descended from Vikings and conquerors and raised by the icy sea winds which sting their cheeks and the hot geyser steams which scald them. And in a land where fire and ice are in battle and care little for anything around them, all people must be strong.
+The authors of this text have drawn from the contents of the Central Council’s previous programs (Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, and Scientific Socialism) and compiled them into national textbooks for Marxist-Leninist science subjects and Ho Chi Minh Thought, as well as other curriculums for the Ministry of Education and Training. The authors have received comments from many collectives, such as the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and Administration, the Central Propaganda Department, as well as individual scientists and lecturers at universities and colleges throughout the country. Notably:
-In the landscape the elements merge like there is no limit to their pervasiveness, no clearly defined contours. You can feel it seeping into you; trading off with the algae in the water and the mud between your toes like nourishment. You can feel the shuddering of the water making everything on your body reach out in reciprocity, every hair a tentacle. Half submerged in the hot spring; in and out; half still and warm, half cold and lashed; ears under, eyes out; the patter of rain on the surface, the gasping of the spring.
+Associate Professor To Huy Rua, Ph.D, Professor Phung Huu Phu, Ph.D, Professor Nguyen Duc Binh, Professor Le Huu Nghia, Ph.D, Professor Le Huu Tang, Ph.D,
-Thilda’s story gives me a feeling like recognition, a sense of inevitability and completion, a slotting into place. Like finding an object you never noticed was missing until you found it and realised its lack had been haunting you all along. I recognise it by knowing its antithesis; my own home and environment. See, where I am from there is not this boundlessness. The ''outside'' that I know is broken to pieces and scattered.
+Professor Vo Dai Luoc, Ph.D, Professor Tran Phuc Thang, Ph.D, Professor Hoang
-Our cul-de-sac is on a suburban estate built on the site of an old power station that had been running up until the eighties. All the houses look the same with neatly trimmed rectangular lawns and faux-Tudor beams, no weeds (there are sprays for those), and the streets are named after famous ships. Our town was typical of Midlands industry because it is well connected to the canal and river systems. There was a power station, a vinegar factory, a sugar beet factory, and several carpet factories, one of which my mum worked in as a secretary while I was in her belly. The power station was coal-fired and archaic and the factories moved to China so they knocked it all down and built the suburbs and a giant Tesco. My mum and dad got jobs a thirty-minute drive away, closer to the city, and no one could grow anything to eat in their gardens because the power station left radon in the topsoil.
+Chi Bao, Ph.D, Professor Tran Ngoc Hien, Ph.D, Professor Ho Van Thong, Associate
-The outside that I know is pastoral, a grid of owned and regimented spaces, moderated for production. Some people think the English countryside is pretty but that is the tragedy of it. It is a result of the way our small country was built, when a bunch of rich men parcelled up what was once shared land to make it easier to go about ploughing and producing more crops. Our common wilderness became a commodity. On an island so small the mark of this is hard to not see: a monotonous quilt of rectangles divided by hedgerows. Especially in the Midlands, where there are not many mountains or bogs or other bits of stubbornly unprofitable land, and where the remains of failed industry create a graveyard landscape, the stumps covered over with prosthetic suburbia.
+Professor Duong Van Thinh, Ph.D, Associate Professor Nguyen Van Oanh, Ph.D,
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+Associate Professor Nguyen Van Hao, Ph.D, Associate Professor Nguyen Duc Bach, PhD. Pham Van Chin, Phung Thanh Thuy, M.A., and Nghiem Thi Chau Giang, M.A.
-[[Image:f0020-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-The peregrine quarry was the one place I knew that had a semblance of wildness to it, of richness and possibility. This is an invisible kind of poverty, this lack of all of the complexity that Urla and her mother are born from.
+After a period of implementation, the contents of the textbooks have been supplemented and corrected on the basis of receiving appropriate suggestions from universities, colleges, the contingent of lecturers of political theory, and scientists. However, due to objective and subjective limitations, there are still contents that need to be added and modified, and we would love to receive more comments to make the next edition of the curriculum more complete.
-Gudrid lived in the days of longboats and raging seas. She travelled to what we now call Newfoundland, which is my own first port of call in Canada. This was before lucky-lost explorer Christopher Columbus, and Thilda proudly points out that although the Spanish like to think that the sagas are make-believe, Icelanders know who really found the New World. Gudrid was the first European mother in the western hemisphere.
+MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
-She had a son; they called him Snorri. But with their small clan and without the guns the Spanish had, they were driven away by the natives. Or savages, as Thilda called them.
+=== Table of Contents ===
-She concludes her story by saying, ‘Gudrid travelled further than all of her husbands, who died one after another and proved early in our history that you don’t need a penis between your legs to make you a great adventurer.’ I look up at the bulking hills and think about how Gudrid personifies them, and the geysers and the winds, and the looming, enduring volcanoes, the shifting ground. And how so much of Thilda is in Urla, and Gudrid in them both. And it feels kind of feminine, all this entering. It feels like pregnation.
+'''Introduction to The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism'''
-It is this harsh softness. Of a landscape that is fertile and ''hostile''. And it takes on this significance for me and for my journey so that I have to squeak into bubbles under the water, because I feel like for the first time ever I know exactly why I am where I am right then in that moment.
+'''I. Brief History of Marxism Leninism'''
-==== GO WEST, YOUNG MAN ====
+. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts
-Our plans for Greenland have undergone sudden and fantastic developments. Urla and Thilda had been plotting the whole time to put us on a boat with Urla’s uncle Larus, who is a whale scientist. Larus has his own research boat and is intending to go out into the Denmark Strait, the channel in between Iceland and Greenland, to survey a pod of long-finned pilot whales. They hadn’t told me in case it didn’t work out, but it has and we leave for Greenland in four days’ time.
+. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism
-It is against protocol because the boat is only supposed to carry two people, but Urla threatened to stow away if her uncle took me and went without her. She will come with me as far as she can before she has to get back and work her summer job, so we will be in the double cabin and Larus will sleep in the steering room on the floor. Urla will then carry on through Greenland with me until I find a way to follow in the wake of Gudrid on to Canada. It is perfect because she can translate for me in Greenland, and she said she would write up the subtitles for the Danish when I edit the footage for the documentary. Because her uncle Larus still has to do his research it will be a slow journey of five days but we get to go whale watching and learn about the behavioural patterns of the long-finned pilot whale.
+'''II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism'''
-It jarred how easily Thilda let Urla go across a foreign country with a stranger so soon after they reunited after so long. I suppose we will be with her uncle and then her family friends in Nuuk once we find a way to reach the west coast, so the prospect seems safe to her. Maybe also she is used to Urla leaving, what with her being at university and having spent half her childhood away at her dad’s because of the separation. But the contrast to my own parents’ response is stark.
+. Objects and Purposes of Study
-===== Why can’t you just be simple like other girls your age, get a job somewhere in town and work your way up, or at least go away to go to university, make something of yourself? =====
+. Some Basic Requirements of the Studying Method
-===== What did we do to you that made you so determined to leave us? =====
+. Excerpt from ''Modifying the Working Style''
-===== We won’t sleep until you return. =====
+'''Chapter I: Dialectical Materialism'''
-===== We won’t sleep ever again. =====
+'''I. Materialism and Dialectical Materialism'''
-I could not make them understand that my breaking-away-from is inevitable and keeps the history of the world in motion. The young always leave. At least the male young of the species always does. My leaving would have been a casting out, an initiation ritual, had I been a boy. Women who leave always abandon. Imagine the pinnacle form of this, the mother who leaves her children to her husband. Unnatural! Monstrous! And the man who does it? My bet is he ends up smug with a younger wife paying minimal child support.
+. The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues
-Urla does not need to lurch away from Thilda because Thilda lets her go. The two of them are twinned in ease, in their mannerisms, in a way that makes them seem more like sisters than mother and daughter. I prefer to be definitive about my being, where it ends and what its characteristics are. I have my dad’s nose, my mother’s green eyes and dark brown hair. I have his stubbornness and her impulse to over-empathise, weeping easily. But I try hard to also not be like them.
+. Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism
-Peregrine; chaffinch; woodpigeon.
+'''II. Dialectical Materialist Opinions About Matter, Consciousness, and the Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'''
-Field; hedgerow; river.
+. Matter
-Mother; father; me.
+. Consciousness
-==== THE CHEMICAL WAR ON THE GYPSY MOTH ====
+. The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness
-Larus has given me Rachel Carson’s ''Silent Spring'' because ‘it is one of the most important books you will ever read’. In 1962 ''Silent Spring'' was published to tell of how different chemicals invented for killing people in the world wars were being used for killing pests on food crops and were then having unexpected repercussions, like the death of birds and children. This is in the sixties, so everyone was doubly pissed with the government for also putting them in range of nuclear weapons that might come at any time without warning and telling them they would be safe under desks.
+. Meaning of the methodology
-Widespread use of DDT was stopped because of Rachel Carson’s book and the US got a mainstream environmental conscience. Acceptance of the ‘ambivalence’ of the oppressors could be scrutinised. Women could have rights, black people could have rights, gay people could have rights, animals could have rights, even grass and trees could have rights, and if you took to the street in a crowd with billboards you could make anything happen.
+'''Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics'''
-Larus overuses his own coined collective nouns like ‘the nascent youth of today’ and ‘the ignorant herd’. He is exactly the kind of man you imagine when you imagine the kind of man who would get upset about bees. He speaks as if he is playing an internal monologue on constant reel, projecting it into the world like his mouth is a loudspeaker. Just by looking at him I can tell he probably actually weeps at the mention of Arctic drilling.
+'''I. Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics'''
-There are certain stereotypes that fit with giving a shit about the planet, and funnily enough these are generally in some way feminine. To be a socially acceptable environmentalist you have to be female, a child, or an eccentric (which itself entails being kind of effeminate, if you are already a man). I have come to the conclusion that this is because environmental issues are perceived to be melodramatic and melodrama belongs to the feminine because women are of course by default hysterical, ‘in touch with nature’, and so easily brought to tears by images of seagulls stuck in Coke cans in conjunction with sad piano music. Melodramatic because there are more pressing issues like terrorists and fascism and the looming employment crisis of the robot workforce, never mind the bees. Women just like animals because they are cute and summon their maternal instinct.
+. Dialectics and Basic Forms of Dialectics
-It is a vicious circle because there is no way of talking about the issues without evoking a whole discourse that is by now tainted by this idea of melodrama. Caring about the environment is lame, Greenpeace is run by scaremongers and weirdo conspiracy theorists, and the bees have gone somewhere, but it is a boring mystery.
+. Materialist Dialectics
-Can YOU give just one pound a month? JUST ONE POUND A MONTH?! One pound could feed cats like Maurice for a whole year and provide shelter on wet nights and windy days and buy the love he so cherishes. Maurice loved his owners (cue sad piano music, image of wet Maurice sat in a box at the side of a road) but one day they took him out in the car and just left him at the side of the road because he had fleas and he smelled. We must protect animals like Maurice, the furry little creatures that god gave us to steward.
+'''II. Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics'''
-But bees do kind of pollinate about everything we eat. So really, though, Larus, where have the bees gone?
+. The Principle of General Relationships
-==== I USE SONAR TO EXPRESS MYSELF ====
+. Principle of Development
-We have found the pod of long-finned pilot whales. There are over one hundred of them and it is incredible to look at, their bodies rising smooth and bulbous from the grey water like bubble wrap, blowing air from their blowholes, spraying water like saliva from a blown-up balloon let loose. After two days of tailing them I am reassured that they are not going to rise up as one and overturn our little boat. I was pacified by realising that they also hang around with dolphins. Dolphins are an animal I can trust. In our pod there are a group of Atlantic white-sided dolphins; Larus says they herd the fish together with the whales. The dolphins are curious about us and come right up to the boat to play around in the foam that comes off our propeller. Their faces and noises are the epitome of happiness, just pure unbridled joy at this strange thing chopping up their water and making it foamy. So simple and pure, like the joy of children.
+'''III. Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics'''
-I have won the tolerance of grumpy Larus. He was moaning about how it is ‘people like me’ who have ruined Bali by thinking they are all spiritual and swamping the place with their yoga mats. He sees this as something flawed in the psyche of the youth of today. I asked him how many children he had and he said he has five from three different mothers because that is just how it was in the sixties. I asked him if Bali’s overcrowding was not just the inevitable outcome of overpopulation and that there were the same annoying yoga mat tourists in the sixties, but in the sixties there were fewer people so there was less yoga mat crowding and that maybe it is actually his generation’s fault for breeding so much. He grumbled some stuff but since then has been actually quite amicable towards me.
+. Private and Common
-On top of his research for the Ocean Association, Larus is conducting his own. The pod is particularly interesting to him because of the dolphins. He uses the equipment on the boat to record and plot their sonar and by measuring patterns he hopes to be able to crack their language. The graphs in the office already prove that the dolphins are talking; Larus has plotted the quantified appearance of each distinct vocalisation in ascending order across a horizontal axis, the times occurring across a vertical axis. The plot of a graph where information is being communicated always results in an angle of 45 degrees because all languages have units that range on a spectrum from frequent to infrequent. If it is not a 45-degree angle then the noises are random and uncommunicative. This is the same for any language, Icelandic, English, Dolphin.
+. Reason and Result
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+. Obviousness and Randomness
-[[Image:f0026-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-Larus says he can apply this method to any long piece of sound data. His other focus is noise picked up by dishes aimed at outer space. A friend in America has built his own dish behind his house in the desert and he and Larus work on the data because the only government-funded dish used specifically to listen for aliens, the Big Ear radio telescope in Ohio, was taken down in 1998 to clear space for a golf course. It ran for twenty-two years and it actually picked up the kind of thing they were looking for. It appeared to come from north-west of the globular cluster of M55 in the constellation Sagittarius. It lasted for seventy-two seconds and they called it the Wow! Signal because that is exactly what astronomer Jerry R. Ehman wrote on the computer printout.
+. Content and Form
-But the signal it picked up only occurred once, so after searching for it they eventually presumed it was some sort of fluke, the logic being that any ''intelligent'' civilisation would keep on sending a signal over and over to make it more likely to be heard. A three-minute-long radio signal was sent from Earth to a cluster of stars at the limits of the Milky Way one time in 1974 and never again. By the time any hypothetical civilisation had got it and then sent a reply it would be around about AD 52,000. The sustained attention span of the average human ranges from between five to twenty minutes. The guys that sent the signal referred to themselves as the Order of the Dolphin. They called themselves this because one of their members, the marine biologist John C. Lilly, used to take hallucinogens and climb into tanks with dolphins to explore interspecies communication. John Lilly found that dolphins can process linguistic syntax. He taught them to differentiate between commands such as bring the ball to the doll and ''bring the doll to the ball.''
+. Essence and Phenomenon
-He would talk about them like he thought they were people. Larus played us a track by a lady spoken-word poet that I liked. She imagined what a whale might say to John Lilly if it could speak telepathically to him, and what the whale asked as it swam circles in its ceramic-tiled prison was whether every ocean has walls.
+. Possibility and Reality
-Because of the difficulty of relaying a message through both deep space and deep time, Larus thinks we also need to consider that aliens might have come to Earth billions of years ago and encoded a message into our DNA, in the genes that do not do a lot apart from sit around. He says that some decoders are looking for mathematical patterns because intelligent civilisations must understand pi and prime numbers and things as universal truths that transcend language. What Pythagoras said: ''the whole cosmos is a harmony and a number''.
+'''IV. Basic Laws of Materialist Dialectics'''
-Some of the guys from the Order of the Dolphin, like the turtle-necked celebrity cosmologist Carl Sagan, also worked on the Golden Records that were sent into space with Voyager 1, which by now could be outside the solar system and on its way to somebody else’s. The Golden Records were a kind of time capsule. In it they sent pictures of a whole range of cultures and creatures, sounds from Earth like screaming and laughter and greetings in lots of different languages. President Jimmy Carter left a written message for the aliens inside the time capsule:
+. Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality
-<div style="text-align:center;">‘This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO SURVIVE OUR TIME SO WE MAY LIVE INTO YOURS.’</div>
+. Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites
-<div style="text-align:center;">– President Carter</div>
+. Law of Negation of Negation
-The time capsule is President Carter’s baby. With it he has conceptually colonised the future.
+'''Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism'''
-==== THE CEILING IN THE SKY ====
+. Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness
-I nominated myself to help Larus while Urla fished for dinner because I like to sit and listen to him talk about space. I am helping group all of the sound bites that Larus has from the dolphin recordings into categories that are similar sounding. He plays them from the computer and we decide which of seven folders to put them into.
+. Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth
-When I was little I wanted to be an astronaut up until age thirteen, when at careers day I sat with my parents and told my head of year about how I wanted to be an astronaut; they all laughed as though it were cute and he signed me up for work experience at a paragliding centre on the basis that I must have liked the idea of flying.
+'''Afterword'''
-Larus was at Kennedy for the lift-off of the Apollo 11 mission. He was there to protest, stood in a line with its back to the launch pad holding a sign that read ‘Meanwhile in Harlem’, but as soon as he heard the roar from the propulsion engines he turned around and could not take his eyes away. There is a photo somewhere of the group with him turning and gaping; he did not ever cut it out of the newspaper because he had spoiled the integrity of the group’s statement. He told me this confidingly and made me promise not to tell Urla because she would never let it go.
+'''Appendices'''
-My being an astronaut was something I did not ever doubt as a child because Mum always told me ''the whole world is your oyster'' and until that careers day I had no cause to doubt her. It did not matter to me that all the cartoon astronauts were men. I think I always positioned myself as male without actually being aware of it. Whenever I watched films or read books with a male hero I totally imagined myself as that hero. Call me Ishmael. Call me Ralf, call me John McClane. It is not fair that only the boys get the fun parts.
+Appendix A: Basic Pairs of Categories Used in Materialist Dialectics
-I said this to Mum and Dad about fun parts when they started protesting at the idea of me doing this trip after college. It took a while to dawn on them that I was being serious and had come of legal age to do it without their permission anyway. Mum said, ‘Your father and I have decided that we can’t help you financially with this trip because we are not behind it.’ I told them that was fine and I could fund it myself. ‘What if you are in an unsafe place and have one of your spells?’ (By this she means my propensity to kind of faint for no apparent reason sometimes.) Of course I have not told them the ''real'' tundra-wilderness plan and the full extent of the ‘survivalism’ experiment, because, well, that would just have been cruel when I know they would suffer for it.
+Appendix B: The Two Basic Principles of Dialectical Materialism
-When America shot a rocket to the moon, even with the sexual revolution in full swing, it was still too soon to let women have a cosmic one. Larus was telling me about an independent programme called Mercury 13 (which he agreed to talk about to the camera), which took accomplished female pilots and put them through the testing that NASA did on their own astronauts, the Mercury 7 programme, the theory being that for various biological reasons women were actually better suited to space flight. It was a success but NASA just could not have ladies on the moon before men, so they kept the requirement that all NASA astronauts be a member of the air force, and women were still not allowed to join the military. So none of the Mercury 13 pilots were taken on, although they had more air experience than a lot of the men at NASA (some of whom secretly did not have all of the requirements anyway). When Larus told me this I remembered how bitter I felt at the paragliding centre while two boys in my year got sent to Leicester Space Centre on ‘limited allocation’ work experience.
+Appendix C: The Three Universal Laws of Materialist Dialectics
-Maybe America sent a man to the moon to undermine Russia’s female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. She was ten years younger than the youngest NASA astronaut and had spent more time in space than all Americans combined, orbiting the earth forty-eight times. Man astronaut Neil Armstrong did not go for all of mankind and he certainly did not go for women. America only went to space in the first place to show that communism could not be more progressive than capitalism. Tereshkova worked in a textile factory before she became a cosmonaut. Her mother before her worked in the textile factory and her father was a tractor driver. What if Apollo had crash-landed? Would Russia rule the world now?
+Appendix D: Forms of Consciousness and Knowledge
-But Tereshkova was a human propaganda pawn: the Russian female programme was dissolved the year of the Apollo moon landing. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s official birthday was moved a day so that there were no records that he was ''really'' born on International Women’s Day; Russia could not have had him as a national hero if he were born on International Women’s Day. That would make him a sissy.
+Appendix E: Properties of Truth
-==== MANNED SPACE FLIGHT IS THE TROPHY WIFE OF THE SUPER-PHALLUS ====
+Appendix F: Common Deviations from Dialectical Materialism
-''INT. BEDROOM CABIN – Erin and Urla sit on opposite sides of the bed facing each other – on her head Urla has a cone with wings coloured with felt-tip pens to look like a rocket – on its side it says NASA under a penis with flames coming out from beneath the testicles – they are talking into walkie-talkies –''
+'''Glossary and Index'''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''Erin''' ('''Jerrie Cobb''') (PUTTING ON AN AMERICAN ACCENT): Oh hey, NASA. It’s Jerrie Cobb from the Mercury 13. So I did everything you said I should</div>
+<br />
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA (NASA)''' (BAD AMERICAN ACCENT. DEEP FOR MALE): Mm-hmm. What’s that?</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-3.png|''“Great Victory for the People and Army of South Vietnam!”'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– Erin bursts into laughter –''</div>
+<br />
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA'''(IN HER NORMAL VOICE/LAUGHING): Hey. What? Are you laughing at my accent?</div>
+= Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism =
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''Erin:''' Sshhhh</div>
+== I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism ==
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– Erin clears her throat and resumes her serious-American tone –''</div>
+=== 1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts ===
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' ('''Jerrie Cobb'''): I did all the tests like all the guys did. And hey, it’s funny. I actually kinda blew them out the water</div>
+Marxism-Leninism is a system of scientific opinions and theories which were built by Karl Marx<ref>Karl Marx, 1818–1883 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, leader of the international working class.</ref> and Friedrich Engels<ref>Friedrich Engels, 1820–1895 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx.</ref>, and defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin<ref>Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1870–1924 (Russian): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class.</ref>. Marxism-Leninism was formed and developed by interpreting reality as well as building on preceding ideas. It provides the fundamental worldview* and methodology of scientific awareness and revolutionary practice. It is a science that concerns the work of liberating the proletariat from all exploitative regimes with the ambition of liberating all of humanity from all forms of oppression.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' ('''NASA''') (ACCENT) (THEATRICALLY SUSPICIOUS): What tests?</div>
+Marxism-Leninism is made up of three basic theories which have strong relationships with each other. They are: ''Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist Political Economics,'' and ''Scientific Socialism''.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN ( Jerrie Cobb)''' (LAUGHING): You know. All the secret tests you make the guys do so they can go into space</div>
+''Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism'' studies the basic principles of the movement and development of nature, society and human thought. It provides the fundamental worldview and methodology of scientific awareness and revolutionary practice.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' ('''NASA''') (PAUSE): I don’t know what tests you’re talking about</div>
+Based on this philosophical worldview and methodology, ''Marxist-Leninist Political Economics'' studies the economic rules of society, especially the economic rules of the birth, development, and decay of the capitalist mode of production, as well as the birth and development of a new mode of production: the communist mode of production.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' ('''Jerrie Cobb'''): I’ll remind you then. I put freezing water in my ears to see what it feels like with no balance. I spent days alone inside a box. I ran on a treadmill till I thought I might die. I drank radiation</div>
+''Scientific Socialism''** is the inevitable result of applying the philosophical worldview and methodology of Marxism-Leninism, as well as Marxist-Leninist Political Economics, to reveal the objective rules of the socialist revolution process: the historical step from capitalism into socialism, and then communism.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' ('''NASA''') (SCOLDING): How’d you find out about the secret tests? They’re secret</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' ('''Jerrie Cobb'''): Er, well now. We have a scientist friend. He invited us to do them. He said you didn’t have your own programme for ladies so he made one to show you that you should have</div>
+==== Annotation 1 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' ('''NASA''') (THEATRICALLY CONDESCENDING): And why’s that?</div>
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> A ''worldview'' encompasses the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about ourselves as human beings, and about life and the position of human beings in the world.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' ('''Jerrie Cobb'''): Because all his evidence suggests that it is way more logical to put a woman in space than a man</div>
+<nowiki>**</nowiki> The word “science,” and, by extension, “scientific” in Marxism-Leninism has specific meaning. Friedrich Engels was the first to describe the philosophy which he developed with Marx as “Scientific Socialism” in his book Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' ('''NASA''') (GRINNING): There is no NASA-led evidence to prove this</div>
+However, it should be noted that the English phrase “scientific socialism” comes from
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' ('''Jerrie Cobb''') (WHINING): Oh please, NASA. I promise I won’t let you down. I coped just as well in the physical tests. I’ve got a higher pain threshold. I beat all the guys in the psychological ones. I’m so small you’ll hardly even notice me, I swear. I won’t take as much food or oxygen. I could even go up there in a smaller shuttle. And all of my reproductive organs are inside of me so I’m less likely to have radioactive children</div>
+Engels’ use of the German phrase “wissenschaftlich sozialismus.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– the girls both laugh then recompose themselves –''</div>
+“Wissenschaft” is a word which can be directly translated as “knowledge craft” in German, and this word encompasses a much more broad and general concept than the word “science” as it’s usually used in English.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' ('''NASA'''): That’s all very nice but we won’t be taking the female programme any further</div>
+In common usage, the word “science” in English has a relatively narrow definition, referring to systematically acquired, objective knowledge pertaining to a particular subject. But “wissenschaft” refers to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding. “Wissenschaft” is used in any study that involves systematic investigation. And so, “scientific socialism” is only an approximate translation of “wissenschaftlich sozialismus.” So, “scientific socialism” can be understood as a body of theory which analyzes and interprets the natural world to develop a body of knowledge, which must be constantly tested against reality, with the pursuit of changing the world to bring about socialism through the leadership of the proletariat.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' ('''Jerrie Cobb'''): But why? We worked so hard. Some of us lost our jobs or our husbands</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– Urla/NASA waves her hands dismissively –''</div>
+Even though these three basic theories of Marxism-Leninism deal with different subjects, they are all parts of a unified scientific theory system: the science of liberating the proletariat from exploitative regimes and moving toward human liberation.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' ('''NASA'''): There are many reasons</div>
+=== 2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism ===
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' ('''Jerrie Cobb''') (SMIRKING): Give me one good reason</div>
+There have been two main stages of the birth and development of Marxism-Leninism:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' ('''NASA'''): Er. I’m, er. I am not authorised to divulge that information to third parties who are not associated with any official NASA programme</div>
+''1.'' ''Stage of formation and development of Marxism'', as developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' ('''Jerrie Cobb''') (LAUGHS/MOCK ANGER): Well, why the hell not?</div>
+''2.'' ''Stage of defense and developing Marxism into Marxism-Leninism'', as developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' ('''NASA''') (DRAWLING): Let it drop now. You’re like a dog with a bone. Do you have a husband? Think of how you’re making your husband feel. If not think about your daddy. You know your daddy wouldn’t want you up there</div>
+==== a. Conditions and Premises of the Birth of Marxism ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' ('''Jerrie Cobb'''): But gee. All the tests show I’d do just fine</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' ('''NASA'''): The tests are not fully conclusive. You might well get up there and just faint or something. And what if you got to space and got yourself raped by an alien? Imagine if you were the courier for an extraterrestrial being back on our planet</div>
+==== Annotation 2 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– Urla straightens up and wags a finger on her free hand pointedly – continues in her best pretend-self-righteous voice –''</div>
+The following sections will explain the conditions which led to the birth of Marxism. First, we will examine the Social-Economic conditions which lead to the birth of Marxism, and then we will examine the theoretical premises upon which Marxism was built. Later, we will also discuss the impact which 18<sup>th</sup> and 19<sup>th</sup> century advances in natural science had on the development of Marxism.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">We will not continue the female programme because of the risks it would bring to the American public. My word is final</div>
+''- Social-Economical Conditions''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– at this Erin/Jerrie Cobb screams in frustration and throws her walkie-talkie into the duvet – Urla jumps and her rocket hat falls off – both the girls are laughing –''</div>
+Marxism was born in the 1840s. This was a time when the capitalist mode of production was developing strongly in Western Europe on the foundation of the industrial revolution which succeeded first in England at the end of the 18<sup>th</sup> century. Not only did this industrial revolution mark an important step forward in changing from handicraft cottage industry capitalism into a more greatly mechanized and industrialized capitalism, it also deeply changed society, and, above all, it caused the birth and development of the proletariat.
-==== CUT ====
+-----
-==== NOT THE WHITE BULL JUPITER SWIMMING ====
+==== Annotation 3 ====
-''INT. CABIN – MORNING – Erin is sat on the bed with laptop – Urla has camcorder – zoom in – Erin’s face – zoom out – sudden noise from outside –''
+Marx saw human society under capitalism divided into classes based on their relation to the means of production.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''LARUS''' (SHOUTING): GIRLS – GIRLS COME – SHI—</div>
+''Means of production'' are physical inputs and systems used in the production of goods and services, including machinery, factory buildings, tools, and anything else used in producing goods and services. ''Capitalism'' is a political economy defined by private ownership of the means of production.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– Larus bursts into cabin, knocks into Urla with camera – Urla turns – camera focuses on Larus – excitement –''</div>
+Within the framework of Dialectical Materialism, all classes are defined by internal and external relationships [see ''The Principle of General Relationships'', p. 107]; chiefly, classes are defined by their relations to the means of production and to one another.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''LARUS''' (WHISPERING): Girls. Come quickly. Outside</div>
+The ''proletariat'' are the working class — the people who provide labor under capitalism, but who do not own their own means of production, and must therefore sell their labor to those who ''do'' own means of production: the ''bourgeoisie''. As the owners of the means of production, the bourgeoisie are the ruling class under capitalism.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' What? What is it?</div>
+According to Marx and Engels, there are other classes within the capitalist political economy. Specifically, Marx named the ''petty'' ''bourgeoisie'' and the ''lumpenproletariat''. Marx defined the ''petty bourgeoisie'' as including semi-autonomous merchants, farmers, and so on who are self-employed, own small and limited means of production, or otherwise fall in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''LARUS:''' You’ll see. Come quickly. Quietly.</div>
+In the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party,'' Marx described the petty bourgeoisie as:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– girls follow Larus into corridor – Urla is in front with camera – Erin out of shot – out onto deck – Larus looks over deck – girls gather round – water slaps against side of boat – Greenland is faint on horizon – iceberg – no whales/dolphins –''</div>
+<blockquote>
+... fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society... The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' What are we supposed to be looking at?</div>
+Vietnam’s Textbook of History for High School Students gives this definition of the petty bourgeoisie in the specific context of Vietnamese history:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''larUS:''' Shush. You’ll see</div>
+<blockquote>
+The petty bourgeois class includes: intellectuals, scientists, and small business owners, handicraftsmen, doctors, lawyers, and civil servants. The vast majority of contemporary intellectuals before the August Revolution of 1945, including students, belonged to the petty bourgeoisie. In general, they were also oppressed by imperialism and feudalism, often unemployed and uneducated.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– the group stands silently for fourteen seconds – four metres away from the boat the water breaks – gush of air from blowhole – ridged back of sperm whale breaks surface – Urla shrieks –''</div>
+The petty bourgeoisie were intellectually and politically sensitive. They did not directly exploit labor. Therefore, they easily absorbed revolutionary education and went along with the workers and peasants.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (YELLS): OHMYGOD—</div>
+However, the intelligentsia and students often suffer from great weaknesses, such as: theory not being coupled with practice, contempt for labor, vague ideas, unstable stances, and erratic behavior in political action.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''LARUS''' (SHOUTING): CHRIST. It’s nearer than before</div>
+Some other petty bourgeoisie (scientists and small businessmen, freelancers, etc.) were also exploited by imperialism and feudalism. Their economic circumstances were precarious, and they often found themselves unemployed and bankrupt. Therefore, the majority also participated in and supported the resistance war and revolution. They are also important allies of the working class.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– boat rocks –''</div>
+In general, these members of the petty bourgeoisie had a number of weaknesses: self-interest, fragmentation, and a lack of determination. Therefore, the working class has a duty to agitate and spread propaganda to such members of the petty bourgeoisie, organize them, and help them to develop their strong points while correcting their weaknesses. It is necessary to skillfully lead them, make them determined to serve the people, reform their ideology, and unite with the workers and peasants in order to become one cohesive movement. Then, they will become a great asset for the public in resistance war and revolution.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA:''' Is it safe?</div>
+Marx defined the “lumpenproletariat” as another class which includes the segments of society with the least privilege — most exploited by capitalism — such as thieves, houseless people, etc.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''LARUS:''' Jesus. Sorry. It took me by surprise. Yes, we should be safe. Just no more screaming, girls</div>
+In the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party,'' Marx defined the lumpenproletariat as: “The ‘dangerous class’ (''lumpenproletariat''), the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society.” Marx did not have much hope for the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat, writing that they “may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''URLA''' (LAUGHING): You screamed loudest. I have it all here. I can play it back to you</div>
+''Political Theories'', an official journal of the Ho Chi Minh National Institute of Politics, discussed the lumpenproletariat in the specific context of Vietnamese revolutionary history:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' It’s so big. I’ve never seen anything so big. Is it a sperm whale?</div>
+<blockquote>
+It should be noted that Marxism-Leninism has never held that the historical mission of the working class is rooted in poverty and impoverishment. Poverty and low standards of living make workers hate the regime of capitalism, and causes disaster for workers, but the basic driving force behind the revolutionary struggle of the working class lies in the very nature of capitalist production and from the irreconcilable contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''LARUS''': Yes, it’s a sperm whale. We will be safe, they’re not that curious. But it’s very close</div>
+Moreover, it should not be conceived that a class is capable of leading the revolution because it is the poorest class. In the old societies, there were classes that were extremely poor and had to go through many struggles against the ruling class, but they could never win and keep power, and did not become the ruling class of society.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– creature resurfaces further from boat – Erin jumps –''</div>
+History has proven that the class that represents newly emerging productive forces which are able to build a more advanced mode of production than the old ones can lead the revolution and organize society into the regime they represent. Fetishizing poverty and misery is a corruption of Marxism-Leninism...
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''': Oh god, it got me again</div>
+The very existence of the lumpenproletariat is strong evidence of the inhumane nature of capitalist society, which regularly recreates a large class of outcasts at the bottom of society.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– nervous laughing – group stand and watch the whale resurface twice more before sinking into the calm water, its mass leaving its imprint in tiny bubbles –''</div>
+In the late 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup> centuries, millions of Vietnamese people were forced to leave their homes in rural farmlands to work for plantations and factories which were owned by French colonialists. These workers were functionally enslaved, being regularly physically abused by colonial masters, barred from any education whatsoever, and receiving only the bare minimum to survive. As a result, under French colonial rule, about 90% of Vietnamese were illiterate and the French aimed to indoctrinate Vietnamese people into believing that they were inferior to the French.
-==== CUT ====
+The French colonialists also worked with Vietnamese landlords to exploit peasants in rural areas. Those peasants received barely enough to survive and, like the plantation slaves, were prohibited from receiving education. Because Vietnamese peasants and colonial slaves composed the majority of workers while being so severely oppressed and living in conditions of such abject poverty, it was difficult to fully distinguish between the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat in Vietnam during the colonial era.
-==== THE COMMUNISTS ARE IN THE FUNHOUSE ====
+During this time, Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists developed the philosophy of “Proletarian Piety.” The word “piety,” here, is a translation of the Vietnamese word ''hiếu'', which originally comes from the Confucianist philosophy of “filial piety.” Filial piety demanded children to deeply respect, honor, and obey their parents. Through the concept of Proletarian Piety, Ho Chi Minh adapted this concept to proletarian revolution, calling for communists to deeply love, respect, and tirelessly serve the oppressed masses. This philosophical concept sought to unite the proletariat, lumpenproletariat, and petty bourgeoisie into one united revolutionary class. Even some feudal landlords and capitalists — who were, themselves, oppressed by the colonizing French — were willing to fight for communist revolution and were welcomed into the revolutionary movement if they were willing to adhere to the principle of proletarian piety. The working class and peasantry would lead the revolution, the more privileged classes would follow, and all communist revolutionists would serve the oppressed masses through sacrifice and struggle.
-KULUSUK: looks pretend. It is a tiny island ‘settlement’ with only five hundred people in it, which is, apparently, quite large for Greenland. The houses look like they were erected from a flat-pack box, as if they could be neatly folded away and taken with the people if they migrated. They are painted block primary colours: little toy houses, stage props. They are set into the rocks at jaunty angles. The slopes sit vertical against the still water, as if the island is built on the tips of a mountain range that lies just below the surface. The water must not get stormy because some of the houses sit just metres from its edge.
+During this period, many novels were written and circulated widely which featured main characters who were members of the lumpenproletariat or enslaved by the French, such as ''Bỉ'' ''Vỏ,'' a story about a beautiful peasant girl who was forced to become a thief in the city, and ''Chí Phèo'', the story of a peasant who worked as a servant in a feudal landlord’s house who was sent to prison and became a destitute alcoholic after being released. The purpose of these stories was to show the cruelty of the colonialist-capitalist society of Vietnam in the 1930’s and to inspire proletarian piety, including empathy and respect for the extreme suffering and oppression of the lumpenproletariat, peasantry, and colonial slaves. These stories also presented sympathetic views of intellectuals and members of the petty bourgeoisie: for instance, in the novel ''Lão'' ''Hạc'', the son of a peasant leaves to work for a French plantation and the father never sees him again. The aged peasant becomes extremely poor and sick without the support of his son, and the only person in the village who helps him is a teacher, representing the intellectual segment of the petty bourgeoisie.
-Urla is glad to be back on shore. She was short and restless and pacing in her catlike way, flitting between being happier reading on her own in the bedroom cabin and coming into the wheelhouse to sit with us but not saying anything, as though to remind us of her presence before slinking off back to her book.
+The writers of these novels were communists who wanted to promote the principles of proletarian piety. Rather than looking down on the most oppressed members of society, and rather than sewing distrust and contempt for the petty bourgeoisie, Vietnamese communists inspired solidarity and collaboration between all of the oppressed peoples of Vietnam to overthrow French colonialism, feudalism, and capitalism. Proletarian piety was crucial for uniting the divided and conquered masses of Vietnam and successfully overthrowing colonialism. Note that these strategies were developed specifically for colonial Vietnam. Every revolutionary struggle will take place in unique ''material conditions''<ref>Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See Annotation 79, p. 81.</ref>, and the composition and characteristics of each class will vary over time and from one place to another. It is important for revolutionists to carefully apply the principles of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to accurately analyze class conditions in order to develop strategies and plans which will most suitably and efficiently lead to successful revolution.
-I can’t sleep now, my womb feels like it is full of acid and lined with tar, and I can’t flail around like I would in my own bed because I will wake Urla. One of the nearby houses has huskies and they have been howling all night at the moonless sky. My eye mask itches, my Mooncup is uncomfortable and I am scared of leaking on the sheets on our last night with Larus.
+The deep contradictions* between the socialized production force** and the capitalist relations of production*** were first revealed by the economic depression of 1825 and the series of struggles between workers and the capitalist class which followed.
-This is the kind of period that requires a big fat nappy towel but I am trying to be good to the environment. I am still so glad to have my periods back that I feel no resentment towards it. The pill had stopped them and I went without for the whole time I was on it. I went on it like a lot of teenage girls do, because my periods hurt a lot and would interrupt that steady forward march to the drumbeat of patriarchy, making me take time off work and school. As though being female is an ailment to be cured with medicine.
+-----
-I have been staring at the first ever picture of Earth for about an hour now. The one taken from the Apollo mission where they flew around the moon to take pictures of craters, the mission before they actually landed. They went up there to take these pictures of the moon’s craters but the astronauts decided to turn the camera around and film Earth rising from behind the moon.
+==== Annotation 4 ====
-At that moment, for the first time ever, images were appearing on the screens at NASA of Earth from outside Earth. They were watching themselves watching themselves almost in real time from 238,857 miles away. Right then, they reached a new level of self-consciousness that will probably never be recreated outside that room and moment ever again. A Copernican Revolution.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> See: ''Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction'', p. 175.
-In the 1960s, the space race expanded the human psyche to incorporate a concept of deep space and deep time. The Earthrise photo made people stop and think about Earth more holistically. Maybe that is why people of the sixties cared more about each other and the future.
+<nowiki>**</nowiki> In Marxism, “socialization” is simply the idea that human society transforms labor and production from a solitary, individual act into a collective, social act. In other words, as human society progresses, people “socialize” labor into increasingly complex networks of social relations: from individuals making their own tools, to agricultural societies engaged in collective farming, to modern industrial societies with factories, logistical networks, etc.
-It is the most reproduced image on Earth, and has become more and more abstract until it has been reduced to an icon for human achievement in the twenty-first century, its significance totally inverted. I am starting to feel a bit strange about it. Because I have been exposed to it so many times that it has numbed me to what I am actually looking at, I am staring at it to try and really see it. It stays on my retina when I blink hard, so when I open my eyes it bleeds into the image on the screen and I can kind of imagine it rising.
+The production force is the combination of the means of production and workers within any society. The “Socialized Production Force,” therefore, is a production force which has been socialized — that is to say, a production force which has been organized into collective social activity. Under capitalism, the “Socialized Production Force” consists of the proletariat, or the working class, as well as means of production which are owned by capitalists.
-They gave a name to the feeling astronauts get when they look back at Earth; they call it the ‘Overview Effect’. When they are going round in orbit and they are trying to put it into words and it is all cauliflower clouds and dancing green ribbons of aurora and lightning like flicking modem lights and any way they put it sounds so stupid, they get frustrated with their words because it is the most earthly thing on Earth but at the same time it is outside our earthly logic.
+<nowiki>***</nowiki> Marx and Engels defined “relations of production” as the social relationships that human beings must accept in order to survive. Relations of production are, by definition, not voluntary, because human beings must enter into them in order to receive material needs in order to survive within a given society. Under capitalism, the relations of production require the working class to rent their labor to capitalists to receive wages which they need to procure material needs like food and shelter. This is an inherent contradiction because a small minority of society (the capitalist class) own the means of production while the vast majority of society (the working class) must submit to exploitation through wage servitude in order to survive.
-It is the same in parts of science that deal with a reality that evades our logic. The scientists have to simplify things using a language we can all understand. Three guesses whose language they use!
+Examples of such early struggles include: the resistance of workers in Lyon, France in 1831 and 1834; the Chartist movement in Britain from 1835 to 1848; the workers’ movement in Silesia (Germany) in 1844, etc. These events prove as historical evidence that the proletariat had become an independent political force which pioneered the fight for a democratic, equal, and progressive society.
-But they have to use one language to talk to other scientists, and to distil their complicated theories until they make sense to us laypeople. But in so doing they make them into something nothing like what they wanted to say in the first place and we believe in this end product because it came from the mouths of scientists. They talk about ''quantum soup'' and ''quark flavour mixing'' and you wonder if it looks more like a minestrone or something smooth like pea soup. And they call their instruments things like THE SUPERCONDUCTING SUPER-COLLIDER, so you wonder if they left the naming jobs down to earnest five-year-olds.
+-----
-My favourite example of this is physics king and wife manipulator Albert Einstein’s name for non-local faster-than-light interaction of atoms that are separated in space. The particles were created in the same instant in space but then got widely separated, but they can still be said to be the same particle, and if you measure one it immediately affects the other. I do not understand it fully but I just like what he called it. He called it ''spooky action at a distance''.
+==== Annotation 5 ====
-And astronauts say things that seem so obvious and dumb, like ‘you realise that the whole world is interconnected’, and you snort at how obvious and dumb these clever astronauts sound, but then you think about it and actually maybe they are on to something. They say things like, ‘You realise that we are all already in space, on a giant spaceship, spaceship Earth’, and you think they are just saying that in a condescending sort of subterfuge to everyone who is not ''really'' on a spaceship, until you realise that you had been thinking of yourself as on this anchored point from which they send rockets to space, when you have been out there the whole time. There is nothing underneath you and nothing above or either side for a very, very long way. The moon rolls around a groove in the space–time fabric created by the gravity of Earth.
+Here are some brief descriptions of the early working class movements mentioned above:
-There should be a flight about every five years that takes all of the current world leaders into orbit so that they can look down at Earth. If the UN wants world peace why have they not thought of that one?
+'''Resistance of Workers in Lyon, France:'''
-==== MUSH QUIMMIG MUSH MUSH ====
+In 1831 in France, due to heavy exploitation and hardship, textile workers in Lyon revolted to demand higher wages and shorter working hours. The rebels took control of the city for ten days. Their determination to fight is reflected in the slogan: “Live working or die fighting!”
-Urla has taught me how to say: Hello, my name is Erin, thank you, yes, no, and the food was very nice. There is a Kalaallit Inuit family from the settlement that were travelling today to pick up supplies from Kangerlussuaq (gan-ker-schloo-schooak) on the west coast, where there is a DIY shop that has something specific that they need, and a family member that needs ferrying, and various other menial things which all seem insane to have to travel FIVE HUNDRED MILES for.
+This resistance was brutally crushed by the government, which supported the factory owners. In 1834, silk mill workers in Lyon revolted again to demand the establishment of a republic. The fierce struggle went on for four days, but was extinguished in a bloody battle against the French army. About 10,000 insurgents were imprisoned or deported.
-They intend to return with a heavy load, so the family are sending the dad and son out with two almost empty dog sleds. The dogs can run between forty and sixty miles in a day, so the thing should take us thirteen or fourteen days. It is too mountainous to get into Nuuk from the east side, but the ferry that goes from Kangerlussauq to Nuuk only goes once a week. If all goes well, I should get into Kangerlussauq the day before the ferry.
+'''The Chartist Movement in Britain:'''
-The dad is called Amos and he loves his dogs. When Amos put me on the sled with his son Umik he made things awkward from the offset by explaining that he might be a bit shy with me because he did not get to meet many girls in the village. Umik is about fifteen, does not say or smile much, wears a beanie with Miley Cyrus on it and a pair of neon orange-framed sunglasses which he never takes off.
+Chartism was a working class movement in the United Kingdom which rose up in response to anti-worker laws such as the Poor Law Amendment of 1834, which drove poor people into workhouses and removed other social programs for the working poor. Legislative failure to address the demands of the working poor led to a broadly popular mass movement which would go on to organize around the People’s Charter of 1838, which was a list of six demands which included extension of the vote and granting the working class the right to hold office in the House of Commons.
-Urla switched her mood as soon as we started moving again. She seems erratic, as though a cloud passes its shadow over her but lifts and then sunshine again. I was a little worried that maybe she had become bored with me; she seemed frustrated by the conversations that me and Larus had. It was the only way to keep time moving through the days at sea, but she would groan ‘boooringggg’, Larus would throw a small object at her, and then she would leave the room.
+In 1845, Karl Marx visited Britain for the first time, along with Friedrich Engels, to meet with the leaders of the Chartist movement (with whom Engels had already established a close relationship). After various conflicts and struggles, Chartism ultimately began to decline in 1848 as more socialist-oriented movements rose up in prominence.
-When we left, Urla hugged her uncle aggressively. I was sad to leave him, but it feels like he has a place in my future as some kind of surrogate uncle or something. He gave me a pile of books and a badge that says ''Save The Bees'' which I put on my rucksack, and a knife for gutting fish. He also gave me his Skype and his mobile number, saying that I had to keep in touch weekly, and that he would worry about me once I had left his niece behind. This paternalism irritated me a little.
+'''Workers’ Movement in Silesia, Germany:'''
-Urla is riding with Amos and I am with Umik and Genen, the lame dog who refuses to be left back at the house without the pack. He is sweet but a bit much. He has taken a shine to me and is keeping my legs warm but cutting off their circulation intermittently. He also smells, all of them smell, from being fed almost entirely on preserved seafood.
+In June, 1844, disturbances and riots occurred in the Prussian province of Silesia, a major center of textile manufacturing. In response, the Prussian army was called upon to restore order in the region. In a confrontation between the weavers and troops, shots were fired into the crowd, killing 11 protesters and wounding many others. The leaders of the disturbances were arrested, flogged, and imprisoned. This event has gained enormous significance in the history of the German labor movement.
-I have tried talking a bit with Umik using the Greenlandic phrase book but I am appalling at pronouncing the words. I think he resorted to putting his iPod on to stop me trying. I thought it would be nice of us to try Greenlandic in case they are sore about still being a colony. I got the phrase book from the harbour office in exchange for my Icelandic one and eight Danish krone. It is a thin thing and useless for actual conversation. I can only pick from utilitarian phrases that are laid out in this odd way that falls into accidental narratives at points:
+In particular, Karl Marx regarded the uprising as evidence of the birth of a German workers’ movement. The weavers’ rebellion served as an important symbol for later generations concerned with poverty and oppression of the working class in German society.
-Please
+It quickly became apparent that the revolutionary practice of the proletariat needed the guidance of scientific theories. The birth of Marxism was to meet that objective requirement; in the meantime, the revolutionary practice itself became the practical premise for Marxism to continuously develop.
-Thank you
+''- Theoretical Premises''
-How much does it cost?
+The birth of Marxism not only resulted from the objective requirement of history, it was also the result of inheriting the ''quintessence''* of various previously established frameworks of human philosophical theory such as German classical philosophy, British classical political economics, and utopianism in France and Britain.
-This gentleman/lady will pay for everything
+-----
-Would you like to dance?
+==== Annotation 6 ====
-I love you
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> In the original Vietnamese, the word ''tinh'' ''hoa'' is used, which we roughly translate to the word ''quintessence'' throughout this book. Literally, it means “the best, highest, most beautiful, defining characteristics” of a concept, and, unlike the English word ''quintessence'', it has an exclusively positive connotation. ''Quintessence'' should not be confused with the universal category of ''Essence'', which is discussed on p. 156.
-Best wishes
+German classical philosophy, especially the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel<ref>Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 — 1831 (German): Philosophy professor, an objective idealistic philosopher — representative of German classical philosophy.</ref> and Ludwig Feuerbach<ref>Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804 — 1872 (German): Philosophy professor, materialist philosopher.</ref>, had deeply influenced the formation of the Marxist worldview and philosophical methodology.
-Leave me alone!
+-----
-Help!
+==== Annotation 7 ====
-Call the police!
+German classical philosophy was a movement of ''idealist'' philosophers of the 18<sup>th</sup> and 19<sup>th</sup> centuries. Idealism is a philosophical position that holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within the human consciousness. Idealists believe that human reason is the best way to seek truth, and that consciousness is thus the only reliable source of knowledge and information.
-I enjoy the narratives of phrase books. They always seem to follow a haphazard protagonist who is forever getting lost and bothering the emergency services. Oh, our hero is at a bakery. Now they are at a flower market. Oh, now they need an ambulance, holiday over! The phrases are like the names scientists come up with for things, almost useless but better than nothing, I suppose.
+One of Hegel’s important achievements was his critique of the metaphysical method.
-I am starting to really need a wee. I have asked Urla how to broach the subject and tried to convince her to tell Amos she needs to go so that we both can because I do not want to. I am just going to hold on until we stop, whenever that is, nightfall, which won’t actually fall but just become a state that we suddenly find ourselves in at some point in the unforeseeable future. By midnight the sun will just about disappear for a few hours.
+-----
-==== THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE ====
+==== Annotation 8 ====
-The command to make the dogs stop is extremely satisfying. They say ‘aaahhh’ really loud just like that, like letting out a massive sigh. The dogs lose momentum and the sleds come to a prompt but smooth halt, proportionate to the length of the sigh/command. Aaaaaaahhhhhhh. We did not head off until the afternoon today so we have had a full seven-hour stint without breaks. It was about eight in the evening when we stopped, very hungry and sore. I was almost definitely sure my period had leaked in my salopettes but no one could tell through the thickness so it was fine. Bit of a panic as to what to do but we have now figured out the toilet situation. One of us holds up a piece of tarpaulin while the other goes, but we have not yet found an explanation for Umik and Amos for the hysterics that Urla goes into as I try to take care of my Mooncup discreetly.
+Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the fundamental nature of reality by classifying things, phenomena, and ideas into various categories. Metaphysical philosophy has taken many forms through the centuries, but one common shortcoming of metaphysical thought is a tendency to view things and ideas in a static, abstract manner. Metaphysical positions view nature as a collection of objects and phenomena which are isolated from one another and fundamentally unchanging. Engels explained the problems of metaphysics in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-It makes me think about the Inuit relationship to the land, how consciously gentle they are to it, how aware they are that every single human being leaves an imprint, a mark on the land behind itself. Out on the ice with no plumbing and no soil this becomes stark. Every time you have to expel your waste a mark is left in the sparkling white snow and that impact is made so very concrete. Starting from our beginning anyone could track us right to where we end no matter how hard we try to leave everything in this place as we found it, could follow our paw marks and scratches and dug-up snow and buried bones.
+<blockquote>
+The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — hese were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years.
+</blockquote>
-The two tents Amos has look so tiny and bright against the vast white of the ice; accidental, futile, defiant, out-of-depth. Like a single plant clinging to the side of a cliff. We are sharing a one-man between the two of us, which at least guarantees maximum body heat exchange. Without the swooshing sound the moving sleds make, and with the dogs all panting and sleeping, this place is eeriesilent. Apart from when the wind makes the tents crackle, their taut skins whipping frantically. The quiet is ominous; we all feel it, the act of writing this itself feels like pathetic fallacy. But there is nothing but us for miles around, the nearest town is the one we headed off from. Urla says polar bears never come this far south, so not to worry too much about attracting them with my blood. It had not occurred to me to worry until she said.
+<blockquote>
+But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.
+</blockquote>
-Urla got a really great interview with Amos today. She did all the speaking, of course, with me filming. We watched it back and Urla translated it for me. He talks about being out on the ice, especially alone (he does most of his trips without Umik but he brings Genen).
+Francis Bacon (1561 — 1626) is considered the father of empiricism, which is the belief that knowledge can only be derived from human sensory experience [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. Bacon argued that scientific knowledge could only be derived through inductive reasoning in which specific observations are used to form general conclusions. John Locke (1632 — 1704) was another early empiricist, who was heavily influenced by Francis Bacon. Locke, too, was an empiricist, and is considered to be the “father of liberalism.”
-I took it so that he was sat cross-legged on the ice with Genen, with nothing else in shot. It was almost perfect, like it encapsulated this ethereal feeling we have both tried and failed to describe: something just less than emptiness, a white collage.
+Engels was highly critical of the application of metaphysical philosophy to natural science. As Engels continues in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:''
-What Thoreau said: in wildness is the preservation of the world. He is often misquoted as having said wilderness, but he meant pure wild-ness. Not wilderness in the sense you usually conceive it, a space set aside to be chaotic or fierce or biodiverse. He meant it in the sense of ‘wild’ as in ‘self-will’ in the past participle. Like looking out over the ocean, or into space, a blank and human-void place, and feeling tiny; this is what Thoreau meant. The very opposite of culture or civilisation.
+<blockquote>
+To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes — ideas — are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses... For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other.
-It is an overwhelming feeling because it reminds you of how you are not like it; vast, indifferent, unfathomable. The ice will erase you. When you and everything living here leave, the ice will swallow up all of your traces. No symbols at all. You. Not you.
+At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees.
+</blockquote>
-The ice sheet refuses human cartography utterly. It is an empty and markless expanse with nothing to anchor the lines of a map to. Well, probably there are glaciologists who can map it in some way, density of ice maybe, accumulation of atmospheric particles perhaps, but this can only be seen with a very specific kind of vision. An esoteric landscape does not help a person to find their way if they are lost; you could walk from the centre of here and never find your way again.
+Dialectical Materialism stands in contrast to metaphysics in many ways. Rather than splitting the world into distinct, isolated categories, Dialectical Materialist philosophy seeks to view the world in terms of relationships, motion, and change. Dialectical Materialism also refutes the hard empiricism of Bacon and Locke by describing a dialectical relationship between the material world and consciousness [see: ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88].
-It makes me feel light-headed, this nullification, if I stand and look out into the expanse. But it is not like a paralysing onset of agoraphobia; instead it is the jolt of a sudden release, the severing of an anchor. It is so not at all like home, where cartography is inescapable, knitted into the soil, and there is no chance to get lost, not really. ''This is a place for walking, this is not, Welcome to the County of Worcestershire, Private Property, Do Not Walk On The Grass.''
+-----
-I asked Amos if he thinks we are on course to get there in time for the ferry. He just said immaqa, which kind of means maybe and is the catchphrase of Greenland. Bodes well. Most methods of transport here only happen on a weekly basis.
+For the first time in the history of human philosophy, Hegel expressed the content of dialectics in strict arguments with a system of rules and categories.
-==== ON BEING OF GREAT ADVANTAGE TO MY SEX ====
+-----
-Sledding across all this snow it kind of feels like we are doing an antithetical version of messianic explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s Antarctica expedition. I watched the Herbert Ponting documentary for inspiration before we left England. At the beginning there is a slide with a quote from King George V along to some jolly colonial-era trumpeting. King George said, I WISH THAT EVERY BRITISH BOY COULD SEE THIS FILM FOR IT WOULD HELP TO FOSTER THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE ON WHICH THE EMPIRE WAS FOUNDED.
+-----
-I wanted some of that spirit, even being of the 50 per cent already excluded by KG. Positioning myself as male again; my masculine counterpart who lives in my brain, appending a fraud penis so I can traverse Scott’s Antarctica in my imagination.
+==== Annotation 9 ====
-We hunt and shoot some seals, but we have to feed the dogs that way so it is not too bad of us. They introduce me to the camp mascot, the black cat Nigger, at which point I am reminded of the terrible inconsistencies of their moral vision. And then they start to anthropomorphise the seals, which is kind of sweet, oh, nice guys, right? But we get all fond of this one seal and her pup, who is too fat and small to clamber out onto the ice when some killer whales chase it because they are hungry. Then we harpoon the killer whales to rescue the baby. Then we sit down to a bowl of seal stew.
+Dialectics is a philosophical methodology which searches for truth by examining contradictions and relationships between things, objects, and ideas. Ancient dialecticians such as Aristotle and Socrates explored dialectics primarily through rhetorical discourse between two or more different points of view about a subject with the intention of finding truth.
-Scott and his men died to put a flag at the South Pole. This is where the fine line between exploration and imperialism was crossed. The expedition was not an exercise in curiosity and adventure but a race of nationalistic pride. Men just love to stick their flags in places. North Pole, South Pole, on the seabed underneath the North Pole, on the tops of mountains, on the moon. Like territorial animals pissing on things.
+In this classical form of dialectics, a thesis is presented. This thesis is an opening argument about the subject at hand. An antithesis, or counter-argument, is then presented. Finally, the thesis and antithesis are combined into a synthesis, which is an improvement on both the thesis and antithesis which brings us closer to truth.
-Annie Smith Peck was a mountaineer who beat Indiana Jones to the summit of Mount Coropuna and stuck a ‘votes for women’ flag on the top of it. She was one of a handful of female explorers to be recognised for her success. Okay, ladies, Annie Smith Peck can have that one, although she is a ‘superwoman’ so don’t you mere mortal women go getting any ideas.
+Hegel resurrected dialectics to the forefront of philosophical inquiry for the German Idealists. As Engels wrote in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-People go mad for that stuff still now, this boyish British Peter Pan nostalgia for exploration and empire. Scouting and wilderness techniques and Bear Grylls, the zealous Christian outdoorsman on the Discovery Channel. When it came out ''Scouting for Boys'' was only beaten as a bestseller by the Bible. It actually came out after the imperial age of Scott and Shackleton when British masculinity was feeling threatened by the waning strength of empire and the rise of the women’s rights movement. The emasculation of men. Which is maybe what the current resurgence of Mountain Man documentaries on television is all about. And they made Bear Grylls the new Chief Scout.
+<blockquote>
+Hegel’s work’s greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics as the highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought.
+</blockquote>
-I want my documentary to be the opposite of colonial exploitation. I want it to explore, quietly, without imprinting. To be porous to all things without contaminating. I want it to be conscious of its tracks in the snow (I did get footage of this to use to that purpose).
+Hegel’s great contribution to dialectics was to develop dialectics from a simple method of examining truth based on discourse into an organized, systematic model of nature and of history. Unfortunately, Hegel’s dialectics were idealist in nature. Hegel believed that the ideal served as the primary basis of reality. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels strongly rejected Hegel’s idealism, as well as the strong influences of Christian theology on Hegel’s work, but they also saw great potential in his system of dialectics, as Marx explained in ''Capital (Volume 1)'':
-==== THE RESURRECTION OF RACHEL CARSON ====
+<blockquote>
+The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.
+</blockquote>
-Today I ride with Genen again. I go to the furthest places at times like this, when I am stationary in transit and alone with just my own head. I fell asleep and had a dream about Rachel Carson. I was in the ‘woods’ that are near my house, which really is just a square of lank trees they did not cut down when they built the estate. It is also laced with radon. It is kind of a recreational area for the housing estate, where everyone walks their dogs. It stinks of dog shit. Mum told me not to play in there when I was young in case it somehow got in my eyes and I got blinded by the shit.
-I was in the woods, standing in the woods and being very still because I could hear buzzing and I was trying to figure out which way not to walk. Then next to me what I had taken for a very ordinary mound of undergrowth started to move. It began to rise in the horizontal shape of a human body. The human shape pulled up all the turf around it as it began to sit up, plucking the plant roots out of the soil like snapping violin strings. They made a noise like that, pluck pluck pluck. When the human shape had sat up it started to brush itself down, its clothes caked in mud and its skin smeared with dirt and dog shit. I recognised Rachel Carson even though I don’t know what she looks like and her face was just a smudge with lichen for eyes.
+-----
-‘Pigeons are suddenly dropping out of the sky dead.’
+Starting with a critique of the mysterious idealism of Hegel’s philosophy, Marx and Engels inherited the “rational kernel” of Hegelian dialectics and successfully built materialist dialectics.
-I was not sure if she was addressing me. It was hard to tell what way her lichen eyes were facing, but her head was turned away from me anyway. Then I woke up from pins and needles because Genen was sat with his femur digging into my shin.
+-----
-==== FIRST FOOTPRINTS IN THE FRESH SNOW ====
+-----
-Every day here is just a slight variation on the first, differentiated by switching sledges, sluggish topics of conversation, and a sky that will sometimes bleed dramatically pink to orange like the belly of a rainbow trout. Sometimes there are strong winds. The constants are the smell of the dogs, wincing at the whip-crack, tensing for the snowdrifts, pins and needles, and the white nothing. I am trying to stay proactive and read but I am kind of too bored to concentrate.
+==== Annotation 10 ====
-A THOUGHT: This nothingness is going to be a very prominent part of the trip. Lots and lots of sitting around, waiting on things, being in transit, but out on the ice like on the ocean this is intensified, your own small contours marked out against the vastness of ether, so that you look at your hands out in front of you and follow the line of your fingers up and down and think, ''I end here, all of me fills up this container that is my body.''
+In order to understand the ways in which the critique of Hegel’s philosophy by Marx and Engels led to the development of dialectical materialism, some background information on materialism — and the conflicts between idealist and materialist philosophy in the era of Marx and Engels — is needed.
-Like proprioception. I keep on thinking that this is the closest I will ever come to moonwalking. There are parallels: the same bulky outerwear, the same being-in-emptiness. Yes, it is almost like moonwalking.
+Materialism is a philosophical position that holds that the material world exists outside of the mind, and that human ideas and thoughts stem from observation and sensory experience of this external world. Materialism rejects the idealist notion that truth can only be sought through reasoning and human consciousness. The history and development of both idealism and materialism are discussed more in the section ''The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues'' on page 48.
-All day I was with Urla and we did not speak more than ten words. Today is day nine, entries are sparse because, mostly, I had nothing to say. It is hard to think with no stimulation. Doing nothing is exhausting. We have slipped into this kind of mental hibernation, except Umik and Amos, who have their tasks to occupy them. Mostly I have been sleeping lots and dreaming vividly. And the ice has saturated my dreams. After a while nothingness becomes potent and textured because of the sense of what is absent. Things are evoked more than if they were actually there: colours, heights, depths. Slight changes in the monochrome landscape come out in relief. When the ice-mountains precipitate onto the horizon they appear as a whisper and disappear as quietly. The horizon is the only spatial marker and it is always on the horizon. We are perpetually at the centre of nothing.
+In the era of Marx and Engels, the leading philosophical school of materialism was known as ''empiricism''. Empiricism holds that we can ''only'' obtain knowledge through human sense perception. Marx and Engels were materialists, but they rejected empiricism (see Engels’ critique of empiricism in Annotation 8, p. 8).
-It feels like trespassing to be alive in a place that is not dead but is inexistence, negation of potentiality. Anything alive is only ever passing through. I cannot put a word on it and when I try I can only think ‘primordial’, but that word entails potential because a beginning initiates a narrative. The one I want is the very opposite of origin.
+One reason Marx and Engels opposed the strict empiricist view was that it made materialism vulnerable to attack from idealists, because it ignored objective relations and knowledge that went beyond sense data. The empiricist point of view also provided the basis for the ''subjective idealism'' of George Berkeley [see Annotation 32, p. 27] and the ''skepticism'' of David Hume. Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism is empiricist in that it supports the idea that humans can only discover knowledge through direct sense experience. Therefore, Berkeley argues, individuals are unable to obtain any real knowledge about abstract concepts such as “matter.”
-Words are getting harder and I am starting to think like the ice; without contrast there is no definition. The ice is self-referential and there is no way into the tautology. I cannot get my bearings if there is nothing to grasp.
+Similarly, David Hume’s radical skepticism, which Engels called “agnosticism,” denied the possibility of possessing any concrete knowledge. As Hume wrote in ''A Treatise on Human Nature'': “I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.” Hume’s radical skepticism lay in his empiricist belief that the only source of knowledge is sense experience; but Hume went a step further, doubting that even sense experience could be reliable, adding: “The essence and composition of external bodies are so obscure, that we mustnecessarily, in our reasonings, or rather conjectures concerning them, involveourselves in contradictions and absurdities.”
-==== THESE ARE SHINING PARTS ====
+Later, in the appendix of the same text, Hume argues that conscious reasoning suffers from the same unreliability: “I had entertained some hopes (that) the intellectual world ... would be free from those contradictions, and absurdities, whichseem to attend every explication, that human reason can give of the material world.”
-I was sorry to leave Umik behind to look after the dogs and sleds. We all hugged goodbye awkwardly, which made him visibly uncomfortable. It felt strange to be walking, and to be walking off the packed snow. I thought permafrost was a permanent frost that kept the ground crispy, but Amos explained it is underneath the ground, and keeps the water up so everything is actually wet and boggy. It was a difficult walk with all the sucking mud, and the weight of our rucksacks. It got a bit warm, even with the wind, so we had to take our coats off, but the wet brings all the insects out and some of them were biting through our thinner sleeves.
+Engels dismissed radical skepticism as “scientifically a regression and practically merely a shamefaced way of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world.” Engels directly refutes radical skepticism in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:''
-I had managed to walk all that way without looking up much from where my feet were going and what insects I was slapping into my skin so it did not even occur to me that the ice was gone until we started driving. Amos was so excited to be in a car, he drove the whole way with the window down and his arm resting on the door, which made it cold in the back but neither of us wanted to say anything. He was talking to his brother, who picked us up in his 4x4, all animated, which suited me because I like to zone out when people are talking a language I do not understand.
+<blockquote>
+... how do we know that our senses give us correct representations of the objects we perceive through them? ... whenever we speak of objects, or their qualities, of which (we) cannot know anything for certain, but merely the impressions which they have produced on (our) senses. Now, this line of reasoning seems undoubtedly hard to beat by mere argumentation. But before there was argumentation, there was action... And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perception.
+</blockquote>
-Then I started to look out of the window and it hit me how colourful everything was. Not really objectively, but in such contrast it nearly hurt my eyes. All this space just mossy and vaguely pink and it just went on and on and on. It hardly changed for the whole journey, flickering on in muted colours, and in front and behind the road was a thin wisp existing through it. The only shape to change was the twisting spine of the mountains.
+This concept of determining the truth of knowledge and perception through practical experience is fundamental to dialectical materialist philosophy and the methodology of materialist dialectics, and is discussed in further detail in Chapter 3, p. 204.
-Wilderness, vast open spaces untouched and just left be. Not a reserve portioned off as a space where you are supposed to go and be recreational. It made me think of Alaska, and how much left I have to see, and how out here it is easy to imagine yourself alone and happy in it.
+Another weakness of empiricism is that it denies the objectiveness of ''social relations'', which cannot be fully and properly analyzed through sensory experience and observation alone. Marx saw that social relations are, indeed, objective in nature and can be understood despite their lack of sensory observability, and that doing so is vital in comprehending subjects such as political economy, as he observes in ''Capital Volume I'':
-As I watched the landscape thaw I thought I felt my spirit thawing a little with it. As if there was something deep inside me that was frozen and had maybe always been frozen and like an Alaskan wood frog frozen dormant for winter it was beginning to wake up to the world again with the spring.
+<blockquote>
+(The true) reality of the value of commodities contrasts with the gross material reality of these same commodities (the reality of which is perceived by our bodily senses) in that not an atom of matter enters into the reality of value. We may twist and turn a commodity this way and that — as a thing of value it still remains unappreciable by our bodily senses.
+</blockquote>
-A RECURRING FEELING: getting excited like forgetting something and then remembering you already did it, like I was waiting for a phone call from Mum asking me what the hell I thought I was doing, young lady, and to come home right now, but realising, nope, she was not going to.
+In other words, Marx pointed out that no amount of sense data about a commodity will fully explain its value. One can know the size, weight, hardness, etc., of a commodity, but without analyzing the social relations and other aspects of the commodity which can’t be directly observed with the senses, one can never know or understand the true value of the commodity. The materialism of Marx and Engels acknowledges the physical, material world as the ''first basis'' for reality, but Marx and Engels also understood that it was vital to account for other aspects of rational knowledge (such as social relations). Marx and Engels believed that empiricist materialism had roughly the same flaw as idealism: a lack of a connection between the material and consciousness. While the idealists completely dismissed sense data and relied exclusively on reasoning and consciousness, the empiricists dismissed conscious thought to focus solely on what could be sensed.
-Amos was really apologetic about leaving us at the hostel and seemed genuinely distressed that he did not have room to accommodate us, which was very sweet. We gave him money, which he took with some sort of feigned coaxing; he kept saying, ‘Lovely girls, lovely girls.’
+It is important to note that, while Marx and Engels rejected ''empiricism,'' they did not reject ''empirical knowledge'' nor ''empirical data'' which is collected from scientific observation [see Annotation 216, p. 210]. On the contrary, empirical data was key to the works of Marx and Engels in developing dialectical materialism. As Lenin explained: “(Marx) took one of the economic formations of society – the system of commodity production – and on the basis of a vast mass of data which he studied for not less than twenty-five years gave a most detailed analysis of the laws governing this formation and its development.” And so, the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels served to bridge the gap between idealism and materialism. They believed that our conscious thoughts are derived from ''material'' processes, but that consciousness can also influence the material world. This is discussed in more detail in the section ''“Materialism and Dialectical Materialism”'' on page 48.
-Kangerlussuaq was only built quite recently by America for the airport. The hostel seems like it is made from slotted-together foam board, partition walls. Like knocking into it would just make it collapse. All of the furniture looks like it was bought from Staples and the mattresses are made from foam.
+-----
-There is a television with American cable and the Discovery Channel. I am taking notes from Bear Grylls for the documentary, both for handy tips and for a character profile of the kind of idea of ‘man and wild’ I keep going on about. As though modern feminism is more ubiquitous than ever before (or so it seems to me, as maybe it does to each new generation) and in backlash, with renewed fanaticism, a strain of hyper-masculinity has occurred. Compensating; which men have always liked to do!
+Marx and Engels also criticized many limitations of Feuerbach’s methodology and viewpoint* — especially Feuerbach’s prescriptions for how to deal with social problems — but they also highly appreciated the role of Feuerbach’s thought in the fight against idealism and religion to assert that nature comes first, and that nature is permanent and independent from human willpower.
-==== THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO ENDURING THE MOST DRAMATIC HARDSHIPS YOU CAN IMAGINE ====
+-----
-''INT. – Erin sits on the corner of a bed with a notebook and pen in hand facing a television – outdoor survivalist show with presenter Bear Grylls – interior is sparse: desk, table, chair, window, rucksacks and possessions spilt on the floor – Erin turns to notice camera and snorts – zoom in on her face – then on television screen – Bear Grylls is hoisting himself up a waterfall –''
+==== Annotation 11 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''BEAR GRYLLS''' (ON SCREEN) (YELLING): SURVIVAL can be summed up in three words (PAUSE) Never. Give. Up.</div>
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Viewpoint, point of view, or perspective, is the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking from which problems are considered. Marx and Engels were critical of Feurbach’s hyper-focused ''humanist'' viewpoint.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– camera pans back to Erin –''</div>
+Feuerbach’s atheism and materialism offered an important foundation for Marx and Engels to develop from an idealist worldview into a materialist worldview, which led them directly to developing the philosophical foundation of communism.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (PUTTING ON AN IMPRESSIVE IMITATION): I have penetrated every crevice of the planet and conquered the WORST nature can haul at me. There is nowhere I haven’t taken on. I’m going to show you the skills I invented that you need to be as man as I am. And survive anywhere on this unforgiving planet</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– Urla is laughing behind camera – camera back to TV screen – zooms in and out erratically on presenter struggling against onslaught of water –''</div>
+==== Annotation 12 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' If you’re stranded in the wilderness you need a weapon. Ideally a rifle. If you don’t have a rifle nature will sometimes throw you a rope in the form of a makeshift weapon. Behold. For example</div>
+Ludwig Feuerbach was one of the “Young Hegelians” who adapted and developed the ideals of Hegel and other German Idealists. Feuerbach was a humanist materialist: he focused on humans and human nature and the role of humans in the material world. Like Marx and Engels, Feuerbach dismissed the religious mysticism of Hegel. Importantly, Feuerbach broke from Hegel’s religious-mystical belief that humans descended from supernatural origins, instead describing humans as originating from the natural, material world.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– Erin flourishes her pen to the camera –''</div>
+Feuerbach also distinguished between the objectivity of the material external world and the subjectivity of human conscious thought, and he drew a distinction between external reality as it really exists and external reality as humans perceive it. Feuerbach believed that human nature was rooted in specific, intrinsic human attributes and activities. As Feuerbach explains in ''The Essence of Christianity'': “What, then, is the nature of man, of which he is conscious, or what constitutes the specific distinction, the proper humanity of man? Reason, Will, Affection.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' This thousand-year-old arrowhead I found on the floor. I will tie it to a stick with the cord from my parachute. If you don’t have an arrowhead or a parachute cord, use your initiative. Initiative is man’s best weapon</div>
+Feuerbach explained that the actions of “thinking, willing, and loving,” which correspond to the essential characteristics of “reason, will, and love,” are what define humanity, continuing: “Reason, Will, Love, are not powers which man possesses, for he is nothing without them, he is what he is only by them; they are the constituent elements of his nature, which he neither has nor makes, the animating, determining, governing powers — divine, absolute powers — to which he can oppose no resistance.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she winks – Urla laughs –''</div>
+In his ''Collected Works'', Feuerbach further explains that materialism is supported by the fact that nature predates human consciousness:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' I am on a journey of SURVIVAL. (THROWS BACK HER HEAD AS SHE SHOUTS) Every step of this journey is me. Man. Surviving. Not dying. Never succumbing to the weakness that is death</div>
+<blockquote>
+Natural science, at least in its present state, necessarily leads us back to a point when the conditions for human existence were still absent, when nature, i.e., the earth, was not yet an object of the human eye and mind, when, consequently, nature was an absolutely non-human entity (''absolut'' ''unmenschliches Wesen''). Idealism may retort: but nature also is something thought of by you (''von dir gedachte''). Certainly, but from this it does not follow that this nature did not at one time actually exist, just as from the fact that Socrates and Plato do not exist for me if I do not think of them, it does not follow that Socrates and Plato did not actually at one time exist without me.
+</blockquote>
-==== CUT TO – ====
+Marx and Engels were heavily influenced by Feuerbach’s materialism, but they took issue with Feuerbach’s sharp focus on human attributes and activities in isolation from the external material world. As Marx wrote in ''Theses on Feuerbach:'' “The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that... reality... is conceived only in the form of the object... but not as sensuous human activity.”
-''INT. – still in same interior but props have moved – belongings piled in corner – Erin has T-shirt tied to her head turban style and is brandishing a broom handle like a scythe –''
+“Sensuous human activity” has a very specific meaning to Marx; it grew from two conflicting schools of thought:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN'''(GESTICULATING BROOMSTICK ON EMPHASISED WORDS): The tropics are home to most of the plants and animals in the world, most of which are trying to KILL YOU. Not every creature in the jungle wants to kill you. Instead these ones want to EAT YOU ALIVE. Sometimes in the jungle it can feel like everything is out to get you. BECAUSE IT IS. Man must reassert his dominance in the jungle. I flick the tarantula off my leg</div>
+The idealists believed the external world can only be understood through the ''active'' subjective thought processes of human beings, while the empiricist materialists believed that human beings are ''passive'' subjects of the material world. Marx synthesized these contradicting ideas into what he called “sensuous activity,” which balanced idealist and materialist philosophical concepts.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– Erin mimes flicking her leg –''</div>
+According to Marx, humans are simultaneously ''active'' in the world in the sense that our conscious activity can transform the world, and ''passive'' in the sense that all human thoughts fundamentally derive from observation and sense experience of the material world (see Chapter 2, p. 53). So, Marx and Engels believed that Feuerbach was misguided in defining human nature by our traits alone, portraying “the essence of man” as isolated from the material world and from social relations. In addition, Feuerbach’s humanism was based on an abstract, ideal version of human beings, whereas the humanism of Marx and Engels is firmly rooted in the reality of “real men living real lives.” As Engels wrote in ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'':
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Petty bug</div>
+<blockquote>
+He (Feuerbach) clings fiercely to nature and man; but nature and man remain mere words with him. He is incapable of telling us anything definite either about real nature or real men. But from the abstract man of Feuerbach, one arrives at real living men only when one considers them as participants in history... The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel of Feuerbach’s new religion, had to be replaced by the science of real men and of their historical development. This further development of Feuerbach’s standpoint beyond Feuerbach was inaugurated by Marx in 1845 in ''The Holy Family''.<ref>''The Holy Family'' is a book co-written by Marx and Engels which critiqued the Young Hegelians, including Feuerbach.</ref>
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– pan to television – presenter is in a desert, talking with spear-clad barefoot gentleman who is holding up to him the corpse of something furry – pan back to Erin, who is looking at the screen –''</div>
+Marx and Engels believed that human nature could only be understood by examining the reality of actual humans in the real world through our relationships with each other, with nature, and with the external material world. Importantly, it was Marx’s critique of Feuerbach which led him to define political action as the key pursuit of philosophy with these immortal words from ''Theses on Feuerbach:'' “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' If you are stranded in the desert you can expect a visit. FROM DEATH. It would take years to learn all the skills of the sand bushmen but I have done it in a matter of hours. They eat every morsel of the desert hare and respect its soul. I will bite out its liver and leave the rest because its liver contains a vitamin that is vital for preventing something bad I mentioned earlier</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– onscreen presenter passes the carcass back to the sand bushman –''</div>
+The British classical political economics, represented by such economists as Adam Smith<ref>Adam Smith, 1723 — 1790 (British): Logic professor, moral philosophy professor, economist.</ref> and David Ricardo<ref>David Ricardo, 1772 — 1823 (British): Economist.</ref>, also contributed to the formation of Marxism’s historical materialist conception [see p. 23].
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Take the rest of the carcass. I have no use for it. No, you may NOT have one of my adventure-sports-sponsorship power-bars, Sand Bushman</div>
+Smith and Ricardo were some of the first to form theories about labor value in the study of political economics. They made important conclusions about value and the origin of profit, and about the importance of material production and rules that govern economies. However, because there were still many limitations in the study methodology of Smith and Ricardo, these British classical political economists failed to recognise the historical characteristic of value*; the internal contradictions of commodity production**; and the duality of commodity production labor***.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– camera shakes with laughter –''</div>
+-----
-==== CUT TO – ====
+==== Annotation 13 ====
-''EXT. FROZEN LAKESIDE – Erin in snow next to a body of frozen water – she is now brandishing a large stick –''
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> '''Historical Characteristic of Value'''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Here in the Arctic there are fish under the ice. I have a frozen deer leg so that’s what I’m going to use to smash through the ice. If you don’t have a frozen deer leg, use your initiative. I’m going to make a line using some cord from my parachute. And some other really useful stuff I found in my pocket</div>
+Marx generally admired the work of Smith and Ricardo, but saw major flaws which undermined the utility of their classical economic theories. Perhaps chief among these flaws, according to Marx, was a tendency for Smith and Ricardo to uphold an ''ahistoric'' view of society and capitalism. In other words, classical economists see capitalism as existing in harmony with the eternal and universal laws of nature, rather than seeing capitalism as a result of historical processes of development [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. Marx did not believe that the economic principles of capitalism resulted from nature, but rather, from historical conflict between different classes. He believed that the principles of political economies changed over time, and would continue to change into the future, whereas Smith and Ricardo saw economic principles as fixed, static concepts that were not subject to change over time. As Marx explains in ''The Poverty of Philosophy:''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she takes to hitting the ice with the stick –''</div>
+<blockquote>
+Economists express the relations of bourgeois production, the division of labour, credit, money, etc. as fixed, immutable, eternal categories... Economists explain how production takes place in the above mentioned relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement that gave them birth... these categories are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.
+</blockquote>
-==== CUT ====
+<nowiki>**</nowiki> '''Internal Contradictions of Commodity Production'''
-=== {{anchor|Topofch02html}} HOW TO CONVEY INVISIBLE DEATH ===
+In Marxist terms, a commodity is specifically something that has both a use value and a value-form (see Annotation 14, p. 16), but in simpler terms, a commodity is anything that can be bought or sold. Importantly, capitalism transforms human labor into a commodity, as workers must sell their labor to capitalists in exchange for wages. Marx pointed out that contradictions arise when commodities are produced under capitalism: because capitalists, who own the means of production, decide what to produce based solely on what they believe to be most profitable, the commodities that are being produced do not always meet the actual needs of society. Certain commodities are under-produced while others are over-produced, which leads to crisis and instability.
-==== CONTAMINANTS THAT CAUSE ADVERSE CHANGE ====
+<nowiki>***</nowiki> Duality of Commodity Production Labor
-I was back standing on the ice sheet in a blizzard. There were two figures in orange jackets with their hoods against the blizzard and goggles on, glaciologists. They were peering over one of those big drills they use to get ice core samples. As the core came up its gradation changed, from glowy green like a nuclear ore on top down to pure white. The glaciologists conferred.
+In ''Capital'', Marx describes commodity production labor as existing in a duality — that is to say, it exists with two distinct aspects:
-‘Witnesses described huge bonfires on which the bodies of the birds were burned,’ said Rachel Carson from beside me.
+First, there is ''abstract labor'', which Marx describes as “labor-power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure.” This is simply the expenditure of human energy in the form of labor, without any regard to production or value of the labor output. Second, there is ''concrete labor'', which is the aspect of labor that refers to the production of a specific commodity with a specific value through labor.
-I could hear clearly what the glaciologists were saying even though they were very far away.
+Marx argues that human labor, therefore, is simultaneously, an activity which will produce some specific kind of product, and also an activity that generates value in the abstract. Marx and Engels were the first economists to discuss the duality of labor, and their observations on the duality of labor were closely tied to their theories of the different aspects of value (use value, exchange value, etc.), which was key to their analysis of capitalism.
-‘The core shows residue,’ said the one. ‘Hmm, yes, they also found it in the underground rivers,’ said the other.
+-----
-‘When some of the Eskimos themselves were checked by analysis of fat samples, small residues of DDT were found (0 to 1.9 parts per million).’ Rachel Carson always spoke with no lilt of emphasis in her voice. Not to me or anyone really. Maybe to herself.
+Smith and Ricardo also failed to distinguish between simple commodity production and capitalist commodity production*, and could not accurately analyse the form of value** in capitalist commodity production.
-‘It’s much worse than we thought.’
+-----
-‘Much worse.’
+==== Annotation 14 ====
-‘The fat samples were taken from people who had left their native villages to enter the United States Public Health Service Hospital in Anchorage for surgery.’
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> '''Commodity Production'''
-I asked, ‘Where have the bees gone, Ms Carson?’ But my voice was lost to the wind.
+''Simple commodity production'' (also known as ''petty commodity production'') is the production of commodities under the conditions which Marx called the “Simple Exchange” of commodities. ''Simple exchange'' occurs when individual producers trade the products they have made directly, themselves, for other commodities. Under simple exchange, workers directly own their own means of production and sell products which they have made with their own labor.
-‘For their brief stay in civilisation the Eskimos were rewarded with a taint of poison,’ she said instead.
+Simple commodity production and simple exchange use what Marx referred to as “C'''→'''M'''→'''C mode of circulation” [see Annotation 60, p. 59]. Circulation is simply the way in which commodities and money are exchanged for one another.
-‘Quick, empty it and let’s go.’ The glaciologists emptied their lab pockets into the core hole. There was a pause as they leaned and peered into it, then a succession of plops like pebbles in still water. Then they replaced the core.
+'''C→M→C stands for:'''
-The noise took me back home to the cul-de-sac between the two lamp-posts that marked the boundary of where I was allowed to play when I was little, where Mum could still see me from the living room as she did the polishing and listened to Boyzone. There is a wall, the side of Marge and Graham’s house, where Charlotte from next door was sat facing it, making the noise, crack crack crack, that the snails made when we would throw them against it if we were bored so their shells burst and their guts spilled out. We would have to kick them down the drain in time before Graham would come out to shout at us when he guessed what we were doing to his wall. Down into the underground sewage, plop plop plop.
+Commodity '''→''' Money '''→''' Commodity
-When I was little I was fascinated by the sewage system. To get rid of anything all you had to do was flush it down a drain. In the garden there was a drain lid, and if you lifted it you could watch all the things coming through the drains in the house on the way off to wherever they were going. We used to put the dog poo in it then flush the downstairs toilet to send it away. If there was ever any evidence of something bad I had done I would lift up the drain lid, put it inside, run in to flush, then run back, in time to see it being washed into oblivion.
+So, with simple commodity production and simple exchange, workers produce commodities, which they then sell for money, which they use to buy other commodities which they need. For example, a brewer might make beer, which they sell for money, which they use to buy food, housing, and other commodities which they need to live.
-One day I sat on the toilet and I jumped up because something had tickled my leg. A snail was sliming its way out of the sparkly white basin. It had come from this elsewhere place and made its way through the plumbing inside our house to the top-floor toilet. This changed something fundamental about how I saw the drains from then on, my own miniature Copernican Revolution. Suddenly the philosophical implications of flushing into the black-hole-void needed to be scrutinised because drains were now not the portal to the place-of-no-return I had thought them, a bit like how Jerry R. Ehman who got the Wow! Signal must have felt, like, ''‘I am not alone something has come out of the void to me wow!’''
+In the C'''→'''M'''→'''C mode of circulation, the producers and consumers of commodities have a direct relationship to the commodities which are being bought and sold. The sellers have produced the commodities sold with their own labor, and they directly consume the commodities which they purchase with the money thus obtained.
-Maybe in the dream of the glaciologists on the ice sheet I am realising the similar always-there-but-not-appreciated thing that haunted Rachel Carson. That sometimes there are things that need to be spotlit against a stark white backdrop for you to perceive them because when ever present you do not interrogate them.
+''Capitalist commodity production'' and ''capitalist exchange'', on the other hand, are based on the M'''→'''C'''→'''M’ mode of circulation.
-The Eskimos did not invent the invisible death. We did. The ice sheet is not-so-pure wilderness. You and I can’t see it but the glaciologists can. They can read the core samples like testimonies to our guilt as geomorphic agents, as ushers of the Anthropocene. And of all the corruptions we will leave behind us there is one that will outlive them all. We are the first civilisation on this planet to have made an invisible death that will outlive all relics of all civilisations ever. We made nuclear waste.
+'''M→C→M’ stands for:'''
-With this comes a responsibility, but how to convey invisible death to the future is a problem unique to our age. Larus told me that some of the guys from the Order of the Dolphin and the Golden Records also worked as part of the Human Interference Task Force. The Task Force was set up to solve the Forever Problem, the problem of relaying warnings at nuclear waste sights to possible future civilisations, possibly as far away as the half-life of plutonium 239, some 24,000 years into the future.
+Money '''→''' Commodity '''→''' More Money
-They could not use a single language because language is always dying, so they tried to come up with universal symbols: a monolith with warnings in multiple languages, cats that glowed when they got close to nuclear waste sites, invented fables for the future, majorly complex booby traps, and an Atomic Priesthood cult who would pass down the dark secrets to each new generation within their elite.
+Under this mode of circulation, capitalists spend money to buy commodities (including the commodified labor of workers), with the intention of selling commodities for MORE MONEY than they began with. The capitalist has no direct relationship to the commodity being produced and sold, and the capitalist is solely interested in obtaining ''more money.''
-The waste will survive us. It is our most enduring time capsule, our ugly baby. What does it say about us? What did we do when we discovered its power? Of course we went and made a superweapon.
+Capitalist commodity production, therefore, uses the M'''→'''C'''→'''M’ mode of circulation, in which capitalists own the means of production and pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor, which is used to produce commodities. The capitalists then sell these commodities for profits which are not shared with the workers who provided the labor which produced the commodities.
-Since the Cold War the world has existed in equilibrium and this equilibrium is still enough for us to have almost forgotten that it is holding us up. The Nash Equilibrium is the concept that once all sides are armed with nuclear weapons, none has the incentive to disarm or to use their weapons, based on the premise of MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION, the idea being we are at a point where if one country attacked another, we would all be fucked, so it benefits nobody to do so. But to keep the equilibrium each side’s defences must be taken into account. If one side has more fallout shelters than another, and more of the population could theoretically be spared, then they are unfairly favoured, and the balance is tipped. Because of this there could not be nationwide plans for fallout shelters built by the government during the Cold War. Covert shelters were built, under town halls, in people’s gardens. There are secret underground time capsules all over the Western world. What would a future archaeologist make of them?
+<nowiki>**</nowiki> '''Value-Form'''
-For the Nash Equilibrium to work each country has to look as though it would blow the shit out of its enemy in retaliation for an attack on the homeland. America has adopted the policy that any attack on America would be responded to with all-out retaliation under any circumstance. Russia take this one step further with their ‘Dead Hand’, which automatically releases all their warheads as soon as an attack is detected by seismic sensors.
+This is one of the most important, and potentially most confusing, concepts in all of Marx’s analysis of capitalism. Marx explains these principles at length in ''Appendix of the 1<sup>st</sup> German Edition of Capital, Volume 1'', but here are some of the fundamentals:
-I was on Skype talking to Larus about this and told him that Britain has a peculiar response. We have the Letters of Last Resort, to be opened and read at the end of a chain of events. The British government has been destroyed and the prime minister and the ‘second person’ to the prime minister have been killed. Our submarines float deep in the Atlantic and almost no one on board knows where they are at any given time. The submarines presume the homeland to have been destroyed if a) there have been no naval broadcasts in four hours or b) BBC Radio 4 has stopped broadcasting. In this event the four submarine commanders open the safe inside the safe and read the four handwritten letters from the now-dead prime minister, written the very day that she/he assumed office. Then they have to follow the instructions, which will be one of three things:
+One of Marx’s key breakthroughs was understanding that commodities have many different properties which have different effects in political economies.
-<div style="margin-left:1.905cm;">1. blow the shit out of the buggers</div>
+Just as Commodity Production Labor exists in a duality of Concrete Labor and Abstract Labor (see Annotation 13, p. 15), commodities themselves also exist in duality according to Marx:
-<div style="margin-left:1.905cm;">2. spare the blighters</div>
+Commodities have both “use-value” and “value.”
-<div style="margin-left:1.905cm;">3. your call, commander</div>
+Use-Value (which corresponds to Concrete Labor) is the commodity’s ''tangible form'' of existence; it is what we can physically sense when we observe a commodity. By extension, use-value encompasses how a commodity can be used in the material world.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">The letters are destroyed when each prime minister leaves office, so history will never know what was written by them. Larus said that is the most British thing he has ever heard.</div>
+Value, or the Value-Form, is the ''social form'' of a commodity, which is to say, it represents the stable relationships intrinsic to the commodity [see ''Content and Form'', p. 147].
-I think given our colonial record the submarines probably have on board their own carefully designed time capsules, for the preservation of the nation, something that says WE ARE NOT NUMINOUS OR ERASABLE. Our submarines are called ''Vanguard'', ''Victorious'', ''Vigilant'' and ''Vengeance''. (And who came up with those names?) So, floating portentously in the Atlantic right now, the decision has already been made.
+Note that this relates to the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideal [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88].
-A paradox: what is the point of retaliation if you are dead and gone already and have no way of knowing any better? What is the point of causing immense suffering to the innocent civilians of the enemy?
+Value-forms represent relational equivalencies of commodities, i.e.: '''20 yards of linen = 10 pounds of tea'''
-The point is, apparently, ''you can’t exist when we do not''. It is ''we will be remembered''. It is WRATH OF THE EMPIRE.
+These relational equivalencies are tied to the equivalent labor value (see Annotation 15 below, and Annotation 26, p. 23) used to produce these commodities. The value-form of a commodity is the ''social form'' because it embodies relational equivalencies:
-I asked Urla if she knew about the Letters of Last Resort and she said no so I told her. She just looked a little confused.
+. The value-form represents the relationship between the commodity and the labor which was used to produce the commodity.
-‘Didn’t Uncle Larus ask to talk to me?’
+. The value-form represents the relationship between a commodity and one or more other commodities.
-I paused to think about it, and said no, he didn’t mention it, although he went in a rush, which when I thought about it then did seem a little unusual. She looked at me strangely and changed the subject.
+As Marx explains in ''Appendix to the 1<sup>st</sup> German Edition of Capital'': “Hence by virtue of its value-form the (commodity) now stands also in a social relation no longer to only a single other type of commodity, but to the world of commodities. As a commodity it is a citizen of this world.”
-==== WOMEN INTERESTED IN TOPPLING CONSUMER HOLIDAYS ====
+Understanding the social form of commodities — the value-form — was crucial for Marx to develop a deeper understanding of money and capitalism. Marx argued that classical economists like Ricardo and Smith conflated economic categories such as “exchange value,” “value,” “price,” “money,” etc., which meant that they could not possibly fully understand or analyze capitalist economies.
-I stood at the bow of the ferry watching the water and eating very Continental-tasting biscuits. It became surreal if you watched it long enough with your chin on the handrail. Like a glassy Rorschach Test, all the icebergs twinned in the water, which was a sky itself, obscured only when a floe passed, or when ice fell from one of the cliff sides and shattered the mirror. There was a cracking sound when this happened, like the noise an ice cube makes when it cracks in a tepid drink.
+-----
-NUUK: a surreal city. Like Kulusuk but bigger and denser. Buildings are still toy houses but multi-storey and apartment style, set at angles to each other so that they sit in the rock like a doggedly arranged model village, a Playmobil city. Slate grey is the base of everything, it is the colour of the cliffs and the colour of the boulders and the pebbles. Everything in blocks of colour, as if cut and stuck from sugar paper. For the first hour or so in I could not put my finger on what was missing. There are nearly no trees or plants apart from the wiry grass.
+British classical political economists like Ricardo and Smith outlined the scientific factors of the theories of labor value* and contributed many progressive thoughts which Marx adapted and further developed.
-There is a new mall, apparently a point of contention for people, usually dividing the old and the young. Some of the older people see it as Nuuk becoming too ‘European’. Greenland is a country in the midst of change, not least because global warming is melting the ice sheet. Complete melt would mean that resources that were hidden by the ice before are revealed to be reaped. If they could be more self-reliant then they would be able to manage independently from Denmark, which would make them the only Inuit country in the world. But looking further ahead in time there is a chance that the amount of water it would create could turn Greenland into an archipelago. Their Inuit culture would have to change beyond recognition. Could they then be called Inuit?
+==== Annotation 15 ====
-Of Urla’s family friends: the daughter, Naaja, is about Umik’s age, she speaks quite good Danish, is a bit shy with me but she looks at Urla with adoration whenever she talks. The dad, Klas, is Danish and the mum, Kalistiina, is Inuit. The inside of their house is interesting because it is like a museum for their hybrid cultures. Lots of fish- and whale-based ornaments, and a cupboard full of weird votive figures that Naaja tells us are made by the family when they have bad feelings, to dispel the feelings. They are eerie, but apparently customary. Some of them are made out of bones and teeth, and what looks like Kinder Egg toy parts. I also keep noticing extravagant fake flower vases in the windows of houses we pass, I suppose because the flora in Greenland is so limited and this makes them a novelty.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Adam Smith and David Ricardo revolutionized the labor theory of value, which held that the value of a good or service is determined by the amount of human labor required to produce it.
-==== MANKIND’S MOST NOBLE GOAL: THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH AND UNDERSTANDING ====
+Thus, Marx was able to solve the contradictions that these economists could not solve and he was able to establish the theory of surplus value*, scientific evidence for the exploitative nature of capitalism, and the economic factors which will lead to the eventual fall of capitalism and the birth of socialism.
-From Nuuk, Klas drove me, Urla and Naaja twenty miles into the tundra with a tent, some of Kalistiina’s seal-fur blankets, a gas stove, our bags, canned food and lots of bottled water, and will return to pick us up in four days’ time. Some Danish hikers found Naaja on the tundra already. She went off from camp on a walk on her own just because she likes to do that. She took her phone in case she twisted her ankle or anything. She came on in the afternoon and said she was with two men. She asked Urla to talk to them and tell them she was camping out with older friends and that she was okay because the men would not take her word for it.
+==== Annotation 16 ====
-They walked Naaja back to the tent even though it took them an hour or so. They must have been bored with their afternoon of dramatic hardship, so bored that they were ready to transcend it already and instruct us on how to be in communion with it successfully (as many Mountain Men are prone to). When we came out to meet them, they conferred conspicuously out of the sides of their mouths, and told us we were too young to be camping out alone. They said it was very dangerous to be out because a polar bear had been spotted in the area and that the ranger had told them this on their way out. As though by avoiding this abstract and likely nonexistent danger they had already conquered wilderness and were in a position of authority on the subject by now.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> David Ricardo developed the concept of surplus value. Surplus value is the difference between the amount of income made from selling a product and the amount it costs to produce it. Marx would go on to expand on the concept of surplus value considerably.
-Naaja would not believe them, and asked them what they were doing out without guns or flares if they knew there was a bear. Naaja has spent her whole young life knowing this place, but these men on a walking holiday of course boasted superior knowledge just by virtue of being older and being men.
+Utopianism'''' had been developing for a long time and reached its peak in the late 18<sup>th</sup> century with famous thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon<ref>Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint Simon, 1760 — 1825 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.</ref>, François Marie Charles Fourier<ref>Charles Fourier, 1772 — 1837 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.</ref> and Robert Owen<ref>Robert Owen, 1771 — 1858 (British): Utopianist activist, owner of a cotton factory.</ref>. Utopianism sought to elevate the humanitarian spirit and strongly criticised capitalism by calling attention to the misery of the working class under capitalism. It also offered many far-ranging opinions and analyses of the development of human history and laid out some basic foundational factors and principles for a new society. However, Utopianism could not scientifically address the nature of capitalism. It failed to detect the Law of Development of Capitalism<ref>The Law of Development of Capitalism referenced here is the Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value, which holds that the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. Over time, this deepens the contradictions of capitalism. This concept is related to the M'''→'''C'''→'''M mode of circulation, discussed in Annotation 14, p. 16, and is discussed in detail in Part 3 of the book this text is drawn from (Political Economy) which we hope to translate in the future.</ref> and also failed to recognise the roles and missions of the working class as a social force that can eliminate capitalism to build an equal, non-exploitative society.
-They asked us to pack up and walk back with them and we declined as politely as we could. They were pissed off and said they would tell the ranger we were out, and that the ranger would be angry that we wasted his time in worrying over us. We promised them we had the number for the ranger saved in our phones and we would call him if we needed rescue. I got this all on camera without them seeing. They walked away, disappointed that their damsels had repudiated them.
+==== Annotation 17 ====
-Naaja assured us when they had gone that polar bears rarely ever come this far south, and besides we were too far inland. The hikers were either too stupid to realise their lie was almost impossible, or else they did not know what they were talking about and would believe anything they heard from any wise Greenlandic tundra man with a sense of humour that they might have met.
+The early industrial working class existed in miserable conditions, and the political movement of utopianism was developed by people who believed that a better world could be built. The utopianists believed they could create “a New Moral World” of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity through education, science, technology, and communal living. For instance, Robert Owen was a wealthy textile manufacturer who tried to build a better society for workers in New Harmony, Indiana, in the USA. Owen purchased the entire town of New Harmony in 1825 as a place to build an ideal society. Owen’s vision failed after two years for a variety of reasons, and many other wealthy capitalists in the early 19<sup>th</sup> century drew up similar plans which also failed.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">TWILIGHT THIS MORNING: I went to sit outside for a bit because I was feeling restless. It was probably about two but I am finding it difficult to sleep. The light through the tent is like a red lamp and gives me headaches, makes everything inside strange colours. The tundra was waking up with all the subtly hopeful colours of a new day: rust and pink from the tiny coarse flowers that blanketed the soil but still shadowless, the sun still just below the horizon and no stamp of cloud shadow, no elongation to the small and lonely trees. It all just stood, luminous and itemised like a child’s non-dimensional painting. I walked away a little to sit on a rise so that the tent was below and chalky red in the half-light. My home that will shape-shift into each new space I stop to sleep. A compact and portable idea of home. It was so pretty that I cried a little bit.</div>
+Utopianism was one of the first political and industrial movements that criticized the conditions of capitalism by exposing the miserable situations of poor workers and offering a vision of a better society, and was one of the first movements to attempt to mitigate the faults of capitalism in practice.
-==== THE PILL REFUGEE FORUM ====
+Unfortunately, the utopianists were not ideologically prepared to replace capitalism, and all of their attempts to build a better alternative to capitalism failed. Marx and Engels admired the efforts of the utopianist movement, and studied their attempts and failures closely in developing their own political theories, concluding that the utopianists failed in large part because they did not understand how capitalism developed, nor the role of the working class in the revolution against capitalism.
-Urla got an interview with Naaja where she told us that lots of her friends (Naaja included) had had abortions. It was in Danish, of course, so Urla had to explain. She asked and Naaja did not mind at all, did not seem fazed by it as long as I promised to cut it out of the film. Of course I promised to, but I struggled a bit with coming to terms with it. I managed to convince myself that it would be dishonest of me as a documentary maker to cut it out, mostly because it would have been such an interesting and relevant sequence.
+As Engels wrote in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:''
-I asked if they did not have the pill in Greenland. She said no one ever talked about the pill or sex or anything, so no one really thought to use it. Her sex education at school was to have a doll that had a chip inside and could tell at the end of the week if it would have stayed alive, had it been a real baby. She said that mostly it just made her classmates think it would be fun to have a baby. They were thirteen when they did the exercise.
+<blockquote>
+(The) historical situation also dominated the founders of Socialism. To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions correspond crude theories. The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.
+</blockquote>
-From what she said they seem stuck between two cultures. The Inuit leaners go back to the villages and have babies, but there are fewer and fewer of them, and the modernisers abort their babies and stay in the towns. But still living with traditional myths of transmigrating souls means the soul of the dead fetus can go on into a tree or a rock or an animal or another baby. So what is there to moralise about?
+Engels is explaining, here, that — in a sense — the utopian socialists were victims of arriving ''too early''. Capitalism had not yet developed enough for its opponents to formulate plans based on actual material conditions, since capitalism was only just emerging into a stable form. Without a significant objective, material basis, the utopians were forced to rely upon reasoning alone to confront capitalism.
-Naaja’s grandmother, her mother’s mother, teaches her Inuit myth. I wanted to know about the transmigration. It is a concept that underpins the myths of Inuits through Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland. It holds that not only animals and plants but also inanimate objects and landscapes can have souls. Anything can be viewed as ‘spiritually charged’. The souls transmigrate between vessels. When such radically different vessels can be chosen by any soul, and a male vessel can take on a female soul and vice versa, is there as much of a concept of gender? Are they a queer culture?
+In this sense, the early historical utopianists fell into ''philosophical utopianism'' in its broader sense — defined by the mistaken assertion that the ideal can determine the material [see Annotation 95, p. 94]. In believing that they could build a perfect society based on ideals and “pure fantasy” alone without a material basis for development, the utopians were, in essence, idealists. As Engels explained: “from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism.” Engels concluded that in order to successfully overthrow capitalism, revolution would need to be grounded in materialism: “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.”
-They do not see humans as different from the animals; there are not separate taxonomical categories of being. A person can become a man or a woman, a tree or a stone. All life is a continuum and a horizontal one. For Inuit all soul vessels are equally important no matter if they talk or not: dolphins, rocks, women. In fact they are all talking, they have something to say, just maybe not in words.
+-----
-Naaja’s dad is a Christian. She told us he came to her mother’s town with the town planning service, to talk to the council about telling the village people the benefits of moving to the city. The government wanted the villagers to move out because it was costing them too much money to send supplies, it being the only village for miles around. They knew if they could get the young to leave the old would eventually die out and the village would not need to exist.
+The humanitarian spirit and compassionate analysis which the utopians embodied in their efforts to lay out concrete features of a better future society became important theory premises for the birth of the scientific theory of socialism in Marxism.
-We told Naaja how the pill is handed out like sweets in Britain. I told her it is great that not many of my friends got pregnant but it is not so great that it makes lots of girls numb. That it makes some of us so numb sometimes it is countered with antidepressants. That it can stop you menstruating, the feeling of which is like an ever-absent ''something'' that I could only compare to displacement, to homesickness, as though homesick for a body. But it does not make you as sad as having a baby would. For this we must be grateful. The pill is progress.
+''- Natural Science Premise:''
-Naaja’s mother followed her dad to Nuuk because she loved him. They married two years later. Naaja’s mother’s parents did not come to the wedding. They stayed in the village until they had to be evicted. They will not talk to Naaja’s dad, but she goes with her mother to visit them in their new, bigger village on the coast. When her dad hears her mother talking to her about myth, he tells her to stop telling fairy stories. Mostly they talk with her grandmother. Her dad wants Greenland to melt so that the resources can be got at and it can be rich like Denmark.
+Along with social-economic conditions and theory premises, the achievements of the natural sciences were also foundational to the development of arguments and evidence which assert the correctness of Marxism’s viewpoints and methodology.
-===== What do you want Naaja? =====
+==== Annotation 18 ====
-===== I want what you want, of course. I want to see the world and make a life for myself. I want to leave Greenland and its small way of life. =====
+''Natural science'' is science which deals with the natural world, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, etc.
-===== But somebody has to stay and be Inuit! =====
+Three major scientific breakthroughs which were important to the development of Marxism include:
-===== Why should we stay when others do not? Where does it come from, this obligation? Where is yours? =====
+''•'' ''The law of conservation and transformation of energy'' scientifically proved the inseparable relationships and the mutual transformation and conservation of all the forms of motion of matter in nature.
-===== We aren’t so different. You could come with me. =====
+''•'' ''The theory of evolution'' offered a scientific basis for the development of diverse forms of life through natural selection.
-===== But we are very different. You are so free. =====
+''•'' ''Cell theory'' was a scientific basis proving unity in terms of origins, physical forms and material structures of living creatures. It also explained the development of life through those relationships.
-==== DO PELICANS LOVE TO SOAR? ====
+These scientific discoveries led to the rejection of theological and metaphysical viewpoints which centered the role of the “creator” in the pursuit of truth.
-The others are sleeping. Outside, the tundra is putting itself together for us. Yesterday we spent the day walking and filming, trying to find something for the documentary. We walked inland through the mountains against the meltwater of the glacier as it found its way to the sea. It was urgent, dense and grey; panicked like a jar of paintbrush water knocked onto a meticulous landscape.
+==== Annotation 19 ====
-I’m looking for something but I am not sure what. An idea, perhaps, that I had of the place before I was here. Of the trip before I was on it. I am actually here now, I have arrived. But where am I really? It is hard enough to actually be there, let alone convey it with a hand-held camera.
+For centuries in Europe, natural science and philosophy had been heavily dominated by theological viewpoints which centered God in the pursuit of truth. Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, and many other metaphysical philosophers who developed the earliest theories of modern natural science centered their religious beliefs in their philosophies. These theological viewpoints varied in many ways, but all shared a characteristic of centering a “creator” in the pursuit of philosophical and scientific inquiry.
-In the morning we startled a herd of reindeer. Must have smelled us and bolted. They ran fast, even the tiny babies and the heavily pregnant ones. A unified movement like a cloud of starlings, all the more magical for its silence. All of our mouths made O’s and we let out a kind of wistful sigh, simultaneously. And after we laughed disbelievingly about where we were and what had just happened and how awake we were.
+Together, the law of conservation and transformation of energy, the theory of evolution, and cell theory provided an alternative viewpoint which allowed scientists to remove the “creator” from the scientific equation. For the first time, natural scientists and philosophers had concrete theoretical explanations for the origin and development of the universe, life, and reality which did not rely on a supernatural creator.
-We hadn’t seen them until they started to run. In the evening we saw them again but this time before they noticed us. Must have been downwind. We had climbed to the top of a low peak to see what was on the other side and found the reindeer in a valley with a small lake down its length. We crawled on our bellies to a vantage point where they could not see us. The mosquitoes found us quickly and lying still very soon became difficult. There were more of them because of the lake. I watched the small animals through the pixellated window of the camera, which shook whenever I tried to swat away the flies with my other hand. The reindeer were tormented by them as well, shaking their heads every few seconds to keep them out of their ears.
+Marx and Engels closely observed and studied the groundbreaking scientific progress of their era. They believed strongly in materialist scientific methods and the data which they produced, and based their analysis and philosophical doctrines on such observations. They recognized the importance and validity of the scientific achievements of their era, and they developed the philosophy of Dialectical Materialism into a system which would help humans study and understand the whole material world.
-Reindeer lope, as if they are always tiptoeing. These movements, so secretive, made me feel dishonest, like a voyeur. The footage was achromatic, as though there only to record the novelty of the experience itself. But it is more than that.
+In ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', Engels explained that ancient Greek dialecticians had correctly realized that the world is “an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away.”
-I am finding it difficult to separate things that say something from things that do not. It is also hard to find things that say what I want them to. I went over what I have so far and I can’t decide if I am saying what I set out to say, or if I am saying anything at all, or if I just have lots of records of my own sentiments. Unsure if the things themselves are saying things or if I am projecting this on to them, in the way that there are feelings evoked when you look at a postcard image you are very fond of; these might not translate when you show the postcard to someone else.
+Engels goes on to explain that it was understandable for early natural scientists to break their inquiries and analysis down into specialized fields and categories of science to focus on precise, specific, narrow subject matters so that they could build up a body of empirical data. However, as data accumulated, it became clear that all of these isolated, individual fields of study must somehow be unified back together coherently and cohesively in order to obtain a deeper and more useful understanding of reality.
-I guess I am taking what I see and making it iconographic but I am finding it difficult to translate the feeling of being present in the moment, which is itself the thing left untranslated in the nature documentaries and encyclopaedias of exotic species which have been my only prior experience of nature on this scale. Or maybe not left untranslated, but translated back and forth until really it has disintegrated, like the Earthrise photo.
+As Engels wrote in ''On Dialectics:''
-I do not want to imbue this film with empty codes that seem talismanic to me. But then maybe it does not matter, maybe it is a vessel for me and I am just now waking up to see the sea. And we have to try to translate or else no one would ever understand anyone. We have to make icons of faraway unexperienceable animals or else people like me would not know to care about them.
+<blockquote>
+Empirical natural science has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for knowledge that the necessity of classifying it in each separate field of investigation systematically and in accordance with its inner inter-connection has become absolutely imperative. It is becoming equally imperative to bring the individual spheres of knowledge into the correct connection with one another. In doing so, however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical ''thinking'' can be of assistance.
+</blockquote>
-I watched the reindeer film over and over. One reindeer I had not noticed before is muzzling a rock around the floor. You can only just make it out, but it goes about muzzling this rock on its own for the entirety of me filming it. After a while watching I felt something new about it that I had not felt before. Maybe even empty moments are never really empty. I am beginning to wonder if this is part of the documentary making itself.
+As science grows increasingly complex, a necessity develops for a philosophical and cognitive framework which can be used to make sense of the influx of information from disparate fields. In ''Dialectics of Nature,'' Engels explains how dialectical materialism is the perfect philosophical foundation for unifying scientific fields into one cohesive framework'':''
-==== *DOG VOICE* NOW YOU MUST LEARN HOW TO SAY GOODBYE ====
+<blockquote>
+Dialectics divested of mysticism becomes an absolute necessity for natural science, which has forsaken the field where rigid categories sufficed, which represent as it were the lower mathematics of logic, its everyday weapons.
+</blockquote>
-We etched our names into a smooth part of a boulder that was grazed out of the moss next to where we pitched. It felt very chapter-defining, one of those things you always remember, like it could be a figurative scratch that etches out some more of what will one day make up my fully formed soul.
+So, Marx and Engels developed Dialectical Materialism not in opposition to science, but as a way to make better use of scientific data, and to analyze the complex, dynamic, constantly changing systems of the world in motion. While distinct scientific discoveries and empirical data are invaluable, each data point only provides a small amount of information within a single narrow, specific field of science. Dialectical Materialism allows humans to view reality — as a whole — in motion, and to examine the interconnections and mutual developments between different fields and categories of human knowledge.
-We asked Klas soon after we started to drive out of the tundra, and there was no polar bear. There have not been any sightings for months. I feel very strange about going on without Urla and Naaja. It would be nice to go traipsing round the world in a girl-caravan. But as integral as they seem now (and especially Urla) we need to go our separate ways, just like we did with Larus.
+-----
-Really, though, it is amazing to me that just by chance of circumstance and necessity two or three quite different people can begin to exist in a kind of ''symbiosis'', what in ecology is termed a mutually beneficial relationship between two dissimilar organisms living in close physical proximity, and somewhat defies Darwinian ideas of evolution as purely competitive. Like a cleaner wrasse that eats only the ectoparasites from the lips of the sweetlips, a larger fish. The wrasse gets fed and the sweetlips rids its itchy lips of parasites. One must feel a kind of relief at least when encountering the other in the wide expanse of the ocean. And maybe in their own way you could say, taking this a little further, that these fish are also ''friends''.
+These scientific principles confirmed the correctness of the dialectical materialist view of the material world, with such features as: endlessness, self-existence, self-motivation, and self-transformation. They also confirmed the scientific nature of the dialectical materialist viewpoint in both material processes and thought processes.
-Sometimes, in the literature, it is acknowledged that symbiotic associations between species can be so integral to their individual biology and identity that actually their individual biology and identity have little meaning outside of the relationship anyway.
+-----
-I think that being real friends with someone is a kind of integration like this. In the way that you let that person know every detail of you in order to get close, even the horrible little things that mostly only you know and that make you an individual by virtue of their small uniqueness. You share all of these with only this person of certain closeness so that the contours of both of you are chipped away, you are porous and receptive and there is almost nothing left to define where you end and where they begin. Intertwined like trees grown together and fused. Inosculation, that is what this is called. Trees that grow together and then apart.
+==== Annotation 20 ====
-It might seem portentous to say this of someone I have only known a short time but that seems to be what happens when your situations are so transitory. They are on fast-forward because really you might never see this person again. So you are simply the most visceral version of yourself.
+''Endlessness'' refers to the infinite span of space and time in our universe. ''Self-existence'' means that our universe exists irrespective of human consciousness; it existed before human consciousness evolved and it will continue to exist after human consciousness becomes extinct. ''Self-motivation'' and ''Self-transformation'' refer to the fact that motion and transformation exist within the universe independent of human consciousness.
-I am going to really miss Urla. I did a lot of crying when we said goodbye. I think she was alarmed and misinterpreted a little; she said, ‘Hey, don’t be scared, you’ve got this.’ I laughed and said I know I’ve got this, I am just going to really miss you. I smiled resolutely and thought to myself that this is the thing I can’t get caught up in, this is the noose of homesickness. I am doing this journey alone by and for myself and this tug is the over-socialisation expected of women which traps us, and is precisely what I am striking against.
+Engels wrote of the scientific nature of the dialectical materialist viewpoint in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-Naaja says she looks around herself in the village at her friends and their lives and she feels so different to them. I understand that because sometimes I would do the same, would look around me at the vacant expression of the cashier in Tesco, the foundation faces of the girls with arms heavy with bags at the shopping centre, the tired faces in the ill-yellow lighting at the bowling-cinema complex, tired from a week’s work and a weekend not to be wasted. I did not recognise myself in these places and tried very hard not to.
+<blockquote>
+Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus has shown that... Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically; that she does not move in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes through a real historical evolution.
+</blockquote>
-But I know my own mum would love for me to go back to my home town and get married and never leave, and sometimes I feel very sorry that I do not want to do this. A lot of girls from my school had their babies and never left and seem genuinely happy for it. If all the girls were to up and leave like the boys can then how would any culture preserve itself?
-But is it not just the inescapable itch of youth, its boredom, its listlessness, that makes you want to up and leave? The youth are always and always have been churning. Fields must be ploughed so that planted seeds will germinate: a period of customary churning prior to the germination of adulthood. Why do the girls suppress it?
+-----
-I had a worry before I left, that I would get out here and just pine for home. When I was little my favourite film was ''Homeward Bound''. In the film two dogs and a cat get left on a ranch with minders while their human family go on holiday; they think they have been abandoned but instead of feeling betrayed they presume something is up and decide to escape the ranch and just walk home. But this takes them through the Californian wilderness and the whole thing is about their treacherous journey home through this forbidding place full of wildcats and porcupines.
+In conclusion, the birth of Marxism is a phenomenon which is compatible with scientific principles; it is the product of the social-economic conditions of its time of origin, of the human knowledge expressed in science at that time, and it is also the result of its founders’ creative thinking and humanitarian spirit.
-Sometimes when I was little I wished I was an orphan because they always had the fun lives in the stories. They had no familial ties keeping them bound with guilt. Most of the good adventure stories are about grown men or boy orphans. I planned to run away from home just for the adventure, wade down the river until I got to the sea because the sniffer dogs could not follow your scent through water. But I would get down the road to the lamp-post boundary marker and my mum would poke her head out and offer me a piece of carrot cake or something and I just could not break her heart.
+==== b. The Birth and Development Stage of Marxism ====
-I worried that ''Homeward Bound'' might have brainwashed me into losing my sense of adventure once the journey was under way, because really what the film says is pets are pets, not wild animals, same as humans are not wild animals, and do not go into the wilderness because it is bad out there. That it had ingrained this static idea of belonging and origin and the ''outside''.
+Marx and Engels initiated the birth and development stage of Marxism from around 1842~1843 through around 1847~1848. Later, from 1849 to 1895, Marxism was developed to be more thorough and comprehensive, but in this early period of birth and development, Marx and Engels engaged in practical activities [Marx and Engels were not just theorists, but also actively supported and participated with various revolutionary and working class organizations including the Chartists, the League of the Just, the Communist League, the International Workingmen’s Association, etc.] and studied a wide range of human thought from ancient times on through to their contemporaries in order to methodically reinforce, complement and improve their ideas.
-===== You will leave me behind. =====
+Many famous works such as ''The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts'' (Marx, 1844), ''The Holy Family'' (Marx and Engels, 1845), ''Thesis on Feuerbach'' (Marx, 1845), ''The German Ideology'' (Marx and Engels, 1845–1846), and so on, clearly showed that Marx and Engels inherited the quintessence [see Annotation 6, p. 8] of the dialectical and materialist methods which they received from many predecessors. This philosophical heritage led to the development of the dialectical materialist viewpoint and materialist dialectics.
-===== Please go to university. =====
+-----
-===== I am too headstrong not to. =====
+==== Annotation 21 ====
-===== But also after, go back to the village. Fight for your culture! =====
+There is a subtle, but important, distinction between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics. This will be explained further in chapters I (p. 48) and II (p. 98).
-===== We won’t ever speak again. =====
+With works such as ''The Poverty of Philosophy'' (Marx, 1847) and ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (Marx and Engels, 1848), Marxism was presented as a complete system of fundamental views with three theoretical component parts.
-===== We will stay in touch. =====
+-----
-===== We don’t even speak the same language. =====
+==== Annotation 22 ====
-It is a shame that Greenland wants to move away from its old ways in order to keep up with the rest of the world. But how can we say they should not, that we want to keep all the wealth for ourselves? What do we want? This idea of its beauty and uniqueness, as culture-porn for ourselves too? Soon all I will have of Naaja are these memories and our footage of her. Then I will carry her with me if she can’t go.
+According to Lenin, the three component parts of Marxism (and, by extension, of Marxism-Leninism) are:
-==== THE RIGHTS OF NATURE ====
+<blockquote>
+. The Philosophy of Marxism: Including Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism
-Back on a boat again. This one is the ''Modet'', a commercial fishing boat. The wonky feeling from ''Blárfoss'' is worse here, what with the boat being much smaller. But I have got my sea legs now. There is an animosity, or it feels like it anyway, because all of the men are really superstitious in a hit-one-knee-got-to-hit-the-other-or-the-boat-will-sink kind of way, and the oldest guys especially believe it is very bad luck to have a woman on board. The aversion gets gentler down the age range. Logan is the oldest, older than Jon, who is Uncle Larus’s age and older than the rest of the crew by at least two decades. He has not spoken to me once.
+. The Political Economy of Marxism: A system of knowledge and laws that define the production process and commodity exchange in human society.
-He reminds me of a seafaring Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Ted Kaczynski posted letter bombs from his cabin in the Montanan wilderness. He was called the Unabomber because for years no one knew his identity, but bombs kept appearing via the mail in universities and airliners around the United States. He posted bombs to universities because he wanted to destabilise The Machine, symbolically at least if not literally. To punish The Machine for oppressing him and encroaching on his wilderness. For him a university was a hub of intellect, which really means ‘symbolic culture’ and the very opposite to his wilderness, a place devoid of human impositions. He must have hated the Golden Records.
+. Scientific Socialism: The system of thought pertaining to the establishment of the communist social economy form.
+</blockquote>
-Before he went to the wilderness he was a genius mathematician at Berkeley. He is worshipped as the God of the Mountain Men by some. Uncle Larus is a Kaczynski sympathiser; he even gave me a copy of Kaczynski’s story ’Ship of Fools’. He says he is a misunderstood environmental defender and not a terrorist.
+These are discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, p. 38.
-When he looks at me it is as though Logan is trying really hard to post me letter bombs, like his squinted eyes could be sending out envelope bomb blades, like those chakra disk weapons the Hindu god Vishnu uses, if only he could just squint hard enough.
+In the book ''The Poverty of Philosophy'', Marx proposed the basic principles of Dialectical Materialism and Scientific Socialism,* and gave some initial thoughts about surplus value. ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' laid the first doctrinal foundation of communism. In this book, the philosophical basis was expressed through the organic unity between the economical viewpoint and socio-political viewpoint.
-I have my own cabin, which is a store cupboard with a camp bed in it. There is a spare bed in the dorm cabin with the others but the captain seems to find the idea of me cohabiting with them indecent. Probably I won’t dwell on this too much since I quite like my little cupboard. It does not have a working light but it is quiet and I have a head torch.
+-----
-It transpires that ''Modet'' used to be a whaling ship. I did a little interview with Jon, which somehow became a defensive rant. Greenland always hunted whales for subsistence. Why should they not hunt them for subsistence? Now it is illegal to hunt them. Since the whaling ban they fish haddock. Sometimes they catch whales and they die and they have to throw the dead whales back into the ocean or they will be fined. The problem that came about was simply one of crowding. Fisherman and boat crowding. Ratio of whales to fishermen unbalanced. For him there was no issue of morality. No sympathy for the souls of the whales. A direct quote from Jon: ‘The money was good. It is hard to think about the future when the money is good.’
+==== Annotation 23 ====
-Jon speaks like an echo of the whalers of old times. They needed to understand whales as swimming hunks of meat and oil because they were very, very valuable commodities. It would not do for commodities to have feelings. Whale blubber and especially the oil of the sperm whales were our main energy source before fossil fuels. They were instrumental in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. Traumatised by the slaughtering of their species, whales began to attack whaling fleets and therefore became monsters to us. They were nearly driven to extinction by the nineteenth century. Then we reached peak whale oil. The sperm whale was saved by the alternative invention of kerosene and the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. They do not attack ships any more.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Scientific Socialism is a series of socio-political-economic theories intended to build socialism on a foundation of science within society’s current ''material conditions'' [see Annotation 79, p. 81]. Scientific Socialism is the topic of Part 3 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.
-===== They aren’t sentient. They are fish. Fish are there to be eaten. =====
+''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' outlined the laws of movement in history,* as well as the basic theory of socio-economic forms.
-===== Whales are not fish. =====
+-----
-===== What next? Haddock have feelings too? We can’t eat the haddock? Then what do we eat? =====
+==== Annotation 24 ====
-===== Maybe one day whales might be classed as non-human people and this whole conversation would be considered highly offensive, like how we look at the times before the women’s rights movement. =====
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> The laws of movement in history are the core principles of ''historical materialism'', which is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.
-===== Ha! You can’t say that as a woman. That is comparing women to animals. Very unfeminist. =====
+The basic theory of socio-economic forms dictates that material production plays a decisive role in the existence and development of a society, and that the material production methods decide both the political and ''social consciousness'' of a society.
-===== Maybe that is what people said about the idea of women’s rights before the suffragettes and in the context of the abolishment of slavery. =====
+-----
-===== That is not a comparison. =====
+==== Annotation 25 ====
-I think about saying these things but they would make for an even more uncomfortable ocean passage. I figure I should keep my mouth shut for now. It is fine, they don’t hunt whales any more.
+''Social consciousness'' refers to the collective experience of consciousness shared by members of a society, including ideological, cultural, spiritual, and legal beliefs and ideas which are shared within that society. This is related to the concept of base and superstructure, which is discussed later in this chapter.
-But that is not the issue. The issue is that the bad seeds are still there.
+''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' also showed that for as long as classes have existed, the history of the development of human society is the history of class struggle. Through class struggle, the proletariat can liberate ourselves only if we simultaneously and forever liberate the whole of humanity. With these basic opinions, Marx and Engels founded Historical Materialism.
-When I found out about the whaling, I thought, how can Larus be friends with these people? He comes to help them if he is near by, if they have caught a whale. He helps them place the whale back into the water and he tags the whale. He tries to educate them on the whales, so that they might understand them better, and in understating, develop some kind of empathy. He is not their friend. He is just cavorting with the enemy to further his own agenda.
+By applying Historical Materialism to the comprehensive study of the capitalist production method, Marx made an important discovery: separating workers from the ownership of the means of production through violence was the starting point of the establishment of the capitalist production method. Workers do not own the means of production to perform their labor activities for themselves, so, in order to make income and survive, workers have to sell their labor to capitalists. Labor thus becomes a special commodity, and the sellers of labor become workers for labor-buyers [the proletariat and capitalist class respectively]. The value that workers create through their labor is higher than their wage. And this is how surplus value* is formed. Importantly, this means that the surplus value belongs to people who own the means of production — the capitalists — instead of the workers who provide the labor.
-==== THE SUPER-TRENDY SPONGE CLUB ====
+-----
-Whales have now become the mascot of environmental stewardship, our very own symbol of empathy for other animals because they represent the idea that humans are not the only self-conscious creatures on Earth. We only recently started to acknowledge this and it has led us to wonder if there are other animals, especially cetaceans, who are so emotionally sophisticated that they might even be more emotionally sophisticated than we are.
+==== Annotation 26 ====
-In the limbic system of orcas or killer whales, for example – that is, the emotional processing bit – some parts are much bigger and more complicated than in the human brain. Something evolved there that has not evolved in humans. Because they have so much social cohesion scientists think that this part of the brain could be working on something crazy like a ''distributed sense of self''. Like they can kind of transmigrate into each other in real time, like mega-empathy, or telepathy. Which is really bloody sad if you think about mass strandings: they just can’t imagine living disconnected from the social group because of their innate collectivism. Like women!
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Surplus value is equal to labor value (the amount of value workers produce through labor) minus wages paid to workers. Under capitalism, this surplus value is appropriated as profit by capitalists after the products which workers created are sold.
-Were Scott and his men beached whales, dying in sacrifice with the rest of the pod, laying down their life for their kingdom, fundamentally collectivist, subsuming their ‘selves’ into the identity of the British Empire?
+So, in discovering the origin of surplus value, Marx pointed out the exploitative nature of capitalism [because capitalists essentially steal surplus labor value from workers which is then transformed into profits], though this exploitative nature is concealed by the money-commodity relationship.
-I would say no because what I think they had in mind when they kept pushing on into the obliterating snow was not death, as the end of self, but rather ''immortality'' (which is the conceptual opposite of a whale giving up any individualised notion of self in its suicide, dying with the colony because without the colony there is no self). The men on Scott’s expedition were demanding to be individualised; honoured; glorified; remembered for ever. (In a bee colony, around twelve males get to mate with the queen and pass on their DNA. Male bees explode after impregnating the queen, but it is not just anyone gets to say they impregnated the queen.)
+-----
-Think of Lawrence Oates of Scott’s mission, who left the tent saying ''I am just going outside''. Maybe what he had in mind was some kind of cryogenic freezing. Maybe he was really going outside to make a time capsule of his body.
+==== Annotation 27 ====
-According to the International Time Capsule Society based out of Oglethorpe University in Georgia, the dawn of the millennium saw an intense increase in the amount of time-capsulisation around the globe. Perhaps because the millennium is a marker of deep time. Perhaps because of our sense of infinitesimality in our new view of our place in the universe, perhaps because of the prospect of nuclear dawn.
+Under capitalism, a worker’s labor is a commodity which capitalists pay for with money in the form of wages. Workers never know how much of their labor value is being withheld by employers, which conceals the nature of capitalist wage-theft.
-What could be more representative than a fully formed and cryogenically frozen self? The desire to be reanimated in the future, a whole human self projected into the uncharted future. Maybe Lawrence Oates was really doing a President Carter.
+The theory of surplus value was deeply and comprehensively researched and presented in ''Capital''<ref>''Das Kapital:'' Karl Marx’s most important contribution to political economy. It is composed of four volumes. It is the work of Marx’s whole career and an important part of Engels’ career, as well. Marx started writing ''Das Kapital'' in the 1840s and continued writing until he died (1883). ''Das Kapital I'' was published in 1867. After Marx’s death, Engels edited and published the second volume in 1885 and the third volume in 1894. The Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the USSR edited and published ''Das Kapital IV'', also known as ''Theories of Surplus-Value'', in the 1950s, long after the death of Marx and Engels.</ref> by Marx and Engels. This work not only paves the way to form a new political-economic theory system based on the working class’s viewpoint, it also firmly consolidates and develops the historical-materialist viewpoint through the theory of socio-economic forms.
-In Shark Bay, Australia, a group of dolphins has formed a little clique that you can only get in to if you are what they call a ‘sponger’. It is called the Sponge Club. It was started by a dolphin they called Sponging Eve, who showed some of her girlfriends how to hold a sponge on the end of the snout so as not to get grazes when shuffling in the grit for food. Spongers only really hang around with other spongers, or dolphins that want to learn to sponge. This is what we describe in humans as ''cultural transmission''. All but one of the dolphins in the Sponge Club are female; they seem to be better at keeping up relationships and therefore cultural transmission. Probably while the males hang out around the fringe of the group hassling other males and being macho.
+-----
-The realisation that things like culture that we once thought were distinctly human are being found in other animals is blurring the rankings of our very meticulous taxonomies. But New Age idiosyncrasies are obscuring the science. Where it is being discussed, it is quite often hampered by mystical and totemic portrayals of these animals by people who think they are magical.
+==== Annotation 28 ====
-John Lilly has to answer for some of this. His maverick experimentation with hallucinogens and his obsession with decoding dolphin language in order to talk to them has tarnished dolphin study as pseudo-science. Plus he was still looking at it the wrong way. John Lilly was ranking language as the highest form of intelligence, as though we are ahead of the animals on a scale of progression, as though animals have not just adapted themselves as we have to the skills most required by their environments. He was still setting humans outside of the rest of nature and looking for the next best contender to invite into our elevated realm. John Lilly was Narcissus looking for something that reflected John Lilly back at himself.
+Karl Marx explained that the goal of writing ''Capital'' was “to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society.” By “laws of motion,” Marx refers to the origins and motivations for change within human society. Historical materialism holds that human society develops based on internal and external relationships within and between aspects of society. Historical materialism is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.
-The understanding that humans are just animals is maybe already there in children, who feel a kind of empathy towards animals because they see them as furry, scaly, feathery people. But of course children’s understanding of animal experience is not perfect because they take human-like responses to mean what they would mean in people.
+According to the theory of socio-economic forms [which is the basis of historical materialism], the movements and developments of human society are natural-historical processes based on dialectical interactions between forces of production and relations of production; between infrastructure basis [commonly referred to as “base” in English] and superstructure.
-When I was little I went to SeaWorld and loved every second of it. I thought the whales were happy and had a genuine best-friendship with their human trainers. You expect a super-friendly place like Florida where they invented orange juice and Mickey Mouse to be really good to their animals. And they are in the biggest pools you had ever seen and they really love what they do – look at the way they leap and smile and splash, all obvious expressions of joy and excitement.
+-----
-YAAAAAY, goes the internal monologue of the dolphin. And the whales are far from home but they have each other and they love to be a family. They get the tastiest fish and the best care and fun toys and stimulation from people that they would not get in the wild and they are safe from those nasty Japanese poachers. Shamu has been alive for ever so they must have long, happy lives in captivity.
+==== Annotation 29 ====
-You would never guess that the big one they get out at the end to do the big splash is not really called Shamu and would go on to kill lots of people because he is so emotionally traumatised from being masturbated by humans so his sperm could be sold for millions and being stuck in a concrete box with strangers who do not speak his dialect of whale and who rake him with their teeth for being different.
+The forces of production consist of the combination of means of production and workers within society. Under capitalism, the production force consists of the proletariat (working class) and means of production which are owned by the bourgeoisie (capitalist class).
-Cetaceans are intensely social. They have coded clicks that they use around each other. We can’t decode what they are communicating, but they seem to be repeating a pattern. These clicks seem to be social affirmations. If they are saying anything it might be HELLO HELLO HELLO in their specific dialect. The sad whales of captivity could just be repeating HELLO HELLO HELLO in mutually unintelligible dialects.
+Marx viewed society as composed of an ''economic base'' and a ''social superstructure''. The base of society includes the material relationships between humans and the means of productions and the material processes which humans undertake to survive and transform our environment. The superstructure of society includes all components of society not directly relating to production, such as media institutions, music, and art, as well as other cultural elements like religion, customs, moral standards, and everything else which manifests primarily through conscious activity and social relations.
-Cetaceans are women’s allies in the war against patriarchy because patriarchy holds the cetaceans down with us. Orcas travel in matriarchal pods. The root of the word dolphin, ''delphus'', means womb.
+In the preface to ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'', Marx explained:
-==== SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH ====
+<blockquote>
+In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
+</blockquote>
-Either I won Jon over or he invited me to watch the second haul because he was worried I would tell Larus they neglected me on the boat. He was hesitant in everything before I got out there, though, taking ages over giving me a bright orange anorak that drowned me already in case I fell in the water. He pointed out where the whistle was built into the collar and made me blow on it.
+RELIGION GOVERNMENT EDUCATION
-It was obvious as soon as I followed him out why he was being so cagey. A couple of the guys swore blatantly, one of them being Logan, who came straight from the other side of the deck and pushed past me back into the cabin, to go into his quarters, take his shoes off, put them back on again and masturbate in frustration over my pillow or something.
+POLITICAL ECONOMY NATURE
-When the netted fish break the surface of the water they seem to be dead already and the gulls appear from nowhere to hover over and peck at them until they realise they can’t lift them from inside the net. All pouched up inside the net, they spiral jaggedly but still quite mesmerisingly into each other because they are slippery and they swirl from the squeeze of the net and the pull of the water. It is the kind of movement that if you concentrate seems self-perpetuating, like a siphon flow, and you can’t imagine how it might have started or when it will stop. A perpetual motion machine. (But this is an illusion. A perpetual motion machine is an epistemic impossibility; energy always dissipates. Second law of thermodynamics.)
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-4.png|''The base of society includes material-based elements and relations including political economy, means of production, class relations, etc. The superstructure includes human-consciousness-based elements and relations including government, culture, religion, etc.'']]
-AN ANALOGY: Once upon a time a bunch of people were on a ship too and they went hubris crazy from their own seamanship and they steered their ship into more and more perilous waters in order just to test their ever more brilliant feats of seamanship. Then the people on the ship started to argue amongst themselves, complaining about conditions on the ship. A lady on the ship complained that ladies do not get as many blankets as men. A Mexican on the ship complained he did not get paid as much as his Anglo counterparts. A Native American on the ship complained that he was owed compensation for the theft of his ancestral lands. A gay man on the ship complained at being called names for sucking cock. An animal lover on the ship complained that the dog on the ship was frequently kicked.
+In other words, Marx argued that superstructure (which includes social consciousness) is shaped by the infrastructural basis, or base, of society. This reflects the more general dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness, in which the material, as the first basis of reality, determines consciousness, while consciousness mutually impacts the material [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88]. So, the base of society — being material in nature — ''determines'' the superstructure, while the superstructure ''impacts'' the base. It couldn’t possibly be the other way around, according to the dialectical materialist worldview, because the primary driving forces of conscious activity are rooted in material needs.
-A lowly cabin boy piped up that everyone should stop arguing because really the issue was that the ship was headed for wreckage in the more perilous waters and that none of their problems would matter if the ship was wrecked, but nobody listened to him because he was just a lowly cabin boy. They called him a fascist and continued to argue amongst themselves about their personal issues, and nobody turned the ship around. Meanwhile the captain distracted them with condolences (an extra blanket for the lady, for example) that were always slight enough to placate but never for long, in order that they would not revolt and the ship could keep steaming ahead.
+The theory of socio-economic forms proves that the materialist viewpoint of history is not just a hypothesis, but a scientifically-proven principle.
-The ship went on sailing north until it was crushed between icebergs and sank to the bottom of the sea.
+-----
-This is an analogy of civilisation written by Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Obviously it has some major flaws. Why is the captain suicidal? Is there really one malicious captain steering the helm of civilisation? If we sabotage the ship, like he wants us to, then wouldn’t we drown in freezing waters? But mostly my issue with it is that he does not seem to see that the problems of the people on the ship stem from the same place that built the ship badly (hint: patriarchy!). That to address the root of all their problems is to also steer the ship responsibly. As though the people on the ship were separate from the ship, as though the ship were sturdy and eternal, not contingent and always in the process of being reconstructed. I decided I should demonstrate this to Logan when the guys finally broached the subject of my presence on the ship.
+==== Annotation 30 ====
-‘We thought you might be a spy that Larus sent to try and dig up the dirt on our whale data,’ said Jon.
+As Lenin explains in ''What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats:''
-‘I just need to get to Canada, and Larus said you’d take me. I can’t say I disagree with how he feels about the whales, though.’
+<blockquote>
+Now — since the appearance of Capital — the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of some formation of society — formation of society, mind you, and not the way of life of some country or people, or even class, etc. — another attempt just as capable of introducing order into the “pertinent facts” as materialism is, that is just as capable of presenting a living picture of a definite formation, while giving it a strictly scientific explanation -until then the materialist conception of history will be a synonym for social science. Materialism is not ‘primarily a scientific conception of history’... but the only scientific conception of it.
-‘That’s exactly the sentimentality a woman would come up with,’ Logan piped up from nowhere.
+-----
-Everyone paused for a second with cutlery midway to mouth because it was the first thing he had said directly to me the whole trip.
+''Capital'' is Marx’s main work which presents Marxism as a social science by illuminating the inevitable processes of birth, development, and decay of capitalism; the replacement of capitalism with socialism; and the historical mission of the working class — the social force that can implement this replacement. Marx’s materialist conception of history and proletarian revolution continued to be developed in ''Critique of Gotha Programme'' (Marx, 1875). This book discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, the transitional period from capitalism to socialism, and phases of the communism building process, and several other premises. Together, these premises formed the scientific basis for Marx’s theoretical guidance for the future revolutionary activity of the proletariat.
+</blockquote>
-‘I’d kill a whale catch if I had my way. I’d stab it in the jugular and let it bleed out slowly. It’s how we’ve always done it. No amount of squeals from folk like you will stop it, as much as you like to think it does.’
-Thinking I would meet him on his own territory, I said, ‘A curse on you and your boat,’ which I thought was quite funny. I did not think he would take it so seriously. He called me a witch, said something about how the catch had been bad and the boat was headed for doom now and slammed out of the room.
+-----
-There was a big old awkward silence until Ethan, the warmest to me, said, ‘You really shouldn’t have said something like that,’ and a few of the guys exhaled loudly and let out low whistles.
+==== Annotation 31 ====
-Logan is like Ted Kaczynski in that he does not realise it is his own issues with me that was sending his ship to imaginary doom in the first place. It comes from inside him. It is a thing they have both imposed but are thinking is an ''essential thing''.
+When Marx refers to a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” he does ''not'' mean “dictatorship” to mean “totalitarian” or “authoritarian.” Rather, here “dictatorship” simply refers to a situation in which political power is held by the working class (which constitutes the vast majority of society). “Dictatorship,” here, refers to full control of the means of production and government. This stands in contrast to capitalism, which is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in which capitalists (a small minority of society) have full control of the means of production and government.
-The ‘curse’ will be lifted, so I suppose I did cast a spell on the boat in a way. Because when Logan realises it is ''he'' who is cursing the ship he will have to change his views on women (although there my own analogy falls down; Logan and the Unabomber are not synonymous because Ted Kaczynski would never kill whales).
+==== c. The Defending and Developing Stage of Marxism ====
-I am partially onside with the Unabomber on the green issues, but like a lot of primitivists he believes in a Darwinian world of individual strength and combat where women have a subservient role because that is just ''essential human nature''. And he really does not like feminists.
+''- Historical Background and the Need for Defending and Developing Marxism''
-===== What he says: feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and capable as men. =====
+In the late 19<sup>th</sup> century and early 20<sup>th</sup> century, capitalism developed into a new stage, called imperialism. The dominant and exploitative nature of capitalism became increasingly obvious. Contradictions in capitalist societies became increasingly serious — especially the class struggles between the proletariat and capitalists. In many colonised countries, the resistance against imperialism created a unity between national liberation and proletarian revolution, uniting people in colonised countries with the working class in colonial countries. The core of such revolutionary struggles at this time was in Russia. The Russian proletariat and working class under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party became the leader of the whole international revolutionary movement.
-===== What Charles Darwin the sexist Victorian naturalist said: the chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man’s attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman. =====
+During this time, both capitalist industry and natural sciences developed rapidly. Some natural scientists, especially physicists, lacked a grounding in materialist philosophical methodology and therefore fell into a viewpoint crisis. Idealist philosophers used this crisis to directly influence the perspective and activities of many revolutionary movements.
-What is ‘strong’? Why is it ‘good’? They are as superstitious as Logan. They believe in the perpetual motion machine, without seeing that something started it, something gives energy to the machine. What the Unabomber needs is a feminist revision.
+-----
-===== What YOU need is a feminist revision. =====
+==== Annotation 32 ====
-===== Get off my ship you witch-whore. =====
+==== Imperialism ====
-=== {{anchor|Topofch03html}} THE RECEDING HORIZON ===
+Lenin defined imperialism as “the monopoly stage of capitalism,” listing its essential characteristics as “finance capital (serving) a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists” and “a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.”
-==== GO CAREFULLY BRAVE SPACE PROBE FOR MY DREAMS GO WITH YOU ====
+==== Subjective and Empiricist Idealism ====
-I had to steer clear of the northernmost mainland of Canada because it is sparsely populated and so logistics would have been difficult. It made more sense to go south to Saint John’s, North America’s oldest city. It’s on the bigger-sized chunk called Newfoundland just off the bottom tip of Labrador, near where they excavated a Viking settlement that could have been Gudrid’s. Means I have to ferry over to the mainland again across the Gulf of St Lawrence.
+In the late 19<sup>th</sup> century, natural scientists were exploring various philosophical bases for scientific inquiry. One Austrian physicist, Ernst Mach, attempted to build a philosophy of natural science based on the works of German-Swiss philosopher Richard Avenarius known as “Empirio-Criticism.” Empirio-Criticism, which also came to be known as Machism, has many parallels with the philosophy of George Berkeley. Berkeley (1685 — 1753) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose main philosophical achievement was the formulation of a doctrine which he called “immaterialism,” and which later came to be known as “Subjective Idealism.” This doctrine was summed up by Berkeley’s maxim: “''Esse est percipi''” — “To be is to be perceived.” Subjective Idealism holds that individuals can only directly perceive and know about physical objects through direct sense experience. Therefore, individuals are unable to obtain any real knowledge about abstract concepts such as “matter”.
-Thank god for the Trans-Canada Highway. I can use it to get all the way across the country to Yukon near the border with Alaska. You can get the whole way using Greyhound buses but they are way too expensive, so I am hoping to be able to do most of it with carpools and just a couple of coaches.
+The philosophy of Empirio-Criticism, which was developed by Avenarius and Mach, also holds that the only reliable human knowledge we can hold comes from our sensations and experiences. Mach argued that the only source of knowledge is sense data and “experience,” but that we can’t develop any actual knowledge of the actual external world. In other words, Mach’s conception of empirio-criticism holds all knowledge as essentially subjective in nature, and limited to (and by) human sense experience. Mach’s development of Empirio-Criticism (which can also be referred to as ''empirical idealism'' or ''Machism'')'''' was therefore a continuation of Berkeley’s subjective idealism. Both Berkeley’s Immaterialism and Empirio-Criticism are considered to be ''subjective idealism'' because these philosophies deny that the external world exists — or otherwise assert that it is unknowable — and, as such, hold that all knowledge stems from experiences which are essentially ''subjective'' in nature.
-If I get completely stuck I suppose I will just have to hitchhike. I keep bringing up pages on the computer about women going missing while walking near the highway. A guy got beheaded and eaten on a Greyhound from Winnipeg, though, so none of my options are perfect.
+Mach argued that reality can only be defined by our sensual experiences of reality, and that we can never concretely know anything about the objective external world due to the limitations of sense experience. This stands in direct contradiction to dialectical materialism, which holds that we can develop accurate knowledge of the material world through observation and practice. Whereas Berkeley developed subjective idealist theological arguments to defend the Christian faith, Mach employed subjective idealism for purely secular purposes as a basis for scientific inquiry.
-The whole dynamic and landscape of the journey is to change now completely. Physically, it is all so lush and green and so many trees, such big trees! So weird to not be on rolling water. I think for the first few days the sensation will carry through, like how liquid that has been shaken about carries on sloshing even when its vessel has stilled. And it is also strange to think that now for the first time I am really on my own, because all the way so far I have been with Urla or kind of passed between adult guardians. Now it is just me and the whole of Canada, each leg of the journey a level to complete, bonus points carried over to the next level for novelty and amount of budget spared. And something else as well. Perhaps ''velocity''. Because I have a vast space to cover and not much time or budget to do it in.
+''Note: all quotations below come from Lenin’s book:'' Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''.''
-The internet tells me that Voyager 1 has left the solar system after all. It is now 12 billion miles away from Earth. That is 121 astronomical units or 121 times the space between Earth and the Sun. There has not been much fanfare to accompany this, maybe because it does not fit into our dogma of linear time, there not being a point where NASA could sit cheering and giving high-fives. They figured it out by comparing the number of protons around it this year with those around it last year, and from that estimated that it must have crossed the heliopause in around August last year.
+Vladimir Lenin strongly opposed Empirio-Criticism and, by extension, Machism, which was becoming popular among communist revolutionists in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century, because it pushed forward idealist principles which directly opposed the core tenets of dialectical materialism.
-So before I even left England it was already gone. In retrospect we will slot it into the history of our progressive forward march. Like when Columbus accidentally discovered a world that had already been discovered, several times over. Convinced it was India, he called the people he found there Indians, but more embarrassing is that we still preserve that mistake in our speech today. Europe did not hear about it until he got back afterwards and then the spread of the news would have been slow compared to our instantaneous world. It was an event that set into motion the beginnings of Western world domination, so from our perspective I suppose we are bound to distil it. Is this the drive behind time capsules? Are they a way to feign control over time by chronologising, a way of saying I MARK TIME THEREFORE I AM in order to assert existence?
+Lenin believed that revolutionaries should be guided not by idealism, but by dialectical materialism. He believed that Empirio-Criticism and Machism consisted of mysticism which would mislead political revolutionaries.
-It is cool that something made in the 1970s is still sending us signals from so far away when you consider what computers looked like in the seventies. On his way back from the New World Columbus threw a bottle overboard, with a message inside addressed to the Queen of Castile detailing what he had found in case he drowned in a storm (I MARKED TIME THEREFORE I WAS). Voyager 1 will carry on sending messages for maybe ten more years until its plutonium runs out, after which it will carry on into interstellar space without us for a billion years before disintegrating.
+Lenin outlined Machian arguments against materialism:
-In Port aux Basques I found a cheap hostel. I was invited out to drink with two obnoxious American boys I met in my dorm but I passed because they were obnoxious and because I was tired and had arranged already to Skype Larus.
+<blockquote>
+The materialists, we are told, recognise something unthinkable and unknowable — ’things-in-themselves’ — matter ‘outside of experience’ and outside of our knowledge [see: Annotation 72, p. 68]. They lapse into genuine mysticism by admitting the existence of something beyond, something transcending the bounds of ‘experience’... When they say that matter, by acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensations, the materialists take as their basis the ‘unknown,’ nothingness; for do they not themselves declare our sensations to be the only source of knowledge?
+</blockquote>
-==== WOMEN’S BLOOD MYSTERIES ====
+Lenin argued that this new form of Machist subjective idealism was, in fact, simply a rehashing of “old errors of idealism,” disguised and dressed up with new terminology. As such, Lenin simply reiterated the longstanding, bedrock dialectical materialist arguments against idealism [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. He was especially upset that contemporary Marxists of his era were being swayed by Machist Empirio-Criticism because he found it to be in direct conflict with dialectical materialism, writing: “(These) would-be Marxists… try in every way to assure their readers that Machism is compatible with the historical materialism of Marx and Engels.”
-I had decided to ask for a lift just to Truro so that if I ended up in the car with a weirdo I could get out in plenty of time before it got too late, then if the driver happened to be taking the route on to Moncton I could decide to stay with them or not to. I won’t pretend I was not uncertain as I stood with my thumb out at the side of the road feeling small. When she pulled in for me she did it almost erratically as though on seeing my small uncertain self up close she could not sail past and just leave me there. I am very aware that in this context my youth and gender will be a blessing and could also very easily be a curse. As it happened, Jules was driving back from seeing friends in Sydney to her home in Riverview just outside Moncton.
+Lenin goes on to describe the work of philosophers such as Franz Blei, who critiqued Marxism with Machist arguments, as “quasi-scientific tomfoolery decked out in the terminology of Avenarius.” He saw Empirio-Criticism as completely incompatible with communist revolution, since idealism had historically been used by the ruling class to deceive and control the lower classes. In particular, he believed that Machist idealism was being used by the capitalist class to preach bourgeois economics, writing that “the professors of economics are nothing but learned salesmen of the capitalist class.”
-Jules: long brown hair speckled with grey and a denim pinafore with a roll-neck sweater on underneath. A big voice and a way of asking questions that makes you think she genuinely wants your life story, as though she collects them. I told her everything about the documentary, about the journey so far. She told me to go ahead and get the camera out if I wanted to ask her anything, she would love to be a part of it.
+Lenin was deeply concerned that prominent Russian socialist philosophers were adopting Machist ideas and claiming them to be compatible with Marxism, writing:
-She told me about how when she was a bit older than me she had done the entire Trans-Canada Highway from British Columbia to Newfoundland with her boyfriend. She spent some time after that living in a commune near an Indian reservation learning about Native American spirituality under some white New Age spiritual leader reborn as Raven-Wildheart or something. Then when she was hiking back home to BC alone afterwards she took a ride in a van. The guy was jittery and kept licking his lips, which were cracked; she had a bad feeling from the offset but his was the only vehicle she had seen in hours because she was in backcountry. It got dark fast and she had no idea where they were when he pulled over and took his cock out for her to suck.
+<blockquote>
+The task of Marxists in both cases is to be able to master and adapt the achievements of these ‘salesmen’... and to be able to lop off their reactionary tendency, to pursue your own line and to combat the whole alignment of forces and classes hostile to us. And this is just what our Machians were unable to do, they slavishly follow the lead of the reactionary professorial philosophy.
+</blockquote>
-She got out of the car but it was prairie land and she had nowhere to run or hide. The flat, indifferent plains lay out before her on every side. She started to walk as fast as stoicism allowed but she heard the gears crunch into reverse and he rolled down the passenger-side window to ask her ‘where ya goin’, little lady?’ as he crawled her. She ran back off the road so that he would have to turn the car around to chase her.
+Lenin further explains how Empirio-Criticism serves the interests of the capitalist class:
-The moon was behind a cloud. She was out of the beam of the tail-lights, and by the time he had aligned the car to the way she had gone, he could not see her running. And besides, his eyesight was bad, she had seen him squinting at the road signs. She turned and could see the car had stopped from the still of its lights, stiffening to the sight of his figure hunched in the car under the weak glow of the interior light. He took something out of the glove compartment and straightened up, holding it out ahead of him. The torch stammered feebly, he tapped it on his palm and it flickered out completely. She heard faintly the clunk of its loose parts as he kicked it into the dark.
+<blockquote>
+The empirio-criticists as a whole... claim to be non-partisan both in philosophy and in social science. They are neither for socialism nor for liberalism. They make no differentiation between the fundamental and irreconcilable trends of materialism and idealism in philosophy, but endeavor to rise above them. We have traced this tendency of Machism through a long series of problems of epistemology, and we ought not to be surprised when we encounter it in sociology.
+</blockquote>
-Jules did not know which way to head. She had tried to aim herself away from the road in a westerly direction, but in the opposite direction to which they had come so as not to stumble onto a road he might still be following. After walking half the night she curled exhausted into a dip in the ground and let the grasses wash around her. She lay awake all night, whispering to the prairie dogs for comfort and listening for the sound of an engine, until it was light enough to make out a farmhouse not too far away. The people inside were sympathetic to her, giving her breakfast and then a ride all the way home, a three-hour drive.
+In the conclusion of the same text, Lenin explains why communists should reject Empirio-Criticism and Machism with four “standpoints,” summarized here:
-The pervert had a generic van and for years afterwards when she saw a similar van she would go clammy.
+. The theoretical foundations of Empirio-Criticism can’t withstand comparison with those of dialectical materialism. Empirio-Criticism differs little from older forms of idealism, and the tired old errors of idealism clash directly with Marxist dialectical materialism. As Lenin puts it: “only utter ignorance of the nature of philosophical materialism generally and of the nature of Marx’s and Engels’ dialectical method can lead one to speak of ‘combining’ empirio-criticism and Marxism.”
-‘But all the other amazing journeys I had apart from that one stupid one… I never let it stop me. It’s the kind of thing that just happens sometimes. You gotta roll with it. Assert your freedom!’
+. The philosophical foundations of Empirio-Criticism are flawed. “Both Mach and Avenarius started with Kant (see: Annotation 72, p. 68) and, leaving him, proceeded not towards materialism, but in the opposite direction, towards Hume and Berkeley (see: Annotation 10, p. 10)... The whole school of Mach and Avenarius is moving more and more definitely towards idealism.”
-Yes. Like Sylvia Plath said in her journal, why should women be relegated to the position of custodian of emotions, watcher of infants, feeder of soul, body, and pride of man? A consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar-room regulars – that is what Sylvia Plath had. To be part of this scene, anonymous, listening and recording. We can’t because we are females, always in danger of assault and battery. Oh, to be free to sleep in an open field! To travel west! To walk freely at night!
+. Machism is little more than a relatively obscure trend which has not been adopted by most scientists; a “reactionary (and) transitory infatuation.” As Lenin puts it: “the vast majority of scientists, both generally and in this special branch of science... are invariably on the side of materialism.”
-Looking out of the window and thinking, in this part of the world there are so many spaces between people that are just for trees. Conifers tower over the highway, making flashing striped shadows, and eagles are in the sky above them. Grass creeps back into the rubble fringing the asphalt. Lakes start to appear as flashes in gaps between the trees, like looking inside a zoetrope. There are spindly top-heavy trees that stand twice the height of the tips of the conifers. We are entering taiga land now, boreal forest.
+. Empirio-Criticism and Machism reflect the “tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society.” Idealism represents the interests of the ruling class in modern society, and is used to subjugate the majority of society. Idealist philosophy “stands fully armed, commands vast organizations and steadily continues to exercise influence on the masses, turning the slightest vacillation in philosophical thought to its own advantage.” In other words, idealism is used by the ruling class to manipulate our understanding of the world, as opposed to materialism (and especially dialectical materialism) which illuminates the true nature of reality which would lead to the liberation of the working class.
-‘You know if you just drive through this you miss it all?’ Jules said. I told her yes but I have to get all the way to Alaska before half of my money runs out, then head back on the rest. She asked, ‘Why’ve you got to do that, sounds like a lot of pressure?’ I told her I have to do it for the project, and that it is constructive pressure.
+At this time, Marxism was widely disseminating throughout Russia, which challenged the social positions and benefits of capitalists. In reaction to Marxism, many ideological movements such as empiricism, utilitarianism, revisionism, etc. [see: Appendix F, p. 252] rose up and claimed to renew Marxism, while in fact they misrepresented and denied Marxism.
-‘Why Alaska? What’s Alaska got that New Brunswick doesn’t?’ ‘Gold fever. The mythology of gold rush country. Frontiers land. Jack London land. I don’t know what it has but that’s what I’m going to find out.’
+In this context, new achievements of natural science needed to be analyzed and summarized in order to continue the authentic development of Marxist viewpoints and methodologies. Theoretical principles to fight against the misrepresentation of Marxism needed to be developed in order to bring Marxism into the new era. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin would fulfill this historical requirement with his theoretical developments.
-She laughed. ‘You going to disappear into the wild, then?’
+''- The Role of Lenin in Defending and Developing Marxism.''
-I told her about the wilderness plan. She smiled and laughed and grimaced and seemed altogether perplexed about her feelings towards it all. Like with the story she had told me, I could not tell if she was being encouraging or cautionary. I asked her why this was.
+Lenin’s process of defending and developing Marxism can be separated into three periods: first, from 1893 to 1907; next, from 1907 to 1917; and finally from the success of the October socialist revolution in 1917 until Lenin’s death in 1924.
-‘I don’t mean to patronise you, but you’re so young! And I surprise myself. See, you remind me of a younger me, I was around your age when I did similar things and was sure of them while I did them and when I look back on them now even. But you also remind me of my daughter and that makes me worry for you. Of course I worry for her because she is my daughter. Isn’t that messed up? You’ll understand one day when you are a mother. Where is your mother anyways?’
+From 1893 to 1907, Lenin focused on fighting against populists<ref>Populist faction: A faction within the Russian revolution which upheld an idealist capitalist ideology with many representatives such as Mikhailovsky, Bakunin, and Plekhanov. Populists failed to recognise the important roles of the people, of the farmers and workers alliance, and of the proletariat. Instead, they completely centered the role of the individual in society. They considered the rural communes as the nucleus of “socialism.” They saw farmers under the leadership of intellectuals as the main force of the revolution. The populists advocated individual terrorism as the primary method of revolutionary struggle.</ref>. His book ''What the Friends of the People are and How They Fight Against the Social Democrats (1894)'' criticized the serious mistakes of this faction in regards to socio-historical issues and also exposed their scheme of distorting Marxism by erasing the boundaries between Marxism’s materialist dialectics and Hegel’s idealist dialectics. In the same book, Lenin also shared many thoughts about the important roles of theory, reality, and the relationship between the two.
-And from out of nowhere and without hesitation I said,
+==== Annotation 33 ====
-‘She’s dead.’
+The ''populist'' philosophy was born in Russia in the 19<sup>th</sup> century with roots going back to the Narodnik agrarian socialist movement of the 1860s and 70s, composed of peasants who rose up in a failed campaign against the Czar. In the late 19<sup>th</sup> century, a new political movement emerged rooted in Narodnik ideas and a new party called the Socialist Revolutionary Party was formed. The political philosophy of this movement, now commonly translated into English as “populism,” focused on an agrarian peasant revolution led by intellectuals with the ambition of going directly from a feudal society to a socialist society built from rural communes. This movement overtly opposed Marxism and dialectical materialism and was based on subjective idealist utopianism (see Annotation 95, p. 94).
-Maybe because I thought she would not press any more after that, but in her uninhibited New World way she said softly,
+With the book ''What is to be Done?'' (1902), Lenin developed Marxist viewpoints on the methods for the proletariat to take power. He discussed economic, political, and ideological struggles. In particular, he emphasized the ideological formation process of the proletariat.
-‘And what about your dad?’ ‘He’s dead too.’
+==== Annotation 34 ====
-I stared right ahead after that but could see her taking snatched glances at me, searching my emotionless face to find the vulnerability there. When she could not find it we sat in silence a while, between us the sombre reverence of the orphan, so young and so blameless and yet wizened beyond years.
+In ''What is to be Done?,'' Lenin argues that the working class will not spontaneously attain class consciousness and push for political revolution simply due to economic conflict with employers and spontaneous actions like demonstrations and workers’ strikes. He instead insists that a political party of dedicated revolutionaries is needed to educate workers in Marxist principles and to organize and push forward revolutionary activity. He also pushed back strongly against the ideas of what he called “economism,” as typified by the ideas of Eduard Bernstein, a German political theorist who rejected many of Marx’s theories.
-After some time had passed she said, ‘Won’t you get lonely out there?’
+Bernstein opposed a working class revolution and instead focused on reform and compromise. He believed that socialism could be achieved within the capitalist economy and the system of bourgeois democracy. Lenin argued that Bernstein and his economist philosophy was opportunistic, and accused economists of seeking positions within bourgeois democracies to further their own personal interests and to quell revolutionary tendencies. As Lenin explained in ''A Talk With Defenders of Economism:''
-I asked her did she think Henry D. Thoreau was ever lonely. He was not, he was in a state of solitude. And besides, even that state was not ever pure. I will bring the camera with me, and this presumes an audience. Thoreau meditating on solitude by conversing with a diary is a paradox if you think about it. There is never solitude, only degrees of separation. You have to know something to know it is not there.
+<blockquote>
+The Economists limited the tasks of the working class to an economic struggle for higher wages and better working conditions, etc., asserting that the political struggle was the business of the liberal bourgeoisie. They denied the leading role of the party of the working class, considering that the party should merely observe the spontaneous process of the movement and register events. In their deference to spontaneity in the working-class movement, the Economists belittled the significance of revolutionary theory and class-consciousness, asserted that socialist ideology could emerge from the spontaneous movement, denied the need for a Marxist party to instill socialist consciousness into the working-class movement, and thereby cleared the way for bourgeois ideology. The Economists, who opposed the need to create a centralized working-class party, stood for the sporadic and amateurish character of individual circles. Economism threatened to divert the working class from the class revolutionary path and turn it into a political appendage of the bourgeoisie.
+</blockquote>
-No man is an island, not even Ted Kaczynski, the man-island of all man-islands. When Ted Kaczynski was a boy genius at Harvard he was used as a subject by Henry Murray as part of the CIA’s secret illegal MK ULTRA mind control programme. The aim of the programme was to find methods and drugs that could be used in interrogations and torture, to weaken the subject and elicit a confession. They chose geniuses because in theory their minds would be more resilient to intrusion. His code name was ‘Lawful’ and he was seventeen years old. Murray used ‘vehement, sweeping and personally abusive attacks’ against the child Unabomber’s ideas, beliefs and his ego.
+''The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Vietnam'', published by the National Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, defines opportunism, in this context, as “a system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, no coherent viewpoint, leaning on whatever is beneficial for the opportunist in the short term.”
-After such an attack on his idea of his self and his place in the world, is it any wonder he subsumed himself into something bigger (nature) and so different from the institution of Harvard (civilisation)? Ted Kaczynski was no island. He was another product of the Cold War.
+Lenin critiques opportunist socialism — referring to it as a “critical” trend in socialism — in ''What is to be Done?:''
-After Jules dropped me in the city centre and I walked away feeling her tear-filled eyes on my back I found a bench right away and rang my parents because I felt so bad that I killed them like that. I have been keeping my promise to email weekly, but that was the first time I have heard their voices in fifty-two days. At the start they texted almost daily, like a check-in to make sure I made it to the end of the day; it would come always around 9 p.m. They must have adjusted based on my time zone so that they would always catch me just before I settled down. But they are becoming less and less persistent with it.
+<blockquote>
+He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the new “critical” trend in socialism is nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism. And if we judge people... by their actions and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that “freedom of criticism” means “freedom for an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism.”
-‘Oh, there she is!’
+-----
-‘I’m sat on a park bench in Moncton in New Brunswick.’
+The first revolution of the Russian working class, from 1905 to 1907, failed. Lenin summarized the reality of this revolution in the book ''Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution'' (1905). In this book, Lenin explains that the capitalist class in Russia was actively engaged in its own revolution against Czarist feudalism. In this context of this ongoing bourgeois revolution, Lenin deeply developed Marxist concepts related to revolutionary methodologies, objective and subjective factors that will affect the working class revolution, the role of the people, the role of political parties etc.
+</blockquote>
-‘Where’s that, love?’
+==== Annotation 35 ====
-‘Canada.’
+From 1905 to 1907, Russia was beset by political unrest and radical activity including workers’ strikes, military mutinies, and peasant uprisings. Russia had just suffered a humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese war which cost tens of thousands of Russian lives without any benefits to the Russian people. In addition, the economic and political systems of Czarist Russia placed a severe burden on industrial workers and peasant farmers.
-‘She told you before she’s in Canada now.’
+In response, the Russian proletariat rose up in various uprisings, demonstrations, and clashes against government forces, landlords, and factory owners. In the end, this revolutionary activity failed to overthrow the Czar’s government, and the Czar remained firmly in power until the communist revolution of 1917.
-‘Well, I never heard of New Brunswick! What can you see, lovely?’
+Lenin wrote ''Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution'' in 1905 in
-‘Lots of tall buildings, a neat little park, no pigeons.’
+Geneva, Switzerland. In it, he argues forcefully against the political faction within the Russian socialist movement that came to be known as the “Mensheviks.” The Mensheviks, as well as the Bolsheviks (Lenin’s contemporary faction) emerged from a dispute within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which took place in 1903.
-‘What time is it there?’
+In the same text, Lenin argued that the Mensheviks misunderstood the forces that were driving revolutionary activity in Russia. While the Mensheviks believed that the situation in Russia would develop along similar lines to previous revolutionary activity in Western Europe, Lenin argued that Russia’s situation was unique and that Russian Marxists should therefore adopt different strategies and activities which reflected Russia’s unique circumstances and material conditions.
-‘It’s about six p.m.’
+Specifically, the Mensheviks believed that the working class should ally with the bourgeoisie to overthrow the Czar’s feudalist regime, and then allow the bourgeoisie to build a fully functioning capitalist economy before workers should attempt their own revolution.
-‘And are you on your own?’
+Lenin, on the other hand, presented a completely different analysis of class forces in Russia. He believed the bourgeoisie would seek a compromise with the Czar, as both feudal and bourgeois classes in Russia feared a proletarian revolution.
-‘Yes.’
+It’s important to note that Russia’s industrial workforce was very small at this time, and most Russians were peasant farmers. The Mensheviks believed Russian peasants would not be useful in a proletarian revolution, which is why they argued for allowing capitalism to be fully established in Russia before pushing for a working class revolution. They believed it was prudent to wait until the working class became larger and more dominant in Russia before attempting to overthrow capitalism. They believed that the peasant class would not be useful in any such revolution.
-‘Oh, love.’
+In contrast, Lenin believed that the peasants and industrial workers would have to work together to have any hope of a successful revolution. He further argued that an uprising of armed peasants and workers, fighting side by side, would be necessary for overthrowing the Czar.
-‘What time is it in England?’
+From 1907 to 1917, there was a viewpoint crisis among many physicists. This strongly affected the birth of many idealist ideologies following Mach’s Positivism that attempted to negate Marxism [See: Annotation 32, p. 27]. Lenin summarized the achievements of natural science as well as historical events of the late 19<sup>th</sup> century and early 20<sup>th</sup> century in his book ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'' (1909). By giving the classical definitions of matter, proving the relationships between matter and consciousness and between social existence and social consciousness, and pointing out the basic rules of consciousness, etc., Lenin defended Marxism and carried it forward to a new level. Lenin clearly expressed his thoughts on the history, nature, and structure of Marxism in the book ''The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism'' (1913). He also talked about dialectics in ''Philosophical Notebooks'' (1914–1916) and expressed his thoughts about the proletarian dictatorship, the role of the Communist Party, and the path to socialism in his book ''The State and Revolution'' (1919).
-‘It’s one fifteen.’
+The success of the October revolution in Russia in 1917 brought about a new era: the transitional period from capitalism to socialism on an international scale. This event presented new theoretical requirements that had not existed in the time of Marx and Engels’ time.
-I skirted around the hitchhiking aspect of the journey and told them I had been getting coaches and, yes, my budget was doing all right, it is pretty cheap out here actually. We chatted for a while about things at home, how one of the neighbours had got a new dog that seemed to disagree with our own dog, how the weather had been especially hot for May and how the house was empty without me. And then there was a long pause with lots of little gasps that meant she was crying.
+In a series of works including: “''Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder'' (1920),
-‘Don’t go getting all upset, she’s fine. Listen! She sounds so happy! Aren’t you happy, Erin?’
+''Once Again on the Trade Unions'', ''The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin'' (1921), ''The Tax in Kind'' (1921), etc., Lenin summarized the revolutionary practice of the people, continued defending Marxist dialectics, and uncompromisingly fought against eclecticism and sophistry.
-‘Yes, very happy.’
+==== Annotation 36 ====
-‘You see, she’s doing just fine.’
+In ''Anti-Dühring'', Engels identifies the historical missions of the working class as:
-I went to wrap it up then because I was about to start crying too and if she heard me cry, well, that would just be it, she would set in with her mantra that I had made a terrible and malady-driven mistake. But then she said in a very small voice, ‘Yes, I know she’s doing just fine, of course she is,’ and that did me in. I waited until we were off the phone and then I sat and wept quietly alone on that park bench in Moncton, New Brunswick, for a full minute until I had exorcised those cumbersome feelings from me and I got up to find a hostel for the night.
+. Becoming the ruling class by establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat.
-==== THE POLLINATOR HEALTH TASK FORCE ====
+. Seizing the means of production from the ruling class to end class society.
-QUEBEC CITY: This whole couch-surfing thing is really novel. All Lucie gets out of it is someone to show her city to, and I suppose a little cultural exchange. Seems to run on a backpacker mentality that sees meeting new people and sharing as the ultimate human rewards. I keep thinking of it like outside your customary social sphere you do not have any prerequisites and can be yourself more than you are yourself at home, become a really exaggerated version of yourself or whatever self you choose to accentuate for a short while.
+''Eclecticism'' is an incoherent approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject, applying different theories in different situations without any consistency in analysis and thought. Eclectic arguments are typically composed of various pieces of evidence that are cherry picked and pieced together to form a perspective that lacks clarity. By definition, because they draw from different systems of thought without seeking a clear and cohesive understanding of the totality of the subject and its internal and external relations and its development over time, eclectic arguments run counter to the ''comprehensive'' and ''historical'' viewpoints [see p. 116]. Eclecticism bears superficial resemblance to dialectical materialism in that it attempts to consider a subject from many different perspectives, and analyzes relationships pertaining to a subject, but the major flaw of eclecticism is a lack of clear and coherent systems and principles, which leads to a chaotic viewpoint and an inability to grasp the true nature of the subject at hand.
-It feels so natural that the strangest thing about it is that there will be a point in just a few days when it is all undone and I am a stranger to these people again. That we will stop existing to each other apart from in rare and passing thoughts.
+''Sophistry'' is the use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.
-She and all the friends I met identify as ‘Pure Laine’; of pure French descent. We did not stop at the Citadelle, the massively serene City Hall or any of the other strikingly majestic/oppressive buildings of the British colonial era, but she lingered at anything built before the British took Quebec in the Seven Years’ War: the Notre-Dame de Quebec, the cobbled architecture of the Haute-Ville and the Basse-Ville of the Old Town. The ramparts are the only fortified city walls north of Mexico. It is like the architecture itself is vying for prominence, a physical manifestation of historical egos. But a thought kept bugging me: it forgets that the sparring ground was appropriated and the fighting was imperial on both sides.
+Simultaneously, Lenin also developed his Marxist viewpoint of the factors deciding the victory of a social regime, about class, about the two basic missions of the proletariat, about the strategies and tactics of proletarian parties in new historical conditions, about the transitional period, and about the plans of building socialism following the New Economic Policy (NEP), etc.
-Lucie told the story as if it began with France and that is how the exhibition at the Musée de la Civilisation told it too, which I suppose it did in terms of written histories we can understand.
+-----
-Cultures indigenous to the Americas had no written history before Europeans came and Latinised (or in some nicer cases invented a new syllabic alphabet for) their speech. Writing is the time-capsulation of language, pinning it so it can’t float away on the wind. (An airborne language is the kind of which Ted Kaczynski would approve.) Their history is oral, is ‘prehistory’. So in a way it is as though they did not exist.
+==== Annotation 37 ====
-Museums are time capsules. Sometimes they are time capsules of the other but by what taxonomies do they become ‘of the other’? The Golden Records time-capsulised different cultures and species under the umbrella of ‘life on earth’. It could be that the relics of past civilisations that we sanctimoniously preserve and curate were meant for the future anyway. Maybe this is the most basic human impulse. (I mark time therefore I am, I marked time remember me, this is how I marked my time.)
+The early 1920s were a period of great internal conflict in revolutionary Russia, with various figures and factions wanting to take the revolution in different directions. As such, Lenin wrote extensively on the direction he believed the revolution should be carried forth to ensure lasting victory against both feudalism and capitalism. He believed that the October, 1917 revolution represented the complete defeat of the Czar, however he believed the proletarian victory over the bourgeoisie would take more time. Russia was a poor, agrarian society. The vast majority of Russians under the Czar were poor peasants. Industry — and thus, the proletariat — was highly undeveloped compared to Western Europe. According to Lenin, a full and lasting proletarian victory over the bourgeoisie could only be won after the means of production were properly developed. In ''Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution'', Lenin wrote:
-At the time-capsule museum in Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia, there is an underground chamber sealed in 1940 by the founder of the university, the ‘father of the modern time capsule’, Thornwell Jacobs. It is called the Crypt of Civilisation. It contains all the great literature, voice recordings of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Popeye, objects like a toaster and a typewriter, scientific instruments, the contents of a woman’s purse, a black doll. By ‘our civilisation’ they meant ‘the United States and the world at large during the first half of the twentieth century’, according to the inscription on the door. Next to this is a ‘language integrator’ based on the Rosetta Stone, for teaching a subset of English called ‘basic English’ in case it is not spoken any more (a gesture towards solving the Forever Problem).
+<blockquote>
+This first victory [the October, 1917 revolution] is not yet the final victory, and it was achieved by our October Revolution at the price of incredible difficulties and hardships... We have made the start... The important thing is that the ice has been broken; the road is open, the way has been shown.
+</blockquote>
-This is taxonomy of sorts; an order to say this culture is different from that culture. They are because I have known them. A discovered animal exists but an undiscovered one does not. Divided they can be ranked. And if not denying the existence of native cultures we are at least able to say, they are behind us, primitive, not-quite-there-yet like animals.
+So, Lenin knew that the victory over the Czar and feudalism was only a partial victory, and that more work needed to be done to defeat the bourgeoisie entirely. He believed the key to this victory over the capitalist class would be economic development, since Russia was still a largely agrarian society with very little industrial or economic development compared to Western Europe:
-It bothered Thornwell Jacobs that there was so little preserved of ancient cultures. He wanted to make future archaeologists’ jobs easy for them. He thought of it in 1936, and figured that date to be the halfway point to the future, 6,177 years after the Egyptian calendar had been established at ‘the beginning of history’ in 4241 BC. So he set the date for the crypt to be opened at AD 8113. And he based the idea of the crypt on the 1920s openings of Egyptian pyramids and tombs. (But still he was the father?)
+<blockquote>
+Our last, but most important and most difficult task, the one we have done least about, is economic development, the laying of economic foundations for the new, socialist edifice on the site of the demolished feudal edifice and the semi-demolished capitalist edifice.
+</blockquote>
-The crypt is an old underground swimming pool built in the bedrock underneath one of the university buildings. Buried in the bedrock underneath Eurajoki in Finland is the world’s only deep geological depository for nuclear waste. It is called Onkalo, which means cave. There are tunnels excavated from the bedrock. The tunnels will be filled with nuclear waste and sealed with concrete. Then the sealed tunnels will be marked with warning signs, or maybe they will not be marked at all; Finland has not decided yet. Because surely to mark them with symbols that will die is only to draw attention to them. And if a future civilisation digs up the Crypt of Civilisation then they might expect Onkalo to contain similar archaeological delights.
+Lenin’s plan for rapidly developing the means of production was his New Economic Policy, or the NEP. The New Economic Policy was proposed to be a temporary economic system that would allow a market economy and capitalism to exist within Russia, alongside state-owned business ventures, all firmly under the control of the working-class-dominated state. As Lenin explains in ''Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution'':
-At the Musée de la Civilisation there was an exhibition on the very first French settlement in Canada, which had been excavated in 2005. The settlement burnt down but they have not figured out whether the scorch marks told of accident or arson. The exhibition does not speculate much about the arsonists. I got so caught up in Lucie’s turbulent history that I forgot that it erased thousands of years of culture, indigenous Canadians killed or cultivated or penned up by Europeans as if they were livestock or an unfortunate feature of the landscape.
+<blockquote>
+At this very moment we are, by our New Economic Policy, correcting a number of our mistakes. We are learning how to continue erecting the socialist edifice in a small-peasant country.
+</blockquote>
-==== AND LIVE ALONE IN THE BEE-LOUD GLADE ====
+He continues later in the text:
-Sat in a diner eating on my own, waiting for the coach to Ottawa. I am thinking about how the small autonomy of just being alone in public for a woman is also a right that needs to be claimed and kept on being claimed until it is a given. In order to do away with the anxiety that is shaping you from outside, like the deer in the glade that twitches its ears as it grazes, looking up and behind itself always in anticipation of predatory eyes. Women can’t eat alone unless we claim it, can’t go to a bar and sit alone, be in solitude in social places, as though always the female body is a lonely body, an invitation.
+<blockquote>
+The proletarian state must become a cautious, assiduous and shrewd “businessman,” a punctilious wholesale merchant — otherwise it will never succeed in putting this small-peasant country economically on its feet. Under existing conditions, living as we are side by side with the capitalist (for the time being capitalist) West, there is no other way of progressing to communism. A wholesale merchant seems to be an economic type as remote from communism as heaven from earth. But that is one of the contradictions which, in actual life, lead from a small-peasant economy via state capitalism to socialism. Personal incentive will step up production; we must increase production first and foremost and at all costs. Wholesale trade economically unites millions of small peasants: it gives them a personal incentive, links them up and leads them to the next step, namely, to various forms of association and alliance in the process of production itself. We have already started the necessary changes in our economic policy and already have some successes to our credit; true, they are small and partial, but nonetheless they are successes. In this new field of “tuition” we are already finishing our preparatory class. By persistent and assiduous study, by making practical experience the test of every step we take, by not fearing to alter over and over again what we have already begun, by correcting our mistakes and most carefully analyzing their significance, we shall pass to the higher classes. We shall go through the whole “course,” although the present state of world economics and world politics has made that course much longer and much more difficult than we would have liked. No matter at what cost, no matter how severe the hardships of the transition period may be — despite disaster, famine and ruin — we shall not flinch; we shall triumphantly carry our cause to its goal.
+</blockquote>
-But tonight I sit in a diner on my own and nobody has looked at me. There are not many people in here, granted, but nobody has questioned or tested my being there with their looks. The waitress brought me a complimentary basket of bread and a jug of water without me asking, and smiled, as if to say, you are welcome here, this table is your own.
+With these great works dedicated to the three component parts of Marxism [see Annotation 42, p. 38], the name Vladimir Ilyich Lenin became an important part of Marxism. It marked a comprehensive developing step from Marxism to Marxism-Leninism.
-Growing out of the girl and into the woman sitting in cafés alone, libraries alone, anywhere alone, really, without feeling the itch of the out-of-place, displaced, mistaken. With the self-assuredness of the intentionally-put-in-place. I am starting to feel that now. A body that says, before they think to ask, no thank you, I am where I intend to be.
+==== d. Marxism-Leninism and the Reality of the International Revolutionary Movement ====
-==== IS THERE WATER ON MARS CUS WE’RE THIRSTY ====
+The birth of Marxism greatly affected both the international worker movements and communist movements. The revolution in March 1871 in France could be considered as a great experiment of Marxism in the real world. For the first time in human history, a new kind of state — the dictatorship of the proletariat state (Paris Commune) was established.
-I have showered and put my least dirty clothes on, and looked at my reflection properly for the first time in weeks. I looked different, perhaps just dirty or tanned, or perhaps I have forgotten myself a little.
+-----
-Now that I am not on the ice sheet or the ocean or moving in a car it is like I am back in real life and that before was unreality. It feels uncomfortable. Like the velocity is gone and now I am at standstill. I feel restless.
+==== Annotation 38 ====
-I have been on the move now for two months so I need to get to Alaska ASAP but I am about on target. So far I have spent about £470, just under a third of my original budget. I also have an extra £200 I won in a travel-writing competition for a thing I wrote about sledging in Greenland, so I am doing all right, but it still makes sense to stop and work while I am in the more populous part of the country and work is theoretically easier to come by, before I move back up north and west. I found a job in a hostel in Ottawa city on a helpshare website so I will stay put for a few weeks and come up for some air.
+The Paris Commune was an important but short-lived revolutionary victory of the working class which saw a revolutionary socialist government controlling Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871.
-A girl called Jackie who is hitchhiking to the west coast of America, following in the steps of serial narcissist-road-trip-writer Jack Kerouac, keeps a blog I have been following closely. She has a big following, and some of them are other girls doing similar things, an online-feminist-adventure-blog-vanguard. It is exciting to feel like I am a part of something bigger. I reckon feminism would have worked a lot faster if Annie Peck could have connected with all the other unnamed women who were taking on man-roles, mountaineering and shit, and realised she was not as remarkable as her male counterparts said she was. I think she would have liked that. What Annie Peck was missing was the internet.
+During the brief existence of the Paris Commune, many important policies were set forth, including a separation of church and state, abolishment of rent, an end to child labor, and the right of employees to take over any business which had been abandoned by its owner. Unfortunately, the Paris Commune was brutally toppled by the French army, which killed between 6,000 and 7,000 revolutionaries in battle and by execution. The events of the Paris Commune heavily influenced many revolutionary thinkers and leaders, including Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and was referenced frequently in their works.
-Benny runs the hostel. He takes on backpackers because they attract other backpackers and also work for a pittance because they mostly don’t have work visas. I cover shifts on the bar, reception, kitchen, wherever there is work, for about £5 per hour. On top of this I get my own single room, food and drink. I have to work eight-hour shifts every day so that is £200 per week with a couple of days off. If I keep it up for two weeks I can make a little bit of money to tide me over.
+In August 1903, the very first Marxist proletariat party was established — the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. It was a true Marxist party that led the revolution in Russia in 1905. In October 1917, the victory of the socialist revolution of the proletariat in Russia opened a new era for human history.
-Everyone who works at Benny’s is under thirty and the hostel is full with travellers. You’d almost call it a melting pot if it weren’t so homogeneous. Maybe let us say it is a bunch of at-least-onetime-Europeans but some of them speak differently.
+In 1919, the Communist International* was held; in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic was established. It marked the alliance of the proletariat of many countries. With the power of this alliance, the fight against Fascism not only protected the achievements of the proletariat’s revolution, but also spread socialism beyond the borders of Russia. Following the lead of the Soviet Union, a community of socialist countries was built, with revolutions leading to the establishment of socialism in the following countries [and years of establishment]: Mongolia [1921], Vietnam [1945], the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [1945], Yugoslavia [1945], Albania [1946], Romania [1947], Czechoslovakia [1948], East Germany [1949], China [1949], Hungary [1949], Poland [1956], and Cuba [1959].
-An Ottawan guy, a friend of Benny’s called Tom, has stayed at the bar talking to me every night I have been here. Tom is quite attractive, I would say. He has deep-set eyes that bore in a bit in a sexy way when I am talking. So far, though, even though he has had opportunity to try it, he has not suggested coming back to my room. I am glad about this. I have a few weeks and it is more fun to be stretching it out, but also should it be an ill-suited pairing then I have less time left to dwell in the regret of it.
+-----
-I did do a few interviews with people around the hostel. I got onto this topic that everyone seems to bring up without really knowing that they are. Lots of the interviews come back to the same elusive thing and this is coming from people from all sorts of nationalities. It makes you think that the world is really a very small place after all, if everyone can be saying the same thing that is not really saying anything, without knowing it. It has something to do with what ''freedom'' feels like, and how it is always just ahead of you, a bright little light like an orb, but if you run hard enough at times and in places like this, you catch it up and you can float it in your hands.
+==== Annotation 39 ====
-Otherwise I suppose everything documentary-wise is on the back burner because I am keeping the laptop in a safe and there is hardly ever time to get it out. It is making me agitated; sometimes instead of sleeping I am thinking of all the things that are waiting to be captured. Like gathering butterflies, and butterflies are really slow and plentiful so I won’t run out or anything, but I might miss a good one while I am not looking. And maybe there is someone else out there butterfly-gathering, gathering them quicker and better.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> The First International, also known as the International Workingmen’s Association, was founded in London and lasted from 1864–1876. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were key figures in the foundation and operation of this organization, which sought better conditions and the establishment of rights for workers.
-It makes me empathise with the anxiety that must have been felt on both sides during the space race. The not knowing where the Russians were at, and oh my god, what if they get there first, what if tomorrow even they announce it, we made it here, the moon is ours. This panic drove them, it rushed them into cutting corners they should not have. Russia had many people die in the process. A fire burned up over one hundred spectators in a launch-pad accident. This was kept classified until the nineties. But what else do we not know? Maybe Yuri Gagarin was not the first cosmonaut. Two Italian brothers with a home-made radio claimed they were picking up transmissions from other, abandoned cosmonauts. They thought maybe Yuri Gagarin was just the first to return alive.
+The Second International was founded in Paris in 1889 to continue the work of the First International. It fell apart in 1916 because the members from different nations could not maintain solidarity through the outbreak of World War I.
-But besides what we don’t know, we ''do'' know perhaps the most heart-breaking best-friend-sacrifice story in history. When Yuri Gagarin inspected Soyuz 1 he found 203 structural problems and he urged his superiors to delay the mission but they would not. Scheduled to fly the mission was his best friend, co-pilot Vladimir Komarov, and Vladimir Komarov would not back out of this mission he knew to be a suicide mission because his back-up was Yuri Gagarin. On the day of the launch Yuri Gagarin tried to halt the mission, demanding that he go in Komarov’s place. Of all the design flaws Komarov overcame it was the very last hurdle that got him. After surviving the multiple perils of space he died as he hit the ground in Russia when his parachute did not unfurl.
+The Third International, also known as the Communist International (or the ComIntern for short), was founded in Moscow in 1919 (though many nations didn’t join until later in the 1920s). Its goals were to overthrow capitalism, build socialism, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was dissolved in 1943 in the midst of the German invasion of Russia in World War II.
-And then even where they pulled it off, if you look at the minute details they are embarrassingly botched. Like when cosmonaut Alexey Leonov became the first human being to space-walk, he nearly could not get back inside because his spacesuit was badly designed and it inflated. He went up in a spaceship made for only one person, with co-pilot Pavel Belyayev. When they had to calculate re-entry it was so cramped in their shuttle that they could not go through the motions in time and their orbital module did not disconnect from their landing module when it should have and they ended up landing 386 kilometres from where they intended in a forest on a mountain in the taiga, where they had to spend two days fending off bears and wolves frenzied in mating season before help arrived on skis.
+These great historical events strongly enhanced the revolutionary movement of the working class all around the whole world. The people awakened and encouraged the liberation resistance of many colonised countries. The guiding role of Marxism-Leninism brought many great results for a world of peace, independence, democracy, and social progress.
-America had the Apollo 1 fire. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin reckoned they had a fifty-fifty chance of coming back alive and President Richard Nixon had two scenario speeches prepared for him. The worst-case scenario speech said very noble and chauvinistic things like THEY BIND MORE TIGHTLY THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN and THEY WILL BE MOURNED BY A MOTHER EARTH THAT DARED SEND TWO OF HER SONS INTO THE UNKNOWN and EVERY HUMAN BEING WHO LOOKS UP AT THE MOON IN THE NIGHTS TO COME WILL KNOW THAT THERE IS SOME CORNER OF ANOTHER WORLD THAT IS FOREVER MANKIIIIIIND.
+However, because of many internal and external factors, in the late 1980s, the socialist alliance faced a crisis and fell into a recession period. Even though the socialist system fell into crisis and was weakened, the socialist ideology still survived internationally. The determination of successfully building socialism was still very strong in many countries and the desire to follow the socialist path still spread widely in South America.
-So really they did not have much of a clue and they were just going for it and hoping for the best. How the hell did they even pull off the moon landings? I mean, imagine having almost no deep space technology and then setting the task, guys, you have eight years to put an actual human being on the actual moon, okay, great, thanks, Mr President Kennedy, sir, we’ll get on it. How did they even test the rockets before using them? I suppose they just pointed them at the sky and crossed their fingers. And they had no clue what would happen to people if and when they got up there. Maybe they would spontaneously combust. Maybe their organs would be sucked out. Maybe they would bring flesh-eating alien microbes back to Earth with them. So maybe I should not freak out too much and it is best not to rush the project.
+Nowadays, the main feature of our modern society is fast and varied change in many social aspects caused by technology and scientific revolution. But, no matter how quickly and diversely our society changes, the nature of the capitalist production method never changes. So, in order to protect the socialist achievements earned by the flesh and blood of many previous generations; and in order to have a tremendous development step in the career of liberating human beings, it is very urgent to protect, inherit and develop Marxism-Leninism and also innovate the work of building socialism in both theory and practice.
-Considering all this I wonder a bit when Larus teasingly says he thinks they faked the moon landings. You were there, I say, you saw it happen. Yes, but maybe they just flew around the world, maybe they never made it past the Van Allen belt where the radiation gets too much, is it really more far fetched to think that it could be the whole thing was a scam directed by Kubrick so they could have one over the Russians and become Kings of the World than to think that they really risked the lives of men and the whole planet live on television, sending them up there in a little tin can propelled by explosives, all the way to the moon, which is a very, very long way? And that almost all seven of the landing missions went without a hitch of the death-causing kind? And then we never went back there? Why does the flag wave? Why no impact crater? Where are the stars? The rock with the ‘c’ on it? And besides, Watergate?
+The Communist Party of Vietnam declared: “Nowadays, capitalism still has potential for development, but in nature, it’s still an unjust, exploitative, and oppressive regime. The basic and inherent contradictions of capitalism, especially the contradictions between the increasing socialization of the production force and the capitalist private ownership regime, will never be solved and will even become increasingly serious. The feature of the current period of our modern society is: countries with different social regimes and different development levels co-exist, co-operate, struggle and compete fiercely for the interests of their own nations. The struggles for peace, independence, democracy, development, and social progress of many countries will still have to cope with hardship and challenges but we will achieve new progress. ''According to the principles of historical development, human beings will almost certainly go forward to socialism.”''<ref>''Delegate Document of the 11<sup>th</sup> National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.''</ref>
-==== WOMEN INCENSED AT TELEPHONE COMPANY HARASSMENT ====
+-----
-I took it upon myself to make the moves on Tom because sufficient anticipatory time had passed. This being week two. He said, ‘I knew you wanted me, I was just making you work to get it’ or something equally arrogant, but he was drunk and I know he was just saying it to try to be alluring.
+==== Annotation 40 ====
-Today he took me around Ottawa because we both had a spare day. I think we are not compatible but it does not matter under the circumstances. For one he is boring on his own, and also he tried to insist on buying all my drinks and then he just did not get it and we had to agree to disagree so things did not get awkward.
+Historical materialism is the application of dialectical materialist philosophy and materialist dialectical methodology to the analysis of human history, society, and development. The principles of historical materialism, as developed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, indicate that human society is moving towards socialism and will almost certainly — in time — develop into socialism, and then proceed towards a stateless, classless form of society (communism). These principles of historical materialism were initially formulated and discussed in several books by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, including:
-In physics the Zone of Middle Dimensions refers to physicist Isaac Newton’s world of falling apples, where the physical rules Newton laid down still apply to an extent and the progress made in modern physics that undermine all of Newton’s rules is kind of put to one side just to make more of an easy and livable life for everyone in ‘the zone’ of everyday life. Sometimes I think of my everyday life as a zone of middle dimensions where it is best to not always be a precise and righteous feminist even when you know you are right. Sometimes you have to do that for the sake of simplicity; suspend your indignation like, yeah, if you say so, Newton. But I did try asking Tom why he thought he should buy my drinks, which he thought about quietly for a while, then came up with, ‘It’s just what guys do.’ He said, ‘You’re an idiot anyway, if guys were always offering me free drinks I’d just take them.’
+''•'' ''The German Ideology'', by Marx and Engels
-I tried to explain to him that accepting a drink is like agreeing to buy something that does not have a price on it and if something does not have a price on it is usually very expensive; that it is like that story about making a deal with the devil when the devil says ‘I get to have whatever is in your garden’ and you think he can only mean the tyre swing but really he meant your ''garden''.
+''•'' ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', by Marx and Engels
-Tom did say something very suddenly illuminating and not in a good way. We were sat looking over the confluence of the rivers Rideau, Ottawa and another one I don’t remember the name of (that is three rivers all colliding, picture it: one large body of water rushing into another, undulating. At what point does one river become another river?)
+''•'' ''Karl Marx'', by Lenin
-‘I think Benny’s kind of pissed that we are on a date.’
+The Communist Party of Vietnam has also declared:
-I asked him why he said pissed, rather than something less angry, like sad, or disappointed, but I did not get why Benny would be that either. He asked if I thought everybody got the same special treatment, their own bedroom. And I realised for the first time that, yes, the two other backpacking girls who worked the bar had beds in a dormitory.
+“In the opinion of the Vietnam Communist Party, using Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought as the foundation for our ideology, the guideline for our actions is an important developmental step in cognition and logical thinking<ref>''Delegate document of the 9<sup>th</sup> national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.''</ref>. Achievements that the Vietnamese people have gained in the war to gain our independence, in peace, and in the renovation era, are all rooted in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. Therefore, we have to ‘creatively apply and develop Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought in the Party’s activities. We have to regularly summarise reality, complement and develop theory, and soundly solve the problems of our society.’”<ref>''Delegate document of the 10<sup>th</sup> national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.''</ref>
-It is so stupidly transparent, so unassumingly obvious and self-assured and so without deviousness, that I failed to notice. But I guess they think I have been playing their game all along.
+-----
-I didn’t react because, well, I bet Einstein, after he disproved Newton, did not just bumble through life coming to loggerheads all the time having to explain fundamental physical laws to people who were just completely ignorant, I bet most of the time he just got on with things. There is being a good feminist and then there is not having any friends. I had told myself two weeks and had made all my next plans accordingly, so I have to make it work for a few more days. But I did make a point of not inviting Tom back to my room tonight.
+==== Annotation 41 ====
-==== WOMEN STILL APPRECIATE CHIVALRY FROM MEN ACCORDING TO STUDY ====
+Ho Chi Minh Thought refers to a system of ideas developed by Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists which relate to the application of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and methodology to the specific material conditions of Vietnam during the revolutionary period.
-I packed up my stuff and quickly left this morning without anyone seeing me, even as I got my things from the locker in the common room, where Benny was passed out on the sofa asleep. The keys were still in his hand. I took them gently and opened the safe behind the reception desk to get to the moneybox, and took the wages he owed me from last week. Then I took a hundred more. And then I put the hundred back.
+There is no universal road map for applying the principles of Marxism-Leninism. How the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism should be applied will vary widely from one time and place to another. This is why Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists had to develop Ho Chi Minh Thought: so that scientific socialism could be developed within the unique context of Vietnam’s particular historical development and material conditions.
-Last night after my shift I had been in bed maybe half an hour without Tom, who I jilted at the bar, and I heard a knock on my door. The first was soft, but when I didn’t answer he knocked louder to try to wake me. I kept quiet, feeling indignant, and then thought, no, I don’t want him to think I am asleep, I want him to know that I am sending him away. So I said, ‘Go away, Tom.’ And a really slurred voice said let me in but it was not Tom’s.
+It is the duty of every revolutionary to study Marxism-Leninism as well as specific applied forms of Marxism-Leninism developed by revolutionaries for their own specific times and places, such as: Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), Mao Zedong (China), Fidel Castro and Che Guevera (Cuba), etc. However, it must be recognized that the ideas, strategies, methodologies, and philosophies developed in such particular circumstances can’t be applied in exactly the same way in other times and places, such as our own contemporary material conditions.
-Then I heard metal scratching metal where he was trying to fit the key inside the lock. I jumped out of bed to stop the door opening fully and Benny leant into the room leering. He said, ‘Hey, let me in’ and leaned heavily on the door. He is a lot bigger than me and I knew he would be able to force his way in so I stood back and let him fall on his weight and I stood straight and spoke loudly at him so everyone would hear.
+''The Renovation Era'' refers to the period of time in Vietnam from the 1980s until the early 2000s during which the Đổi Mới (renovation) policies were implemented. These policies restructured the Vietnamese economy to end the previous subsidizing model (which was defined by state ownership of the entire economy). The goals of the Renovation Era were to open Vietnam economically and politically and to normalize relations with the rest of the world. The Đổi Mới policies were generally successful and paved the way to ''the'' ''Path to Socialism Era'' which Vietnam exists in today. The goals of the Path to Socialism Era are to develop Vietnam into a modern, developed country with a strong economy and wealthy people, which will allow us to transition towards the lower stage of communism, which Lenin called “socialism.”
-‘No, you can’t come in my room, Benny, now go away. You’re drunk.’
+And, finally: “We have to be consistent with Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. We have to creatively apply and develop the ideology correspondingly with the reality in Vietnam. We have to firmly aim for national independence and socialism.”
-Next door’s dorm had opened up at this point from the banging and two of the guys came out to ask if I was okay. Benny turned around pitifully from the floor.
+== II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism ==
-‘It’s fine. She’s fine. I’m leaving. I was just… checking on her.’ He dragged himself from the floor and wiped his arm slowly over his mouth to try to be inconspicuous, calling me an ungrateful bitch as he left the room. I mouthed thank you to the others, who nodded and one gave a fingers to eyes signal, to imply he would keep an eye on me. After that I did not sleep too well even with the chair wedged firmly under the door handle.
+=== 1. Objects and Purposes of Study ===
-The guys would not say anything today because Benny shelters and feeds them, and why would they jeopardise their comfortable situation? I wonder what else he gets away with; that makes me angry.
+The objects of study of this book, ''The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism,'' are the fundamental viewpoints of Marxism-Leninism in its three component parts.
-One thing that Kerouac Jackie does on her blog that is really interesting, she is deadpan about all the people she has slept with along the way. The thing that makes it interesting is that her blog is pretty big, big enough to have attracted trolls. These trolls sit and write petty things, mostly calling Jackie a slut. I don’t know if the trolls have read Kerouac or not, so I don’t know if they condone male sexuality and lusting over thirteen-year-old girls and wifebeating. I bet Benny likes Kerouac.
+-----
-Anyway, I am away and on a coach to Sault Ste. Marie on some of the money I earned because I can afford it and because I wasn’t really feeling like jumping in a vehicle with a stranger right away. It is a ten-hour coach then I have a room booked the other end. I have a lucky last-minute carpool tomorrow all the way to Thunder Bay and from there I will figure out how to get to Winnipeg.
+==== Annotation 42 ====
-Larus has sent me not one but two follow-up emails to an email that I have not had a chance to see let alone reply to. The first one being a catch-up and a how’s things, here, look at some stuff I found for you to read. The second being a follow-on to the first with an enquiry into why I did not reply and some inane stuff about what he has been keeping himself busy with. The third is a little parental, chiding me for ‘going off the radar’. I think he is enjoying living life through me or something, or it is some weird kind of deflected paternalism. Urla would have thought of some great way to enact revenge on Benny. I wish she had been there. I wrote her an email to enlist her in effecting Benny’s karmic retribution, but she hasn’t replied to me in a while now.
+Remember that a viewpoint is the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking and the perspective from which problems are considered. Also remember that Marxism-Leninism has three component parts:
-==== OF THE SHINING BIG-SEA WATER ====
+'''1. The Philosophy of Marxism:'''
-Trees clear for a diner and some cabins, then the trees clear altogether and we hit the lakeside. And suddenly a whole new perspective, a landscape with depth and a horizon instead of a belt of evergreens. It is so blue and glittering and vast that for a second I am thrown. How did we end up by the sea? But the water is still and we are so near that I can make out the pebbles in the shallows, like the lake is clear plastic in a miniature replica, and for a second the entire world feels like we have been shrunk to thumb size with this model landscape that is simultaneously tiny and proportionally huge to our new tiny selves. Low concrete bollards separate the highway from the water. My mind is surprised into silence. Lake Superior.
+Including Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism
-From back behind our green conveyor we arrive at a break in the trees again and the coach slows to elongate our passing it. The driver says ‘over there is America’ and there it is, the stretch of the lake unbroken, America so far away and blue with distance, like Calais from Dover on a good day. I know from the map that if we were looking directly south we would be looking at Hiawatha National Park.
+'''2. The Political Economy of Marxism:'''
-We pass some holiday condos. The lake now must feel very different from when Henry Longfellow, the old poet, wrote ''The Song of Hiawatha''. You can write about a lake and a landscape but then when something is worth writing about this usually leads on to something beyond admiration, reduces it to something people want to come and see for themselves. Then everyone wants to get touchy-feely and build their condos right there so that they can own their lake-view property. Now Longfellow could do away with his birch canoe with paddles and circumnavigate the entire lake in his pick-up in just a few hours. It was because fancy new cabins kept creeping into his lovely wilderness that Ted Kaczynski retreated further and started to send the letter bombs.
+A system of knowledge and laws that define the production process and commodity exchange in human society.
-Looking at the glassy surface of the lake I remembered that the micro-beads from your facewash are not biodegradable and they leave the sewage system to collect in constellations on the surface of all of the Great Lakes. I squinted and imagined I could see them glinting.
+'''3. Scientific Socialism'''
-This morning, back to hitchhiking. I settled for a short ride out of Thunder Bay to where the road forks off at Kakabeka Falls to ease myself in with a quiet businessman I could not have spoken more than ten words to. I set up after the turn-off where the highway stretches on to Dryden in an area with thin traffic, in view of a lonely reservoir, and where the aspens bled the landscape yellow and lethargic. Small insects hummed around me as I slumped on my bag and half dozed, sitting up to the sound of any approaching traffic. I was not making good time but the sky was milky with cloud and the air thick with warmth and pollen. If I wanted to do it for free or cheaply, I was going to have to travel the 450 miles to Winnipeg at whatever pace the day or days decreed, and the character of this day was languid. I was thinking this and just laughed out loud.
+The system of thought pertaining to the establishment of the communist social economy form.
-It is interesting to watch the faces of people as they pass me in cars. If I am stood with my thumb out then nobody drives by without noticing. The majority avert their eyes, as though to look at me would pull them in out of guilt, I guess because I must look the furthest from threatening, a cute siren on a rock. Those that realise they are going the wrong way to take me seem to take absolution from theatrically signalling they are going the wrong way, with big sorry mouths and shrugging shoulders. Some stare and pass, some shake their heads disapprovingly and some, inexplicably, just honk.
+These objects of study stand as the viewpoints — the starting points of analysis — of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and the three component parts of which it’s composed.
-At around eleven a car pulled over and offered me a ride to Dryden, an old man who seemed concerned for my welfare. I watched time peel away through the window. There was a speck of bird poo on the window and by moving my head up and down I could jump it over the conveyor belt of variable treetops like in a 2D video game. It felt good to watch the world flicker by as though we were still and it was moving around us, and the illusion would be crystallised when a train would appear on the railway where the road and the rail were adjacent and the train would converge with us in speed, making it and us appear static.
+-----
-My driver dropped me at a service station. Touchingly, he was projecting vulnerability onto me; the kindly chauvinism of an old man towards a young woman. Irritating, yes, but also he is just old and sweet and well-meaning and of-his-time. He tried to give me money, which I refused, laughing. But the look on his face as he drove away really did make me feel alone and vulnerable for a moment, as though I had transformed into his idea of me. I felt pangs of guilt for this stranger who I would never see again and who would probably worry about me from time to time, wonder if I found my way. God, not even orphans are free of the guilt of people, are they?
+In the scope of '''Marxist-Leninist Philosophy''' [the first component part of Marxism-Leninism], these objects of study are:
-I found a cardboard box in a bin behind the building and broke it down to make a sign, then positioned myself conspicuously with it on an embankment at the exit, where anyone about to leave could pull over for me or had to sail by my imploring cherubic face. I thought how Urla would probably say I should use my feminine powers to my advantage, so I unzipped my hoody to show a little cleavage. Then I thought, that’s not very feminist, is it? Then I decided that either way it made me feel weird, and I zipped myself back up.
+* Dialectical Materialism — the fundamental and most universal worldview and methodologies which form the theoretical core of a scientific worldview*. [See Part 1, p. 44]
+* Materialist Dialectics — the science of development, of common relationships, and of the most common rules of motion and development of nature, society and human thought. [See Chapter 2, p. 98]
+* Historical Materialism — the application and development of Materialism and Dialectics in studying social aspects. [Historical materialism is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.]
-Traffic coming through is so thin that I only see someone pass every fifteen minutes or so. There are some lorries parked and drivers mill to and from them. The sparrows have got used to me by now and are pecking around at the crumbs I am throwing to them. I managed to get one so close that I touched it gently with my foot before it flew away to a small sapling, where it sat scolding me.
+-----
-==== THE EARTH IS AN INDIAN THING ====
+==== Annotation 43 ====
-The lorry cab had two seats in the front and a raised compartment behind with a mattress for sleeping. It was very clean and neat. There were no pornographic photos pinned to the dashboard. There was a little meter up where the rear-view mirror goes in cars and he typed something into it before we started to pull out of the service station. He was very particular that I sit up front next to him, which did not seem too out of the ordinary, just in fitting with his extreme orderliness. The bed compartment behind, where he showed me to put my bag, was out his range of vision, so I put the camera hidden just behind, where he could not see it on, and it could witness everything.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Remember that ''Scientific'' in Marxism-Leninism refers to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding [see Annotation 1, p. 1]. Note, also, that ''Worldview'' refers to the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in the world. This is discussed in more detail on page 44.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+Thus, a ''scientific worldview'' is a worldview that is expressed by a systematic pursuit of knowledge of definitions and categories that generally and correctly reflect the relationships of things, phenomena, and processes in the objective material world, including relationships between humans, as well as relationships between humans and the world.
-[[Image:f0100-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-He offered me little cakes from out of a cool box under his seat in a way that made me nervous about eating them. I declined and patted my stomach to show I was full. I figured I had better stay alert just to be safe rather than sorry. I sat saying things about the landscape at awkward interludes and he nodded and said something or other in another language and stared at my legs a lot.
+In the scope of '''Marxist-Leninist Political Economics''' [the second component part of Marxism-Leninism], the objects of study are:
-The journey went on so slowly and so uneventfully at lorry speed that now and then I would feel the exhilaration again at my distance to Alaska getting smaller and smaller while I sat still, and that pushed my suspicion and paranoia out of my mind for a while. Even the Stanley knife on the dashboard had become benign by virtue of its sustained uneventful just being there. There was the meter which said how far there was to go and he had checkpoints and a schedule so he could not just take me out into the middle of nowhere and do something bad. A lorry was the most sensible place to be, if I thought about it.
+* The theory of value and the theory of surplus value.
+* Economic theory about monopolist capitalism and state monopolist capitalism.
+* General economic rules about capitalist production methods, from the stage of formation, to the stage of development, to the stage of perishing, which will be followed by the birth of a new production method: the communist production method.
-We pulled in at another service stop at which he managed to communicate to me without English that he was going to go have a cigarette. We were in the lorry-designated area of the services, where regular vehicle paraphernalia like petrol pumps and parking spaces are upped to lorry scale, and men stand around leaning against their wheels smoking and talking. I thought of Plath mingling with truckers. The driver got out and went over to the nearest group for a few minutes; they were talking and looking over to me and smoking their fags and they all laughed together, then he came back to the lorry. He said something to me, half turned round in the driver’s seat and laughed a little spittle out of his mouth, and then he pinched my leg. Between the thumb and forefinger, the part of my leg that indents where the muscle meets the fatter bit of thigh.
+-----
-The group of men outside were staring in. They stared as we pulled away. As we passed them he held up his hand in salute to them. We rolled back onto the road. I was too caught up unravelling the situation to realise until we were moving that I probably should have got out of the lorry at that point.
+==== Annotation 44 ====
-Later we passed a road sign that showed a turning up ahead for the road to Winnipeg – +207 km – but we passed the slip road and he did not even glance at it.
+Marxist-Leninist political economics is the topic of Part 3 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.
-‘That was our turning.’
+In the scope of '''Scientific Socialism''' [the third component part of Marxism-Leninism], the objects of study are:
-He looked at me.
+* The historical mission of the working class and the progression of a socialist revolution.
+* Matters related to the future formation and development periods of the communist socio-economic form.
+* Guidelines for the working class in implementing our historical mission.
-‘That was the road to Winnipeg.’
+''The purposes'' of studying ''The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism'' are:'''' to master Marxist-Leninist viewpoints of science, revolution, and humanism*; to thoroughly understand the most important theoretical foundation of Ho Chi Minh Thought, the revolutionary path, and the ideological foundation of the Vietnam Communist Party. Based on that basis, we can build a scientific worldview and methodology and a revolutionary worldview; build our trust in our revolutionary ideals; creatively apply them in our cognitive and practical activities and in practicing and cultivating morality to meet the requirements of Vietnamese people in the cause of building a socialist Vietnam.
-‘What?’
+-----
-‘Why didn’t you turn?’
+==== Annotation 45 ====
-‘Sorry, no understand.’
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> The humanism of Marxism-Leninism differs greatly from the humanism of Feuerbach discussed in Annotation 12, p. 13. Marxist-Leninist humanism concerns itself with the liberation of all humans. As Marx and Engels wrote in ''The Communist Manifesto:'' “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
-I stabbed my finger to the right.
+=== 2. Some Basic Requirements of the Studying Method ===
-‘That was the road for Winnipeg.’
+There are some basic requirements for studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism:
-He smiled and shrugged.
+First, Marxist-Leninist theses were conceptualized under many different circumstances in order to solve different problems, so the expressions of thought of Marxist-Leninists can vary. Therefore, students studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism must correctly understand its spirit and essence and avoid theoretical purism and dogmatism.
-‘Winnipeg,’ I said slowly, stabbing my finger again.
+-----
-‘Ah! Winnipeg,’ he said, motioning forward.
+==== Annotation 46 ====
-I did not know what to do. I must have looked forlorn and he smiled, said ‘Winnipeg’ cheerfully and motioned forward again. I did not believe him but what could I do, jump out of a moving vehicle? Was I certain enough to tell him to stop and leave me at the side of the road? It was going to start to get dark soon and it might be better to presume we would end up in a floodlit lorry park than to risk the side of the road at night. He had to stop somewhere legit, another service station with other lorries and people. You can’t just go off-road and incognito with a lorry.
+Marxism-Leninism should be understood as an applied science, and application of this science will vary based on material conditions. As Engels wrote in a personal letter in 1887, remarking on the socialist movement in the USA: “Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learned by heart and to be repeated mechanically. The less it is drilled into the Americans from outside and the more they test it with their own experience... the deeper will it pass into their flesh and blood.”
-‘How far?’
+As an example, Lenin tailored his actions and ideas specifically to suit the material conditions of Russia under the Czar and in the early revolutionary period. Russia’s material conditions were somewhat unique during the time of Lenin’s revolutionary activity, since Russia was an agrarian monarchy with a large peasant population and a relatively undeveloped industrial sector. As such, Lenin had to develop strategies, tactics, and ideas which suited those specific material conditions, such as determining that the industrial working class and agricultural peasants should work together. As Lenin explained in ''The Proletariat and the Peasantry'':
-I tried to act out distance with my hands.
+<blockquote>
+Thus the red banner of the class-conscious workers means, first, that we support with all our might, the peasants’ struggle for full freedom and all the land; secondly, it means that we do not stop at this, but go on further. We are waging, besides the struggle for freedom and land, a fight for socialism.
+</blockquote>
-‘How long until Winnipeg?’
+Obviously, this statement would not be specifically applicable to a society with highly developed industry and virtually no rural peasants (such as, for instance, the modern-day USA), just as Lenin’s remarks about the Czar would not be specifically applicable to any society that does not have an institution of monarchy.
-‘Ah! Winnipeg soon soon. Yes, soon,’ he said.
+As another example, take the works of Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh Thought is defined by the Communist Party of Vietnam as “a complete system of thought about the fundamental issues of the Vietnam revolution.” In other words, Ho Chi Minh Thought is a specific application of the principles of Marxism-Leninism to the material conditions of Vietnam.
-‘Soon?’
+One unique aspect of Vietnam’s revolution which Ho Chi Minh focused on was colonization. As a colonized country, Ho Chi Minh realized that Vietnam had unique challenges and circumstances that would need to be properly addressed through revolutionary struggle. Another unique aspect of Vietnam’s material conditions was the fact that the colonial administration of Vietnam changed hands throughout the revolution: from France, to Japan, back to France, then to the USA. Ho Chi Minh was able to dynamically and creatively apply Marxism-Leninism to these shifting material conditions. For instance, in ''Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party,'' written in 1930, Ho Chi Minh explains some of the unique problems faced by the colonized people of Indochina (modern day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and proposes solutions specific to these unique material conditions:
-‘Soon.’
+<blockquote>
+On the one hand, they (the French) use the feudalists and comprador bourgeoisie (of Vietnam) to oppress and exploit our people. On the other, they terrorize, arrest, jail, deport, and kill a great number of Vietnamese revolutionaries. If the French imperialists think that they can suppress the Vietnamese revolution by means of terror, they are grossly mistaken. For one thing, the Vietnamese revolution is not isolated but enjoys the assistance of the world proletariat in general and that of the French working class in particular. Secondly, it is precisely at the very time when the French imperialists are frenziedly carrying out terrorist acts that the Vietnamese Communists, formerly working separately, have united into a single party, the Indochinese Communist Party, to lead the revolutionary struggle of our entire people.
+</blockquote>
-We drove on; the yolk of the sun spilt on the horizon and the sky got inky. He turned his headlights on and with the dark I began to feel panic really set in. I could see a reservation coming up to our left. An indigenous woman stood at the side of the road in a very short skirt. He pointed at her and laughed like a hyena. The woman winced when the headlights and the sound of his horn hit her face.
+During this period, the nations of Indochina were predominantly agricultural, prompting Ho Chi Minh to suggest in the same text that it would be necessary “to establish a worker-peasant-soldier government” and “to confiscate all the plantations and property belonging to the imperialists and the Vietnamese reactionary bourgeoisie and distribute them to the poor peasants.” Obviously all of these considerations are specific to the material conditions of Indochina under French colonial rule in 1930.
-A little later, as the headlights breached the trees, you could see the land where the forest had been clear-cut. It stuck in your throat how it was so dense and dark and enclosing then, suddenly, barren, the sky bursting through, the weak light of it pooling out over the feebler trees they left behind, scattered like redundant matchsticks. It must have stretched for miles, naked and vulnerable like a head shaved for neurosurgery. In the far distance a town sat lit up like a cluster of glow-worms. The tick-tick of his indicator started up and we steered onto a gravel path, up towards a closed diner cabin and a portaloo where one other lorry was parked with its lights out. No floodlights.
+By 1939, the situation was changing rapidly. Ho Chi Minh was operating from China, which was being invaded by fascist Japan. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the Japanese imperial army would come to threaten Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. As such, Ho Chi Minh wrote a letter to the Indochinese Communist Party outlining recommendations, strategies, and goals pertaining to the precipitating material conditions. At that time, France had not yet been invaded by Germany, but Ho Chi Minh was very aware of the looming threat of fascism both in Europe and in Asia. He realized that rising up in revolutionary civil war against the French colonial administration would give fascist Japan the opportunity to quickly conquer all of Indochina, which is why he made the following recommendations in a letter to the Communist Party of Indochina in 1939:
-We ground to a halt and he tapped something into the meter, which played a triumphant little jingle. He said something and patted then shook my knee, grinning, and there was the spittle again. I pulled away and asked where we were. And he said something else with his hand back on my knee. I said Winnipeg really resolutely this time. He made the universal sign for sleeping and nodded up to the bed.
+<blockquote>
+Our party should not strive for demands which are too high, such as total independence, or establishing a house of representatives. If we do that, we will fall into the trap of fascist Japan. For now, we should only ask for democracy, freedom to organize, freedom to hold meetings, freedom of speech, and for the release of political prisoners. We should also fight for our party to be organized and to operate legally.
+</blockquote>
-‘Winnipeg tomorrow.’
+Once France fell to Germany in 1940, Indochina was immediately handed over to Japanese colonial rule. The Japanese army was brutal in its occupation of Vietnam, and the French colonial administrators surrendered entirely to the Japanese empire and helped the Japanese to administer all of Indochina. Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam in January of 1941 and participated directly with the resistance struggle against Japan until 1945, when the situation once again changed dramatically due to the Japanese military’s surrender to allied forces and withdrawal from Vietnam. He immediately took advantage of this situation and held a successful revolution against both the Japanese and French administrators. In the Declaration of Independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh wrote:
-‘No. I’m not sleeping here. I need to get to Winnipeg now.’
+<blockquote>
+After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French. The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the homeland.
+</blockquote>
-‘Winnipeg tomorrow.’
+As France began to make their intentions clear that they would be resuming their colonialist claim to Indochina, Ho Chi Minh began preparing the country for a new chapter in revolutionary struggle. In his 1946 letter to the people of Vietnam, entitled ''A Nationwide Call for Resistance'', Ho Chi Minh wrote:
-‘No, I—’ I started to say through gritted teeth. He said something very firmly, then grabbed my thigh and ran his hand up to my groin.
+<blockquote>
+We call everyone, man and woman, old and young, from every ethnic minority, from every religion, to stand up and fight to save our country. If you have guns, use guns. If you have swords, use swords. If you have nothing, use sticks. Everyone must stand up and fight.
+</blockquote>
-I pushed then kicked his arm away from me. We faced each other for a few seconds, each waiting to see what the other would do next. I had to move closer to him to move around the seat so I snaked my body without breaking eye contact so that I could see where his hands were. I grabbed my rucksack and camera strap with one hand, pulled myself back over with the other and, panicky, wrestled with the stiff door handle.
+As these historical developments illustrate, Ho Chi Minh was able to creatively and dynamically apply the principles of Marxism-Leninism to suit the shifting material conditions of Vietnam, just as Lenin had to creatively and dynamically apply these principles to the emerging situation in Russia in the early 20<sup>th</sup> century. So is the task of every student of Marxism-Leninism: to learn to apply these principles creatively and dynamically to the material conditions at hand.
-Meanwhile he sat back into his seat, saying things between his jerky hyena cackles. As I prised the door open and threw my bag out he lurched for me. I threw myself down from the tall cab on top of my bag as I felt his hand tighten on my ankle, lose grip, and clutch at my shoe. My foot slipped from it as I fell.
+-----
-I scrambled up, swung my bag on my shoulder and put the camera strap around my neck. Then at a safe distance, I glared back at him. He held my shoe in his hand, laughing, and I was filled with so much furious hatred for him I wanted to take a stone and smash his greasy head with it. I wanted to wrestle my shoe back out of his hands and slap it on his face. I thought maybe I would, maybe the danger had passed now, maybe the danger was only ever his violating hands, which were no longer on me. But then he lurched towards me again, making a mocking sort of animal grunt; I started to run.
+Second, the birth and development of Marixst-Leninist theses is a process. In that process, all Marixst-Leninist theses have strong relationships with each other. They complement and support each other. Thus, students studying each Marxist-Leninist thesis need to put it in proper relation and context with other theses found within each different component part of Marxism-Leninism in order to understand the unity in diversity [see: Annotation 107, p. 110], the consistency of every thesis in particular, and the whole of Marxism-Leninism in general.
-I ran flat out back down the gravel path towards the dark highway. On the road I headed the way we had come, back in the direction of the reservation, I suppose because taking the road towards the town would have meant running parallel to the park, where he could have scrambled down the slope and intercepted me. The ground where the trees were cut was littered with stumps and amputations. I ran hard, away from the lorry park and the distant lights of the town and towards the blotted darkness of the forest.
+Third, an important goal of studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism is to understand clearly the most important theoretical basis of Ho Chi Minh Thought, of the Vietnam Communist Party and its revolutionary path. Therefore, we must attach Marxist-Leninist theses to Vietnam’s revolutionary practice and the world’s practice in order to see the creative application of Marxism-Leninism that President Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnam Communist Party implemented in each period of history.
-I was running running running and everything hurt but blind panic kept me moving forward and clouded the jolts in my left heel, the one that had no shoe. I had been running for about ten minutes when the pain of it got too much and I limped to a halt, bent with my hands on my knees, looking behind.
+Fourth, we must study the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism to meet the requirements for a new Vietnamese people in a new era. So, the process of studying is also the process of self-educating and practicing to improve ourselves step-by-step in both individual and social life.
-===== Can he see me? =====
+Fifth, Marxism-Leninism is not a closed and immutable theoretical system. On the contrary, it is a theoretical system that continuously develops based on the development of reality. Therefore, the process of studying Marxism-Leninism is also a process of reflection: summarizing and reviewing your own practical experiences and sharing what you’ve learned from these experiences in order to contribute to the scientific and humanist development of Marxism-Leninism. In addition, when studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, we need to consider these principles in the proper context of the history of the ideological development of humanity. Such context is important because Marxism-Leninism is quintessentially<ref>See Annotation 6, p. 8.</ref> the product of that history.
-===== No, can’t see the park now. =====
+These requirements have strong relationships with each other. They imbue the studying process with the quintessence of Marxism-Leninism. And more importantly, they help students apply that quintessence into cognitive and practical activities.
-===== But he would have seen which way, following the road. =====
+==== Part I: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism — Leninism ====
-I started to walk forward, trying to keep my heel off the ground and looking behind me. I stopped, remembering my boots tied to my bag. Brushing the bottom of my foot, I squinted at my hands. It was too dark to see much properly, but I felt stickiness between my fingers. My heel was bleeding.
+''Worldview'' refers to the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in that world. Our worldview directs and orientates our life, including our cognitive and practical activities, as well as our self-awareness. Our worldview defines our ideals, our value system, and our lifestyle. So, a proper and scientific worldview serves as a foundation to establish a constructive approach to life. One of the basic criteria to evaluate the growth and maturity of an individual or a whole society is the degree to which worldview has been developed.
-I did not want to stop so I shoved the boots on and kept pressure off the heel, abandoning the other shoe in the scree by the road. Eventually I decided that probably he had not followed but I could not turn back, had to carry on ahead, just keep moving.
+''Methodology'' is a system of reasoning: the ideas and rules that guide humans to research, build, select, and apply the most suitable methods in both perception and practice. Methodologies can range from very specific to broadly general, with ''philosophical methodology'' being the most general scope of methodology.
-I felt really suddenly like I wanted to scream and hit myself. How could I have been so stupid? And look at me now, stupid and limping and alone in the dark on a road god knows where at night being what I set out not to be reduced to, fulfilling for everyone who worried and foresaw it, and what now? This is not my world to walk in. I wanted without thinking my phone from my bag. I needed a voice to be with me. I rummaged inside and brought out the torch.
+-----
-===== Don’t put the torch on! =====
+-----
-Fuck! I scrabbled to turn it off. I hugged the rucksack to me and started to shake and whimper pathetically. Who would I call exactly? What could they do from the other side of the world? I told myself out loud ''this is your mess'', sniffled into my sleeve and started walking quickly onward. The weak moonlight was strobing through the moving canopy, lighting things up in jolts like club lighting.
+==== Annotation 47 ====
-===== Into the forest? =====
+Tran Thien Tu, the vice-dean of the Department of Marxist-Leninist Theoretical Studies at the Le Duan Political Science University in Quang Tri, Vietnam, defines three degrees of scopes of Methodology. They are, from most specific to most general:
-===== I don’t want to get lost in the forest. =====
+'''1. Field Methodology'''
-===== But it’s so risky to keep to the road. =====
+The most specific scope of methodology; a field methodology will apply only to a single specific scientific field.
-I decided to carry on up the road to the reservation. Sit behind a building where I was not in the open. Find a shed or something. Until the morning. I broke into a little trot again. The indifferent trees spun, they were so high above me; the tough long grass lashed against my legs from the roadside. The road itself was lit up like a silver beacon by the moon, leading up and on and on. The trees were hush-hushing, but the sound of panic beat on my eardrums. I had to keep stopping to get my breath and readjust my rucksack. Then at some point I remembered the camera.
+'''2. General Methodology'''
-===== I need something to complete the sequence. =====
+A more general scope of methodology; a general methodology will be shared by various scientific fields.
-===== You and that fucking documentary! =====
+'''3. Philosophical Methodology'''
-I took a bit of footage of the road shaking with my running. Then I noticed the figure on the road up ahead. I stopped running but carried on approaching at limping pace because there was nowhere else to go, and besides, they had already seen me. They raised their hand. They were just ahead of the reservation.
+The most general scope of methodology, encompassing the whole of the material world and human thought.
-I put my hand in the air. The figure put theirs down. As I got nearer I could tell it was a woman, which made me feel easier. Nearer still, the woman from the headlights. Then I was stood in front of her, gasping.
+-----
-‘Are you all right?’ she asked in a soft voice. I could not answer from panting. ‘I saw you running.’
+''Worldview'' and ''philosophical methodology'' are the fundamental knowledge-systems* of Marxism-Leninism.
-‘I ran from. The lorry park,’ I managed.
+==== Annotation 48 ====
-‘Why were you running?’
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> In the original Vietnamese, the word ''lý'' ''luận'' is used, which we roughly translate to the phrase “knowledge-system” throughout this book. Literally, ''lý luận'' is a combination of the words ''lý'' ''lẽ,'' which means “argument,” and ''bàn'' ''luận,'' which means “to infer.”
-‘There was a man. In the lorry—’
+The full meaning of ''lý'' ''luận'' is: a system of ideas that reflect reality expressed in a system of knowledge that allows for a complete view of the fundamental laws and relationships of objective reality.
-But then I do not know because the sky dimmed to black and some sirens started and my knees buckled under a huge pressure that came both from above my head and out of my body at once, and I fell to the floor. The woman went to catch me, I think, because when I came to I was half on the ground and half in her arms, but my leg was twisted under me and she had got on her knees to scoop me into a sitting position. My knees were gashed. It struck me how lost and young I must have seemed right then to this stranger. I feel embarrassed now at this image of me like a broken doll but I did not feel embarrassed right then, because I felt too much relief that the sick pressure was gone from my stomach, that the loss of consciousness had come on me like an anaesthetising sleep that takes pain away and the sweat all over my body was now a cooling balm to the heat. It is a familiar feeling, and by now I am used to the loss of control, and feel less disempowered just letting it happen rather than struggling against it. It makes me feel Victorian and weak.
+<br />
-‘Oh no. All right. All right. Will you be okay here for five minutes? I can go and get my truck. You’re exhausted. I’ll go and get my truck. I’m Rochelle. I’ll be right back.’ Then she got up and ran up the path into the reservation. As she left, I wanted so badly for her not to go and leave me to be enveloped by the darkness. I sat and tore at blades of dry grass and shook, from adrenaline or shock, or something.
+==== The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism ====
-After a few minutes Rochelle came back with her truck and drove me to her caravan, where she picked out the gravel from my foot and put a brown ointment from a jam jar on it then bandaged it up with plasters. She gave me this thing called ‘flybread’ to eat and a savoury tea, telling me the history of the bread. It was made from flour and lard, invented in 1860-something by the Navajo people, who were given the ingredients by the US when they were forced into a 300-mile relocation from Arizona to New Mexico. She told me her mother was Navajo and had died of diabetes from eating too much flybread. She ate it too without a tinge of irony and so I thanked her for it.
+Marxist-Leninist worldview and philosophical methodology emerge from the quintessence [see Annotation 6, p. 8] of dialectical materialism, which itself developed from other forms of dialectics, which in turn developed throughout the history of the ideological development of humanity.
-Rochelle gave me blankets and set up her electric heater next to me on her sofa. I woke up when she came into the room with the sun in the morning wearing a full velour tracksuit and wrapping herself in a thick leather coat from the back of the door. She lit a cigarette and started making a pot of coffee without saying anything. I wondered if she had forgotten I was there, if it was even possible to miss me in this tiny space. I had the feeling I should not talk. I shifted my position so I could look out of the window.
+Materialism is foundational to Marxism-Leninism in two important ways:
-Outside I could see the neighbouring trailer, its smashed window blocked up with a bin-liner that tremored in the wind. Next to the trailer was the exoskeleton of a car, its tyres deflated and so sunk into the ground that it looked as though it was melting. It was brown with rust, rainbowed with spray-paint, with no glass in the windows and bullet holes in its side, dark and ringed at the edges like pockmarks of disease.
+''Dialectical Materialism'' is the ideological core of a scientific worldview.
-Rochelle placed the coffee on the coffee table in front of me and sat opposite on a stool that she moved directly into the beam of light from the window, even though it made her squint, and basked like a lizard does. Dust drifted past her face and caught the light like glitter. Her cigarette smoke was dense in the light, an eel curling through the dust motes. She poured the coffee carefully with the cigarette tucked in the corner of her mouth, talking around it.
+''Historical Materialism'' is a system of dialectical materialist opinions about the origin of, motivation of, and the most common rules that dominate the movement and development of human society.
-She said a lot of stuff too that I did not process all of, being hazy and still reeling and replaying things as she talked. ‘I suppose I should say you shouldn’t have put yourself in danger like that but I guess you weren’t to know any better. It happens. Sometimes girls go missing, but not usually white girls.’ I remember that bit because her tone changed. ‘It can happen out here because it’s kind of a forgotten backwater. But anyway it didn’t happen. Nothing happened. You were lucky. Or unlucky or neither, a close call. That’s all.’ Then she looked directly at me and I had to look away.
+Dialectics are also foundational to Marxism-Leninism, specifically in the form of ''Materialist Dialectics,'' which Lenin defined as “the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge.”<ref>''The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.</ref> Lenin also defined Materialist Dialectics as “what is now called theory of knowledge or epistemology.”<ref>''Karl Marx'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref> [Note: Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge; for more information see ''Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism'', p. 204.]
-She was surprisingly forthcoming but in a very detached way, as though thinking aloud to herself. Nothing she said really invited participation. She looked out of the window as she spoke, at two small children who had started poking sticks into the bullet holes. Making a porcupine, she said.
+-----
-Rochelle has lived on the reservation all her life, apart from four years when she lived on the road with her ex-boyfriend. They met in one of the bars, in the town I saw lit up in the distance the night before. Her ex-boyfriend was a hippy and had always wanted an Indian girlfriend, called her his Pocahontas. They broke up because he wanted to move onto the reservation with her, but it made her more and more uneasy the way he would braid his hair and wear a headband and keep pestering her to arrange a naming ceremony for him, how his favourite film was ''Dances with Wolves''.
+==== Annotation 49 ====
-The transcendental open-mindedness of the liberal white man! So free of cultural constraints, free-spirited and open to the other! Many levels progressed from the Enlightenment specimen collectors! What almond skin, what glossy hair, I can’t kill and stuff it, no no, how barbaric. I will parade it around living and glorious! We only view our animals on safari now!
+For beginning students of Marxism-Leninism, distinguishing between ''Dialectical Materialism'' and ''Materialist Dialectics'' may at first be confusing. Here is an explanation of each concept and how they relate to one another:
-She started to feel as though he wanted her as a prized possession, or maybe even just a ticket to somewhere else. As though casting off his own civilisation and shrugging on something antithetical, her culture, the uncivilised one.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-5.png|''Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics.'']]
-It seemed to bug her to talk to me, like it made her squirm, but a silence would be too heavy with my presence inside her small home. We got on to the topic of the documentary and she asked about it. I wasn’t sure if I should tell her explicitly, right after what just happened. But I decided, she will get it, I mean, the white man is her historical enemy. She laughed, not in a condescending way, really just a non-committal laugh that could have meant anything. She said, ‘The freedom to roam free like a white man, hey?’
+''Dialectical Materialism'' is a scientific understanding of matter, consciousness and the relationship between the two. Dialectical Materialism is used to understand the world by studying such relationships.
-Later on she said she wanted to show me something and then she would take me to town. When we left the reservation people were sat and stood about in groups, chatting and smoking. A couple of dark and long-haired guys loped coolly on actual frisky-spirited horses. They all stared at me. I got right into the truck under Rochelle’s instruction. Someone called out ‘Hey, Rochelle’, and she just called back hey, climbing in the driver’s side and starting the engine before she had even shut the door. A twenty-something boy scooted up to her window and tapped on it. She let out a sigh then rolled down the window a couple of inches.
+''Materialist Dialectics'' is a science studying the general laws of the movement, change, and development of nature, society and human thought.
-‘Hey, Walt.’
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-6.png|''Relationship between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics.'']]
-‘Hey, Rochelle. Hey,’ he said to me, craning around her door to where I sat in the back and grinning. I said hello back and I felt the most British and accented I have done since leaving.
+And so, we use Dialectical Materialism to understand the fundamental nature of reality. This understanding is used as a basis for changing the world, using Materialist Dialectics to guide our activities. We can then reflect on the results of our activities, using Dialectical Materialism, to further develop our understanding of the world.
-‘Where you going, hey?’ he asked her.
+As Marxist-Leninists, we utilize this continuous cycle between studying and understanding the world through Dialectical Materialism and affecting change in the world through Materialist Dialectics with the goal of bringing about socialism and freeing humanity.
-‘Just to town.’
+It is also important to understand the nature of ''dialectical relationships.''
-‘What you goin’ to town for?’
+A dialectical relationship is a relationship in which two things mutually impact one another. Dialectical materialism perceives all things in ''motion'' [see ''Mode and Forms of Existence of Matter'', p. 59] and in a constant state of ''change'', and this motion and change originates from relationships in which all things mutually move and change each other through interaction, leading to development over time.
-‘Just got to drop some things, is all. Mind it.’ And she pulled the truck away jerkily.
+-----
-We drove a little way away from the reservation in the truck. She took us into the trees that skirt the far side. We walked uphill a little way until we came to a clearing. There were bottles strewn everywhere, tyres and large black scaffolds and needles, almost chaos but arranged in a rough circle around a nucleus, a fire pit.
+Thoroughly understanding the basic content of the worldview and methodology of Marxism-Leninism is the most important requirement in order to properly study the whole theory system of Marxism-Leninism and to creatively apply it into cognitive and practical activities in order to solve the problems that our society must cope with.
-‘We tell the kids not to come here so of course they come. We used to put up fences but they just pushed them down. If we stand here too long you’ll get a headache. They like to get dizzy off the fumes.’
+-----
-She points out the still pool gathered where the dirt slopes down. There is a filmy rainbow spilt across it. A dead crow floats bloated belly up in it and I notice then that no birds are singing. There is not a sound aside from the trees swaying, and there is a tangy smell that makes your eyes sting a little. Even the sunlight seems anaemic where it reaches the pool’s surface.
+=== 3. Excerpt From ''Modifying the Working Style'' By Ho Chi Minh ===
-‘The younger kids have mostly given up on the land, when they just see it dumped on like this. Nobody else wants it in their backyard so the state pays us to dump their shit here. The elders are angry at the young for trading the land for money. The young are angry with the reservation and think there’s better stuff for them on the outside that money can buy. They don’t speak the language much any more. But most of them will never leave. You know, before white men came we had a matriarchy. Figure that into your documentary.’
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-7.jpg|''Ho Chi Minh training cadres in 1959.'']]
-At this point I realised that she was putting herself through telling me this even though it made her uncomfortable, because she felt it was important. I had the thought that she was telling me because she attached importance to me making a documentary, like she had found a vessel for her message to the outside world. But then I dismissed it, because it did not feel like that at all. It felt like she had a lesson for me.
+Training is a must. There is a proverb: “without a teacher, you can never do well;” and the expression: “learn to eat, learn to speak, learn to pack, learn to unpack.”
-The cesspool sticks with me and the smell will follow me for days. Dump waste on poor people because they are non-people and even if they shout about it no one can hear them. Indians are just layabouts and alcoholics who refuse to get jobs and live off the money they were given for their sacred lands, not so sacred if they chose to sell them anyway, hey? Somebody has to take the collateral damage, to aid progress. In ''On the Road'' Jack Kerouac had the foresight to say that ‘the earth is an Indian thing’, right before he went to a whorehouse to purchase some Mexican Indian women.
+Even many simple subjects require study, let alone revolutionary work and resistance work. How can you perform such tasks without any training?
-I asked Rochelle if she knew who Henrietta Lacks was. She did not. Henrietta Lacks is a mascot of bioethics, and systematic medical experimentation on poor and invisible people. Henrietta Lacks was a working-class African-American woman in the 1950s, which made her a non-person too. Scientists sewed a piece of radium inside her and told her it was aggressive treatment for her cervical cancer. She died eight months later at the age of thirty-one. Without asking they sliced two pieces of tissue from her cervix. They called these cells HeLa.
+But training materials must be aimed at the needs of the masses. We must ask: after people receive their training, can they apply their knowledge immediately? Is it possible to practice right away?
-Thousands of metric tonnes of HeLa have been grown and used for research. The cells of her lady-parts were used to find a polio vaccine and a treatment for Parkinson’s and NASA sent some into orbit to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity. Pharmaceutical companies made billions off the back of her but she is barely remembered and her family live in poverty. They did not even know about HeLa until scientists asked them twenty-five years after she died if they could take their cells too. In 2010, fifty-nine years after she died, her grave got an epitaph.
+If training is not immediately practical, then years of training would be useless.
-===== Her immortal cells will continue to help mankind forever. =====
+Unfortunately, many of our trainers do not understand this simple logic. That’s why there are cadres who train rural people in the uplands in the field of “economics!”
-Her story is a sad one. But it has light to it. Henrietta Lacks is immortal, she is a time capsule, a legacy in the lady-parts of a poor African-American woman.
+In short, our way of working, organizing, talking, propagandizing, setting slogans, writing newspapers, etc., must all take this sentence as a model:
-Rochelle said, ‘What good is that to Henrietta Lacks?’
+“From within the masses, back into the masses.”
-After that she hardly spoke but insisted on driving me the rest of the way to Winnipeg. She would not take any petrol money but let me buy her a coffee in a diner in town. We had a stilted conversation about my plans, where I was headed next, but it all felt hopelessly futile and I could see her thinking so as she picked at the rim of her Styrofoam cup. After the coffee I said a clumsy thank-you. She said don’t mention it and swung herself into her truck. Before she drove away she leant out and said, you take care. I watched it kick up gravel as it clutched its way back onto the road, winding out back in the direction of the distant hunching conifers that camouflage the reservation.
+No matter how big or small our tasks are, we must clearly examine and modify them to match the culture, living habits, level of education, struggling experiences, desire, will, and material conditions of the masses. On that basis we will form our ways of working and organizing. Only then can we have the masses on our side.
-When she had gone I felt a relief I could not put my finger on.
+Otherwise, if you just do as you want, following your own thoughts, your subjectivity, and then force your personal thoughts upon the masses, it is just like “cutting your feet to fit your shoes.” Feet are the masses. Shoes are our ways of organizing and working.
-===== You take care now, white girl. =====
+Shoes are made to fit people’s feet, not the other way around.
-I don’t think she meant to seem like she was helping me begrudgingly. She did not take the money and she wrapped my foot up kindly. It seemed like I called something home for her. Like probably she knows somebody that something much, much worse happened to.
+= Chapter 1: Dialectical Materialism =
-===== Well, yeah, duh. She was a prostitute. Probably knows a lot about it. =====
+Dialectical Materialism, one of the materialist foundations of Marxism-Leninism, uses the materialist worldview and dialectical methods to study fundamental philosophical issues. Dialectical Materialism is the most advanced form of Materialism, and serves as the ''theoretical core of a scientific worldview.'' Therefore, thoroughly understanding the basic content of Dialectical Materialism is the essential prerequisite to study both the component principles of Marxism-Leninism in particular, and the whole of Marxism-Leninism in general.
-For a few minutes I felt intensely sick at myself for such an ugly thought. Was I actually put out that Rochelle had not acted like what had happened was a big enough deal, for not taking me to the police or suggesting I should go?
+== I. Materialism and Dialectical Materialism ==
-Of course she didn’t suggest it. What the hell would I say to them? Something bad maybe nearly happened to me, not sure what something. Rochelle is just a really nice lady that took me in when I was in trouble, she is an angel. When I was not, even. Because nothing bad has happened.
+=== 1. The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues ===
-==== THE LICHENS OF MANITOBA ====
+''Philosophy is a system of the most general human theories and knowledge about our world, about ourselves, and our position in our world.''
-Rochelle was right: nothing had happened at all. Although maybe I came close enough for it to mean something. Perhaps my abstract statistic has been accounted for now, so I am pretty much invincible. In a way, I could say that I am a real woman, a real vulnerable woman. An invincible woman.
+Philosophy has existed for thousands of years. Philosophy has different objects of study depending on different periods of time. Summarizing the whole history of philosophy, Engels said: “The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being<ref>''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', Friedrich Engels, 1886.</ref>.”
-I have been thinking probably he was not being malevolent, probably if he had known I did not want to he would have tried to make me stay anyway, that he must have thought I was up for it and been surprised when I was not or else he would not have let his catch go so easily. When he realised his mistake he let me go. I reiterate this in a way that sounds both beat and resolute, a promise no one’s sure they believe in. Does he still have my shoe?
+So, philosophy studies the relations between consciousness and matter, and between humans and nature.
-I stayed in my motel room with comfort food and watched daytime television and started to see about how I get out of here but it gets more complex now as I am leaving the Trans-Canada Highway somewhere just after Winnipeg.
+In philosophy, there are two main questions:
-==== GREEN IS THE NEW RED ====
+'''Question 1: The question of consciousness and matter: which came first; or, to put it another way, which one determines which one?'''
-I took time in the motel to Skype Larus, seeing as he has been feeling so neglected. He had been explaining what has been going on with fracking in the UK while I was away. I got a bit down while he was talking, thinking about how far away from it all I am, and the area where the kids hung out behind the reservation, and how I had been avoiding checking home news in too much detail since I left. My home town has been marked out as one of the possible areas to be fracked. There are not even otters in the river like there should be, and the anglers that actually eat the fish are seen as tramps. I think they are smart. Why pay money for a fish bred in a cesspool and pumped with hormones when you can get one with equivalent danger levels of chemicals from the river, for free?
+In attempting to answer this first question, philosophy has separated into two main schools: ''Materialism,'' and ''Idealism.''
-Our rivers are already lifeless and inert, so the threat of chemical contamination is met with a shrug and ''well, there is nothing to destroy anyway, we need the energy!'' There is no mass resistance in the UK because not enough people can see anything worth the bother of saving. The environment was smuggled off a long time ago, as far back as the Enclosure Acts, when the peasants were denied the right to graze or forage so the land could be exploited more efficiently and the peasants had to leave en masse for the cities so that they could lube up the Industrial Revolution with whale oil, and begin the colonisation of the New World. The upheaval can still be seen now where I am from, where the abandoned towering furnaces of industry still cast their shadows. They are immortalised by J. R. R. Tolkien: that exodus from the green and balmy shires of the Midlands to the fiery forges, the slags and the mine pits of the urbanised Black Country (or Mordor; elvish for ‘dark land’).
+'''Question 2: Do humans have the capacity to perceive the world as it truly exists?'''
-The Environmental Protection Agency in America is downplaying the dangers of fracking and of leaking pipelines. The EPA was started because of the legacy of Rachel Carson. I told Larus about my weird dreams about her. This got Larus on to telling me Rachel Carson’s saga.
+In answer to this second question, two schools: ''Intelligibility'' — which admits the human cognitive capacity to truly perceive the world — and ''unintelligibility'' — which denies that capacity.
-Rachel Carson worked in a very masculine field, but at home on her 65-acre family farm she was surrounded by women. From a young age she liked to write and read stories about animals and the ocean. Her dad died when she was young and she took over as the provider of the family, supporting her ageing mother. She spent all her time working in biology and looking after her ill family, who just kept dying, taking her two nieces in when her older sister died. She still loved to write and did write many beautiful and scientifically important essays and books about the ocean. She started a strong friendship, which may or may not have been romantic, with a woman named Dorothy Freeman. Dorothy was married and their friendship was mainly through letters, which Dorothy had to share with her husband to prove they were not having a lesbian affair.
+Materialism is the belief that the nature of the world is matter; that matter comes first; and that matter determines consciousness. People who uphold this belief are called materialists. Throughout human history, many different factions of materialists with various schools of materialist thought have evolved.
-A lot of the Big Dogs did not like Ms Carson because they saw her attack on Big Chemical Corporations as a threat to the paradigm of Scientific Progress in post-war America, and also because she was a woman. A jealous man scientist wrote a letter to President Eisenhower in which he said that because Rachel Carson was physically attractive and not married, she was probably a communist. After working really hard to save the planet she died of cancer at the age of fifty-six, and she never made a deal over the fact that her cancer was probably from the pesticides they sprayed over her home. She kept her cancer secret while she wrote ''Silent Spring''. Rachel Carson knew very well that her body was not her own, its health in the hands of chemical corporations.
+Idealism is the belief that the nature of the world is consciousness; consciousness precedes matter; consciousness decides matter. People who uphold this belief are called idealists. Like materialism, various factions of idealists with varying schools of idealist thought have also evolved throughout history.
-So I was already feeling emotionally fraught when Larus asked me what had happened since we last spoke. There was a big cavernous hole in my narrative so I had to tell him about how I ended up at Rochelle’s. I just told him, really casual, no emphasis, and at first he found the thing almost a little funny. He asked me to send him over some of the videos from the lorry. I sent them while we were talking about other things then he opened one up and started to watch. After a minute or so he rubbed his eyebrows in the fashion of someone tired by the weight of something heavy and spherically shaped and difficult to hold.
+<br />
-Larus speaks a little Russian from a fleeting obsession in his twenties while trying on communism for size. The man was speaking Russian. He might have been Siberian. He most likely spoke English. How could he be driving through Canada if he didn’t speak basic English, Erin? Either way Larus said he could tell the driver understood me by the way he was talking.
+Idealism has cognitive origins and social origins.
-Then Larus ran through the clips with me and translated. ''What’s wrong, little sourface, are you a long way from home?'' It was after that that I started to have what I think might have been a panic attack; something sat on my head and stopped me from breathing, the room went bright as though the walls and ceiling had exploded away from me and I felt simultaneously this gravity and this weightlessness, like falling and floating both at the same time and every breath empty of air.
+-----
-‘Erin?’ Larus’s voice came at me. ‘I think you’re having a panic attack, calm down, breathe slow, sloooooow,’ and my breathing got shallower but had more substance to it. Because he could not hear me gasping any more Larus freaked out, raising his voice, saying Erin, Erin are you still there, are you okay, can you hear me? It was all very embarrassing.
+==== Annotation 50 ====
-Because he could not look at my face he looked directly into the webcam, a serious look that wavered the longer he tried to hold it. It only lasted about five seconds but that is uncomfortably long to hold a look on webcam if you think about it. Slowed down by the lag it went through micro-cycles of intensity, reasserting itself. It said, ''Look into my eyes and see how serious I am. My face is saying it so hard it can’t even keep it up, like it’s a wet bar of soap or something. Like, we are that close now. I can be your rock.''
+''Cognitive origin'' refers to origination from the human consciousness of individuals.
-‘Erin, I’m really concerned about you and I have a suggestion.’
+''Social origin'' refers to origination from social relations between human beings.
-‘What?’
+So, idealism originates from both the conscious activity of individual humans as well as social activity between human beings.
-‘I have some time now I’ve finished with the whale data. Let me come and meet you.’
+These origins are ''unilateral consideration'' and ''absolutization'' of only one aspect or one characteristic of the whole cognitive process.
-Is he mad? At first I just laugh, but with time for it to sink in I get a little angry. Why is everyone concerned for me? Why is everyone stifling me? Apart from Rochelle, who maybe is trying to liberate me with her cool indifference. TO WALK FREELY AT NIGHT!
+-----
-‘You aren’t infallible, Erin.’
+==== Annotation 51 ====
-I told him that if I were a boy he would not be dwelling on my in/fallibility. He said that’s the point. I think if I blur the driver’s face I can probably still use it in the documentary.
+''Unilateral consideration'' is the consideration of a subject from one side only.
-==== INTO A WORMHOLE ====
+''Absolutization'' occurs when one conceptualizes some belief or supposition as ''always'' true in ''all'' situations ''without'' exception.
-I do not think the tight feeling in my chest, the struggle breathing, like my lungs were filled with tar and every breath in and out was sucked and pushed through this viscous liquid, I do not think it had just to do with the lorry driver.
+Both unilateral consideration and absolutization fail to consider the dynamic, constantly changing, and interconnected relations of all things, phenomena, and ideas in our reality.
-It is everything. The lorry driver was just the shake that rattled like passing debris, so that I felt the shuttle’s fragility. The documentary is my shuttle and it keeps me going, it is the only vehicle for carrying on with purpose-propulsion-direction, it stops me from floating aimlessly into the ether, it keeps me on track towards that shining light ahead and the feeling that comes from it.
+Idealism originates from unilateral consideration because idealists ignore the material world and consider reality ''only'' from the perspective of the human mind. It also originates from absolutism because idealists ''absolutize'' human reasoning as the ''only'' source of truth and knowledge about our world ''without exception.''
-The rattling of the debris made me look around and realise the enormity of this task, my journey, its sudden height and distance. A kind of vertigo, a very sudden awareness. But this is just a dizzy spell. Because if I do not have this project as a vessel to move me forward, then what the fuck am I doing and where am I going, what authority do I have being here?
+As Lenin wrote in ''On the Question of Dialectics'': “Philosophical idealism is a unilateral development, an overt development, of one out of many attributes, or one out of many aspects, of consciousness.”
-Today I want very badly to call Mum and Dad, but if I did I would likely burst into tears, and what for? Imagine how much it would upset her. She would freak the fuck out. There was nothing she could do about it from home, so what was the point in putting her through it?
+Historically, idealism has typically benefitted the oppressive, exploitative class of society. Idealism and religions usually have a close relation with each other, and support each other to co-exist and co-develop.
-They say in emails that I never call, that they want to speak with me more often, but they do not understand that I can’t do it that way. We can’t carry on in tandem; like the Voyagers dividing from their rocket engines I had to break away completely in order to use the break-off as a kind of propulsion too. I feel bad but it is the way it has got to be.
+-----
-I checked out coaches and car shares but there is nothing any time soon. I really need to leave Winnipeg so I can catch the carpool I have arranged out of Saskatoon. Then I am staying on a farm outside Edmonton and they are picking me up from outside the town hall on Monday at 4 p.m. The only thing that seems viable is that I hitch again.
+==== Annotation 52 ====
-===== I know this is the kind of thing I wanted to prove should not stop women exerting their right to individual freedom. =====
+Idealists, in absolutizing human consciousness, have a tendency to only give credence to the work of the mind and ignore the value of physical labor. This has been used to justify class structures in which religious and intellectual laborers are given authority and privilege over manual laborers.
-===== That is the spirit. =====
+This situation has also led to the idea that mental factors play a decisive role in the development of human society in particular and the whole world in general. This idealist view was supported by the ruling class and used to justify its own power and privilege in society. The dominant class has historically used such idealist philosophy as the justifying foundation for their political-social beliefs in order to maintain their ruling positions.
-==== MUSHROOM SPORES MAY FLOAT IN OUTER SPACE ====
+Marx discusses this tendency for rulers to idealistically justify their own rule in ''The German Ideology'':
-So I stood again in a little layby on Portage Avenue at the city limits extending onto the Trans-Canada Highway, with my thumb out. A lorry breached the road; as it got close enough to see me I dropped my arm. The lorry sailed past; like holding out a titbit of meat for a falcon at the country fair and baulking at the last second of its swoop to your gloved hand. I thought of Jules and her white van. I swore to keep my arm up the next time.
+<blockquote>
+The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an ‘eternal law.’
+</blockquote>
-After half an hour another lorry appeared and as it drew nearer I noticed it was slowing. I said to myself, ''Come on, let’s not be stupid, you just need to get back on the horse, remember.''
+Marx goes on to explain how the idealist positions of the ruling class tend to get embedded in historical narratives:
-Roy chatted on about his home town Allgood in Alabama, US, how he had a little baby girl and had to be a trucker because it paid well and he wanted his baby to go to a good college. But he did not like being a trucker because he was sad about leaving his baby and his wife. He showed me a picture of his baby and wife. His wife was called Amelia, which he said ‘Melia’, unless that was just what her name was, and his baby was called Jade. I was thinking a guy who comes from a place called Allgood can’t be that bad, and I kept telling myself that. I sat awake daydreaming about how to deal with the recent events when making the narrative of the doc.
+<blockquote>
+Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word and believe that everything it says and imagines about itself is true. This historical method which reigned in Germany, and especially the reason why, must be understood from its connection with the illusion of ideologists in general, e.g. the illusions of the jurist, politicians (of the practical statesmen among them, too), from the dogmatic dreamings and distortions of these fellows; this is explained perfectly easily from their practical position in life, their job, and the division of labour.
-There is not much footage of Rochelle; she has been more or less the only person to not be enthusiastic and obliging. And the problem is: how do I show it so that I can make it real like it happened? I have enough that I worry I might inadvertently frame it like she had more significance to what happened than she did, something I do not want to do. I can’t figure out how to use her when I edit, without it seeming like I latched on because she had said something that made her sound like a wise old Mother Willow. It was only because of an accident that she happened to me. Just an act of decency or maybe of obligation to humanity.
+-----
-But I need something to tie the story together, from running in the night and onwards, a bit of narrative over the top of some of the story-less shots of her and the reservation. I thought I might as well play my feelings out with Roy, seeing as we would never meet again.
+In history, there are two main forms of idealism: ''subjective'' and ''objective''.
+</blockquote>
-‘Oh, those natives are touchy folks.’
+''Subjective idealism'' asserts that ''consciousness'' is the primary existence. It asserts that all things and phenomena can only be experienced as subjective sensory perceptions while denying the objective existence of material reality altogether.
-Like he was letting me on his team in a kind of us versus them. I was not sure whose team I was more on, Woman vs White? But it made me think, do I have more of a propensity to feel self-conscious as a kind of voyeur making this film? As a woman, knowing already what it feels like to be an exhibition, to feel eyes on my body? Like the embarrassment I feel when I look in on the glass boxes of taxidermy, towards the possessiveness of ‘collect and display’.
+''Objective idealism'' also asserts the ideal and consciousness as the primary existence, but also posits that the ideal and consciousness are objective, and that they exist independently of nature and humans. This concept is given many names, such as “absolute concept”, “absolute spirit,” “rationality of the world,” etc.
-===== I am doing this for you too, Rochelle! =====
+-----
-===== You are doing this for yourself. =====
+==== Annotation 53 ====
-Before this trip I had a pretty obscure idea of what an Indian reservation would even look like; horses, totem poles and alcoholics, based on what I had seen on a programme on the National Geographic channel once. Mum had come in with the vacuum and stood looking a little perplexed at the TV for a few minutes before saying, ‘You know, I didn’t realise that Indians still existed,’ and I had not even thought that was very strange. I do not want Rochelle to be so much a part of the narrative that it seems like I am yoking my feminist problems with hers, even if we share some.
+''Primary existence'' is existence which precedes and determines other existences.
-In the late afternoon, where the highway met Regina, I said goodbye to Roy and hopped down from his lorry into a sodden layby a walkable distance from the city. The rain had stopped but the air was damp and clung to the smells and made them sticky; cloying diesel fumes, turf, and the wet on wet of the lakes as I skirted round them.
+Idealists believe that consciousness has primary existence over matter, that the nature of the world is ideal, and that the ideal defines existence.
-==== TAMING THE SAVAGES ====
+Materialists believe the opposite: that matter has primary existence over the ideal, and that matter precedes and determines consciousness.
-I had a dream about Ms Carson again last night. She was underwater conferring with a concerned-looking delegation of fish who held in their wafered fore-fins tiny hermaphrodite fish infants. The Queen of the Fish was distraught, she wanted some answers.
+Dialectical Materialism holds that matter and consciousness have a dialectical relationship, in which matter has primary existence over the ideal, though consciousness can impact the material world through willful conscious activity.
-In all these millions of years the ocean hasn’t changed, now there is a new taste in it, she said. The taste came after your people came so you must have brought it, sour, sharp and fizzing. What is it? Rachel Carson told her that the taste that made the babies hermaphrodites was called synthetic oestrogen and her Womankind had been taking it because they were made to think it would emancipate them but what it also had done was to take their bodies from them, mechanised and controlled, warped to fit the jigsaw.
+The primary existence of matter within Dialectical Materialism is discussed further in ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88.
-The Fish Queen did sympathise. She said, ‘As fish we know of the Man tyranny that your Womankind face because we are also subject to the tyranny of Mankind, have also been subdued and controlled, but we must come to a compromise.’ Rachel Carson promised to be an Ambassador of the Fish to the dry world of above. Like Thoreau casting off the sins of the flesh to attain greater spiritual purity, she swore her chastity to the Fish Queen in order to best fulfil her role as ambassador and prove her devoted kinship.
+Willful activity (''willpower'') is discussed in ''Nature and Structure of Consciousness'', p. 79.
-It is funny that, how a woman denying her biological breeding function is abhorrent, yet men like Thoreau or the virginal Isaac Newton denying their biological breeding functions are ''chaste'', as though theirs were an admirable ''choice''. What this says is that a woman’s body is not her own to choose to keep from a man.
+The key difference between ''subjective'' and ''objective'' idealists is this:
-She swore she would never take the pill because it a) would cause the decline of the Fish Kingdom, which could have a knock-on effect on the rest of the underwater realm, her favourite realm, and b) ruined the integrity of the Fish Queen, and she liked the Fish Queen. Plus the pill was made by Bayer, who were disappearing the bees with their neonicotinoids. The Fish Queen swore her in as Ambassador of the Fish.
+Subjective idealists believe that there is no external material world whatsoever — that what we imagine as the material world is merely illusory — and that all reality is created by consciousness, whereas objective idealists believe that there ''is'' a material world outside of human consciousness, but it exists independently of human consciousness; therefore (according to objective idealists), since humans can only observe the world through conscious experience, the material world can never be truly known or observed by our consciousness.
-In Regina I look at a map of Canada and it reads like a pictogram of clusters of neurons. The shape is uniform; where the lines might have been pliant and organic they are neat right angles. The states of Canada are divided in horizontal strips as if Descartes or someone threw down a quadrat and declared it an enlightened territory. Illuminated and user friendly like the satisfying angularity of Enlightenment taxonomies of life; rational flow charts of stable and quantifiable kingdoms that can be pinned to a table and dissected, taken apart and reassembled.
+In opposition to Idealism, Materialism originated through practical experience and the development of science. Through practical experience and systematic development of human knowledge, Materialism has come to serve as a universally applicable theoretical system which benefits progressive social forces and which also orients the activities of those forces in both perception and practice.
-Canadian prime minister John A. Macdonald was the father of the Canadian Pacific Railway, built from east to west in four years from 1881. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company sold the land around its railway in cheap little acred packages marketed and sold to European homesteaders as a Dream of a similar model to the American one. The Wild West was crazy and big and scary but rapid subdivision into super-manageable chunks made it easy to domesticate. Everything within each quadrat was quantified, named, tamed, land and natives included. From their new stronghold of the south-western cities, the CPRC could frontier-bust again into the north, where they built cities on the Gold Fever of the 1890s.
+-----
-The dawn of railways in Britain brought about the invention of Unanimous Time. Some anthropologists think that marking time was the first step in the construction of the symbolic world, before language, before art. Because, like Einstein said, time is not something absolute. He said different observers order an event differently in time if they are moving with different velocities relative to the observed event. A seemingly simultaneous event can occur differently for other observers (also true of history). That means all measurements involving time as a constant lose their absoluteness.
+==== Annotation 54 ====
-But the invention of Unanimous Time in Greenwich made the world fall into our order just like the cities are order and the roads and railways are order and the animals are order and genders are order. We invented time and we have sped it up by our own making. The Clock of the Long Now is a clock designed to mark time into the deep, deep future, 10,000 years at a time. It would be built by the Long Now Foundation, in the hope of counterbalancing modern myopia and making us more responsible to the future. But it seems to me just a louder assertion, just a bigger claw reaching. (I REALLY mark time therefore I VERY am.)
+Materialism benefits progressive social forces by showing reality as it is, by dispelling the idealist positions of the ruling class, and by revealing that society and the world can be changed through willful activity.
-In the north, where the highway does not reach, the roadveins are less tangled, like a tree spilling out and reaching all its twig-fingers to the sky in whichever way it feels to fill the space around it. In the north, where the landscape is more immutable, the settlers have been made to oblige it. In the northernmost territories the permanent villages are mostly native because the First Nations and the Metis and the Inuit know how to bend to the land rather than make the land bend to them. And like Naaja said, they see the animal/mineral/vegetable worlds as a continuum of which we are a part in the same way that Inuit gender is a continuum.
+Materialism guides progressive social forces by grounding thought and activity in material reality, enabling strategies and outcomes that line up with the realities of the material world. For instance, we must avoid utopianism [see Annotation 17, p. 18] in which emphasis is placed on working out ideal forms of society through debate, conjecture, and conscious activity alone. Revolution against capitalism must, instead, focus on affecting material relations and processes of development through willful activity.
-The Trans-Canada Highway was built in the 1950s to link up the cities that Macdonald and the CPR spawned. And all of this came to happen so that the rational concrete highway could unravel underneath me and lead me forward on my journey like my very own yellow brick road. After two hours or so a young couple picked me up and took me to Saskatoon. The journey was treeless and flat, I could see the clouds move all the way to the horizon, where they would lose their shape and amalgamate into one big haze, the blue sky stretching over me like a dome.
+As Engels pointed out in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'': “The final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.”
-==== THE BUFFALO AND THE PASSENGER PIGEON ====
+=== 2. Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism ===
-''INT. CAR – camera in Erin’s hand taking in the outside of her window – road sign flashes past, ‘You are leaving Saskatoon, please come back soon!’ – flat plains behind a low flickering fence, stretched out as far as one can see, sickie-yellow and bleached by the sun – no glint like there should be – no pastoral quilt trimmed with hedgerows – monotonous sprawling land, dirty and dead and coaxed and quenched with rotating sprinklers, wide and uniform and on giant scales – a humming that should be insects but is diminished and croaky like an echo from giant machines that even look small against the crop desert – now and then a metal structure bent like a crouching pterodactyl butting the ground –''
+In human history, as human society and scientific understanding have developed, materialism has also developed through three forms: ''Primitive Materialism, Metaphysical Materialism,'' and ''Dialectical Materialism.''
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+''Primitive Materialism'' is the primitive form of materialism. Primitive materialism recognizes that matter comes first, and holds that the world is composed of certain elements, and that these were the first objects, the origin, of the world, and that these elements are the essence of reality. These Primitive Materialist concepts can be found in many ancient materialist theories in such places as China, India, and Greece. [These Primitive Materialist elemental philosophies are discussed more in ''Matter'', p. 53] Although it has many shortcomings, Primitive Materialism is partially correct at the most fundamental level, because it uses the material of nature itself to explain nature.
-[[Image:f0121-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' It smells</div>
+''Metaphysical Materialism'' is the second basic form of Materialism. This form of materialism was widely discussed and developed in Western Europe in the 17<sup>th</sup> and 18<sup>th</sup> centuries. During this time, the metaphysical method of perceiving the world was applied to materialist philosophy. Although Metaphysical Materialism does not accurately reflect the world in terms of universal relations [see p. 108] and development, it was an important step forward in the fight against idealist and religious worldviews, especially during the transformational period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in many Western European countries.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''STEVE:''' Yep. Welcome to the hydraulic fracturing capital of Canada. There’s been fracking here for fifty years, but nowadays it’s goin’ haywire. Around abouts third-biggest petroleum reserve in the world</div>
+==== Annotation 55 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– Erin turns the camera to face Steve in the driver’s seat – red cap, dark green North Face gilet – he turns to the camera, smiles haltingly, turns'' ''back to the road, shifts his hands on the wheel to steer from the top –''</div>
+Metaphysical materialism was strongly influenced by ''mechanical philosophy'', a scientific and philosophical movement popular in the 17<sup>th</sup> century which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices. Mechanical philosophy led to a belief that all things — including living organisms — were built as (and could theoretically be built by humans as) mechanical devices. Influenced by this philosophy, metaphysical materialists came to see the world as a giant mechanical machine composed of parts, each of which exists in an essentially isolated and static state.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''STEVE:''' Then there’s your tar sands. And the forests. Half of Alberta is forest. It’s all in the north. And over half of the forest is ripe for harvest. Yep. You could say Alberta runs on selling itself. Alberta is a goddam whore</div>
+Metaphysical materialists believed that all change can exist only as an increase or decrease in quantity, brought about by external causes Metaphysical materialism contributed significantly to the struggle against idealistic and religious worldviews, especially during the historical transition period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in Western European countries. Metaphysical materialism also had severe limitations; especially in failing to understand many key aspects of reality, such as the nature of development through change/motion and relationships.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– he laughs, a short honk of a laugh – a shadow passes over his face because a cloud goes under the sun – he points to a harrier out of the window, silhouetted in the sky –''</div>
+''Dialectical Materialism'' is the third basic form of materialism. It was founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as many of his successors. By inheriting the quintessence of previous theories and thoroughly integrating contemporary scientific achievements, Dialectical Materialism immediately solved the shortcomings of the Primitive Materialism of ancient times as well as the Metaphysical Materialism of modern Western Europe. It reaches the highest development level of materialism so far in history.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''STEVE:''' That’s a harrier. My pop used to point out all the birds to me. I don’t remember most of the birds. But for some reason I always remember to recognise the harrier</div>
+By accurately reflecting objective reality with universal relations and development*, Dialectical Materialism offers humanity a great tool for scientific cognitive activities and revolutionary practice. The Dialectical Materialist system of thought was built on the basis of scientific explanations about matter, consciousness, and the relationship between the two.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– he carries on glancing back at the bird from the road until he cannot any more without craning his neck –''</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''STEVE:''' I used to think all these environmental types were just out to scaremonger. But then when I worked the tar sands I changed my mind. And you know, I can’t get my head around why I ever doubted them. These guys who just want to see the world green. Over these corporations with big money in their pockets</div>
+==== Annotation 56 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– he talks about it all with an odd kind of affection – custodial attentiveness that makes it seem as though he is talking as part of the Albertan psyche rather than out of a personal fondness or interest –''</div>
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Materialist Dialectical methodology explains the world in terms of relationships and development. This is discussed in ''Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics'', p. 106.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''STEVE:''' But hey. Who am I to moan? Driving my car?</div>
+== II. Dialectical Materialist Opinions About Matter, Consciousness, and the Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness ==
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– he sits quietly for a few seconds, as though waiting for her to cut the camera – agitatedly, he fidgets his hands, reaches to the glove box –''</div>
+=== 1. Matter ===
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''STEVE:''' You want a mint?</div>
+==== a. Category of “Matter” ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– he unwraps a mint between his fingers with his wrists steering the wheel from the top – the camera shudders as Erin reaches for a mint –''</div>
+<br />
+''Matter'' is a philosophical subject which has been examined for more than 2,500 years. Since ancient times, there has been a relentless struggle between materialism and idealism around this subject. Idealism asserts that the world’s nature, the first basis of all existence, is consciousness, and that matter is only a product of that consciousness. Conversely, materialism asserts that nature, the entirety of the world, is composed of matter, that this material world exists indefinitely, and that all things and phenomena are composed of matter.
-==== CUT ====
+Before dialectical materialism was born, materialist philosophers generally believed that matter was composed of some self-contained element or elements; that is to say some underlying substance from which everything in the universe is ultimately derived. In ancient times, the five elements theory of Chinese philosophy held that those self-contained substances were ''metal — wood — water — fire — earth;'' in India, the Samkhya school believed that they were ''Pradhana'' or ''Prakriti''<ref>According to the Samkhya school, Pradhana is the original form of matter in an unmanifested,indifferentiated state; ''Prakriti'' is manifested matter, differentiated in form, which contains potential for motion.</ref>'';'' in Greece, the Milesian school believed they were ''water'' (Thales’s<ref>Thales, ~642 — ~547 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, politician.</ref> conception) or ''air'' (Anaximene’s<ref>Anaximene, ~585 — ~525 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher.</ref> conception); Heraclitus<ref>Heraclitus, ~540 — ~480 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, founder of ancient dialectics.</ref> believed the ultimate element was ''fire;'' Democritus<ref>Democritus, ~460 — ~370 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, naturalist, a founder of atom theory.</ref> asserted that it was something called an “atom,”'''' etc. Even as recently as the 17<sup>th</sup>-18<sup>th</sup> centuries, conceptions about matter belonging to modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon<ref>Francis Bacon, 1561 — 1626 (British): Philosopher, novelist, mathematician, political activist.</ref>, Renes Descartes<ref>Rene Descartes, 1596 — 1650 (Fench): Philosopher, mathematician, physicist.</ref>, Thomas Hobbes<ref>Thomas Hobbes, 1588 — 1679 (British): Political philosopher, political activist.</ref>, Denis Diderot<ref>Denis Diderot, 1713 — 1784 (French): Philosopher, novelist.</ref>, etc., still hadn’t changed much. They continued following the same philosophical tendency as ancient philosophers by focusing their studies of the material world through elemental phenomena.
-==== GOT LAND? THANK AN INDIAN ====
+These conceptions of matter which were developed by philosophers before Marx’s time laid a foundation for a tendency to use nature to explain nature itself, but that tendency still had many shortcomings, such as: oversimplification of matter into fictitious “elements;” failure to understand the nature of consciousness as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness; failure to recognize the significance of matter in human society, leading to a failure to solve social issues based on a materialist basis, etc.
-Steve drove me all way into Edmonton to where I was being picked up even though it was out of his way. He took the petrol money and gave me his email so he could see himself in the finished product when it came about. I thought about all the footage I have, about how Steve was not really talking about what I had told him my documentary was about. But he was talking about how Alberta is a whore and even if he did not quite know it, he was talking indirectly about women too, and the significance that it took a woman with a stolen body to write ''Silent Spring''.
+-----
-Sam’s parents left the farm a few days ago for a fortnight, to visit his mum’s family on their reservation over in British Columbia. Sam is a couple of years older than me and Berry is seventeen. They both have similar chin-length raven-black hair, but Berry’s face is much too soft and pretty for them to look too much alike, although they both have the same defiant jawbone. I had to do a bit of introspection and even read back over our emails to try to figure out why I had presumed they were a white family. Maybe it was the all-Canadian-sounding names.
+==== Annotation 57 ====
-The homestead is just north of Rocky Mountain House, a small town around two hours away from Edmonton. The drive leading up to the homestead from the main road is unpaved and winds through pine trees. Two chickens scuttled out of the way of the car as we pulled up the drive. In the clearing of the forest that surrounds their house, which is a large cabin, there is a totem pole reaching the height of the cabin and half again. I did not want to ask just yet how typical this is. There is a small shed to the right of the cabin and behind the trees fall out onto a meadow where they have a vegetable plot, paddies, a chicken coop and a shed with four yellow plastic kayaks stacked against it. At the far end a wide stream marks the boundary to their land.
+Here are further explanations of these shortcomings of early materialists:
-Around the chicken-roost shed I counted five chickens, and more wandering around. They collect the eggs from the roost every morning and sometimes they eat the chickens. In a pen next to the roost were three speckled pigs, mucking about, two larger and one smaller. They take the bigger ones for breeding every year and raise up the piglets for market, keeping just one back to slaughter themselves for cured meat. The smaller of the three pigs was the keeper and they were fattening her up. The chickens, one pig, fish they catch from the river and the things they shoot hunting are the only meat they eat.
+'''Oversimplification of matter into fictitious “elements”'''
-We grazed the pigs, letting them out from the paddy to forage through the forest for mushrooms and roots and berries and worms and things. We were assigned one pig each. I learned to move them by tap-tapping them on the flank with a stick and manoeuvring them with my legs. I followed my pig close because he kept moving and I was frightened of losing him.
+Due to a lack of understanding and knowledge of matter, metaphysical materialists created erroneous conceptions of “elements” which do not accurately describe the nature of matter. By using such an erroneously conceived system of non-existing elements to describe nature, metaphysical materialists were prevented from gaining real insights into the material world which delayed and hindered scientific progress.
-The forest was awake with sound, a medley of territorial and cat calls. Now and again I would zone in on a trill I thought I knew, like picking up on a phrase recognised on a foreign street. Blackbird, wren, wood thrush, starling. And squirrels chattering at us from the trees, him digging up their nuts with his snout.
+'''Failure to understand the nature of consciousness as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness'''
-Sunlight filtered down through the canopy in diagonal beams and motes floated through them. My pig chattered happily and I was thinking to myself, yes, pig, this is what happiness is; when alone, being alone without people or people things, noticing selfacutely, and with a kind of fondness.
+Many early materialists believed that consciousness was simply a mechanical byproduct of material processes, and that mental events (thoughts, consciousness) could not affect the material world, since these events were simply mechanically determined ''by'' the material world.
-I asked if the chickens ever run away. Sam said they don’t because they feed them and the chickens are happy here. I asked if they ever get eaten. He said Grey the dog chases away the weasels and the cats, but sometimes he misses one and they lose chickens. This just happens sometimes, and since the chickens are not exactly theirs they can’t get angry about them being taken away, they just feed them and sometimes the chickens give them eggs and seem to accept that every now and then they kill one to eat. I think this is very philosophical.
+As a first principle, Dialectical Materialism does hold that consciousness is ''created by'' matter. However, Dialectical Materialism also holds that consciousness can ''influence'' the material world through conscious action. This constitutes a dialectical relationship.
-For dinner we had fish that had been smoked in their smoke house, and vegetables and potatoes from their plot. I am staying put for a few weeks, to decompress before the final push. This is going to be the perfect place to go into the whole helping-out-a-stranger-in-exchange-for-food-and-board thing. Like being a Samaritan in old times, but the idea is that I learn shit about organic living.
+As Lenin explains in ''Materialism and Empirio-criticism'': “Consciousness in general ''reflects'' being—that is a general principle of ''all'' materialism... social consciousness ''reflects'' social being.”
-In the documentary this will be a few weeks of time-out skimmed over in a few short clips of idyllic pastoral living, like Kerouac, McCandless et al. working on flour mills and the like to pay their way across the States. Rest time and recuperation, a big breath before the deep plunge. Since I got to Sam’s I have this enduring feeling of serenity. I have caught it up for now, the thing, and its glow gives off enough warmth to bask in.
+Whereas early materialists erroneously held that consciousness is simply an “accidental” byproduct of matter, Dialectical Materialism holds that consciousness is a characteristic of the ''nature'' of matter. As Engels wrote in the notation of ''Dialectics of Nature'':
-==== BECOMING A RIVER AND SLEEPING LIKE A RIVER ====
+<blockquote>
+That matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain is for mechanism a pure accident, although necessarily determined, step by step, where it happens. But the truth is that it is the nature of matter to advance to the evolution of thinking beings, hence this always necessarily occurs wherever the conditions for it (not necessarily identical at all places and times) are present.
+</blockquote>
-Sam and I took kayaks out today. The lake was pellucid and the air barely moved. As we cut into the water with our paddles we startled fish. We could see them a metre underneath us the water was so clear. There was the sound of moving water and the feeling of being pulled away. The feeling of sitting in a little vessel on top of an indifferent intensity, the feeling of being buoyant on the skin of depth. Big swathes of time would pass where neither of us would say anything to the other, just the rhythmical dipping of the paddles and the tinkle of drips from the blades. Behind us the mountains rose, diminished into lethargy by a hazy film of distance. Above the deep green forest, black shapes hovered and dipped.
+Dialectical materialism also breaks from early materialism by positing that consciousness has a dialectical relationship with matter. Consciousness arises from the material world, but can also influence the material world through conscious action. In other words, mental events can trigger physical actions which affect the material world.
-We made it most of the way back upriver but in the end, when I especially was lagging and hardly pushing back against the current, we landed the kayaks and walked the rest. Sam drove to pick them up later and I went with him for company while a friend of his who had come to stay, a guy from the town called Ollie, made dinner with Berry. I can’t help but stare at Sam every time his talking gives me an excuse to. His hands are always dirty. Not gross dirty, but earthy from the farm. I might have been paying a lot of attention to him to notice that his hands are always earthy. Heavy eyelids like crescent moons.
+-----
-In the truck he said, half joking, you’re good in a kayak, I didn’t know you had kayaks in England. I told him we do, and that I was good because I had been in kayaks lots as a Girl Guide. He found the fact that I was a Girl Guide really amusing. He said, ‘I hear you sing Indian songs around the campfire too?’
+As Marx explains in ''Theses on Feuerbach'':
-I told him there was a song about an Indian in a kayak we used to sing actually.
+<blockquote>
+The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice... Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
+</blockquote>
-He said, ‘That’s funny. We never sing about Girl Scouts.’
+Put more simply, we as humans are capable of “revolutionary practice” which can “change the world” because our consciousness allows us to “change circumstances.” This is discussed further in ''Nature and Structure of Consciousness'', p. 79.
-==== A REAL MOUNTAIN ====
+<blockquote>
+Failure to recognize the significance of matter in human society, leading to a failure to solve social issues based on a materialist basis
+</blockquote>
-Sam said he did not know why I would want to go there, but he took me anyway: the famous Banff Park. The sky was practically cloudless and everything crisp with colour. Ollie rode up front with Sam, so I sat in the truck bed with Grey. To look out over the top of the van’s roof from the back meant positioning my face in the stream of air forced over it, which stung my eyes and wrapped my hair into tight little knots. The only viable way to sit was facing backwards on the bench with Grey wrapped over me, because even though Sam said he always rode in the back I was nervous about him getting excited and bailing over the side.
+Dialectical materialists believe that matter exists in many forms, and that human society is a special form of existence of matter. Lenin referred to the material existence of human society as ''social being'', which stood in contrast with human society’s ''social consciousness.'' Social being encompasses all of the material existence and processes of human society.
-Not being able to see ahead on the journey gave me a novel perspective. The Rockies started to crawl into my view. Grey knew them, his eyes twitching to them frantically. I watched the fixed point where the road disappeared at the horizon as it all rushed past and towards it, the mountains sluggishly because they had further to go.
+As Lenin wrote in ''Materialism and Empirio-criticism'':
-I am getting towards the real Wild North now, like I had imagined the frontiers-land, the Yukon, to look. Not quite there yet but I can start to feel its tremor. Looking at it, you get why all the Mountain Men do not care to keep any company if they can just keep company with the mountains, so sure and majestic and other-than-you-are.
+<blockquote>
+Social being is independent of the social consciousness of men. The fact that you live and conduct your business, beget children, produce products and exchange them, gives rise to an objectively necessary chain of events, a chain of development, which is independent of your social consciousness, and is never grasped by the latter completely. The highest task of humanity is to comprehend this objective logic of economic evolution (the evolution of social life) in its general and fundamental features, so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries in as definite, clear and critical a fashion as possible.
+</blockquote>
-But the road rushing away underneath does something strange. Makes it feel spectral, staged, to be seen but not really felt, like how walking through an underwater tunnel at the Sealife Centre is not anything like swimming in it. Every now and then the sides of the road would rise up and show the flat innards of some great rock or crust, layers of sediment and scars where the road cuts through.
+Early materialists failed to recognise the relationship between matter and consciousness — as Lenin puts it, specifically, between ''social being'' and ''social consciousness''. Thus in contemplating social issues, these early materialists were unable to find proper materialist solutions.
-Walking through the forest, Sam chose the least scenic but most secluded route, leading through thick pine forest. Grey rushed around in a frenzy, snuffing up stories, like maybe the coyote that killed its prey dead here, or a three-year-old hare that was caught by its leg already lamed a week ago in another scuffle, that time with a wolverine, and it knew that it could not be so lucky twice. It ran some way then lay down so as not to prolong the inevitable and gave itself to the coyote.
+-----
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+These shortcomings resulted in a non-thorough materialist viewpoint: when dealing with questions about nature, the early materialists had a strong materialist viewpoint but when dealing with social issues, they “slipped” into an idealist viewpoint.
-[[Image:f0127-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-Grey smelled its before and its death smell, then much later in the walk its after, where the coyote had passed it in its scat days after. He smelled the terror of the ground squirrel in its burrow but he catalogued the scent and left it because it was too deep out of the reach of his snout and there was much too much else to read to make time for digging. There was smell around a grand old tree with a thick trunk like the leg of a diplodocus and he ran around it excitedly yapping and cocked his leg to it. Perhaps it was a wolf smell and he was calling out to them and leaving a message in case they came back. Perhaps he was accepting the challenge of the scent of his primordial nemesis: the cat of the wild, the mountain lion.
+-----
-Sam walked us through like a heritage tour guide who has been decades in the game so has all the knowledge but waning enthusiasm. He pointed out the ''Polyporaceae'' fungi, of the ''Badius'' genus, jutting from a tree, a pruned brown palm cupping water. He took a skeletal beehive, paper thin, a snakeskin doubled and redoubled, folded and helixed on itself, broke it apart in his hands to show us the chambered innards and crumbled it absently. It fell away like ashes.
+==== Annotation 58 ====
-He said, ‘Don’t you see that that is what it is? Empty? It is a museum to itself, like someone took the whole thing and replaced it with a replica, put it aside for us to experience.’ At first I thought he meant the beehive and I thought, that is very deep to get about a beehive, I am sure the bees have just moved home. But as we went along I began to think he might be talking about the park itself, like it was all a vacant symbol to him.
+Lenin explains this concept of “slipping into” idealism through a non-thorough materialist viewpoint in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism:'' “Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation, you have already lost every one of your weapons against fideism, for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism — and that is all fideism wants.”
-We walked for maybe a couple of hours and eventually came onto a lake from inside the trees. It was that opaque and turquoise blue that you can just about accept in photographs but on seeing it there in the real-world landscape I was incredulous. It had a kind of powdered texture, as if a giant had painted the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds and then swilled out their paintbrush in the water of the lake. Peyto Lake is fed by a glacier, Sam said, and in the warmer months the meltwater takes the rock flour it ground up underneath itself and spills it into the lake. When this happens the water of the lake gets called ''glacial milk''.
+''Note: fideism is a form of idealism which holds that truth and knowledge are received through faith or revelation. Subjectivism is the centering of one’s own self in conscious activities and perspective; see Annotation 222, p. 218.''
-I told them I had seen this before, in the very wildest place I know at home: my old quarry. The quarry was for limestone but it had been abandoned for years so filled up with rainwater. The rainwater mixing with the limestone dust makes a similar rock milk, although it is not as dramatic, but eerie, the hacked cliffs and flats still and blinding white like a moonscape doused with floodlights.
+In the same work, Lenin upholds that objective reality can be known through sense perception:
-The quarry was fenced off because it was dangerous and also because it was a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Hunks of orange rust char it, the remains of miscellaneous pieces of machinery, but it is heavy with the presence of the fossils in its 430-million-year-old sediment. There are trilobites from the Silurian period when life was just beginning to crawl out of the sea, and as though to mirror this there are shallow pools writhing with rare newts. There is my nesting pair of peregrine falcons, which Sam says are considered particularly spiritual by Native Americans and Ancient Egyptians. Driven to local extinction in places by DDT in the 1960s, I tell them, but clawing back in this graveyard to humanity. Sometimes when I am there I imagine it is the far future and I am the last human on earth.
+<blockquote>
+We ask, is a man given objective reality when he sees something red or feels something hard, etc., or not? [...] If you hold that it is not given, you... inevitably sink to subjectivism... If you hold that it is given, a philosophical concept is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long, long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.
+</blockquote>
-But the wild of Peyto Lake is the conceptual opposite. It is modelled on life before, but really it is just a simulation. Sam made me see this. He seemed unfazed by the place and sat on the pebbled shore throwing sticks into the water for Grey. On the far shore we could see ants looking down into the lake from an overhang which Ollie told us was designated the most scenic viewpoint in Canada. He asked us if we didn’t think it could be as beautiful seen from the other way round.
+Lenin also explains that proper materialism must recognize objective/absolute truth:
-I was glad that being with the boys gave me a backstage pass into the park and made me different to all the other tourists, even though that was exactly what I was. Sam probably couldn’t help thinking I was not any better than them either.
+<blockquote>
+To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth.
+</blockquote>
-‘It’s just a spectacle to them,’ Sam said.
+A failure to recognize the existence of such objective, absolute truth, according to Lenin, constitutes “relativism,” a position that all truth is relative and can never be absolutely, objectively knowable.
-Ollie laughed and told him to shut up, the park was beautiful, and if it weren’t for all the tourists they would not have the money to keep it open and conserved.
+<blockquote>
+It is unconditionally true that to every scientific ideology (as distinct, for instance, from religious ideology), there corresponds an objective truth, absolute nature. You will say that this distinction between relative and absolute truth is indefinite. And I shall reply: yes, it is sufficiently ‘indefinite’ to prevent science from becoming a dogma in the bad sense of the term, from becoming something dead, frozen, ossified; but it is at the same time sufficiently ‘definite’ to enable us to dissociate ourselves in the most emphatic and irrevocable manner from fideism and agnosticism, from philosophical idealism and the sophistry of the followers of Hume and Kant. Here is a boundary which you have not noticed, and not having noticed it, you have fallen into the swamp of reactionary philosophy. It is the boundary between dialectical materialism and relativism.
+</blockquote>
-‘It’s beautiful, yes, but in a different way to how it should be. Doesn’t it worry you that it will end up with only preserving real mountains, picture-postcard ones? With waterfalls and snow on top and its image reflected in a lake? What about where we live? How long until the river is polluted because people have real mountains put aside to go visit in a park?’
+In other words, while proper materialism must contain a degree of relativistic thinking sufficient to challenge assumptions and reexamine perceived truth periodically, materialists must not fall into complete relativism (such as that espoused by Hume and Kant) lest they fall into idealist positions. Ultimately, Absolute Truth — according to Lenin — constitutes the alignment of conscious understanding with objective reality (not to be confused with Hegel’s notion of Absolute Truth; see Annotation 232, p. 228).
-And Sam is right. At home our quilted landscape is fully exploited and the wild is relegated to special parks. Spaces set aside for preservation are museums, and their segregation makes it okay to debase anything outside of them. Parks are time capsules and that itself seems a futile admission of the falling-apart of nature.
+Lenin recognized the development of Marx and Engels as “''modern materialism'', which is immeasurably richer in content and in comparably more consistent than all preceding forms of materialism,” in large part because Marx and Engels were able to apply materialism properly to social sciences by taking the “direct materialist road as against idealism.” He goes on to describe would-be materialists who fall to idealist positions due to relativism and other philosophical inadequacies as “a contemptible ''middle party'' in philosophy, who confuse the materialist and idealist trends on every question.”
-I chewed on my sandwich. Ollie took his time formulating a reply. ‘But no one would care about mountains at all if there wasn’t somewhere for them to come and see real ones.’ I could not disagree with him either.
+Lenin warned that a failure to hold a thoroughly materialist viewpoint leads philosophers to become “ensnared in idealism, that is, in a diluted and subtle fideism; they became ensnared from the moment they took ‘sensation’ not as an image of the external world but as a special ‘element.’ It is nobody’s sensation, nobody’s mind, nobody’s spirit, nobody’s will — this is what one inevitably comes to if one does not recognise the materialist theory that the human mind reflects an objectively real external world.”
-==== NO PERSON IS AN ISLAND ====
+In other words, idealist conceptions of sensation inject mysticism into philosophy by conceiving of sensation as otherworldly, supernatural, and detached from material human beings with material experiences in the material world.
-Mum had sent me frantic messages over Facebook and to my email to say she had had a really bad dream about something happening to me and to ring her. My phone had been dead for a week at the bottom of my bag so I had not seen Mum ring. I phoned her up and she had a fit, first begging me to come home if I was going to keep on pulling stupid stunts like that, disappearing without contact, then when I promised I would not again she burst into tears.
+The development of natural sciences in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century and early 20<sup>th</sup> centuries (especially the inventions of Roentgen<ref>Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, 1845–1923 (German): Physicist.</ref>, Becquerel<ref>Henri Becquerel, 1852–1908 (French): Physicist.</ref>, Thomson<ref>Sir Joseph John Thomson, 1856–1940 (British): Physicist, professor at London Royal Institute.</ref> etc.), disproved the theories of “classical elements” such as fire, water, air, etc. [see ''Primitive Materialism'', p. 52]. These innovations led to a viewpoint crisis in the field of physical science. Many idealists used this opportunity to affirm the non-material nature of the world, ascribing the roles of supernatural forces to the birth of the world.
-===== My only child, my daughter. =====
+-----
-But Mum on the phone is just a little voice, so small and so far away. She is standing on a dot and the balloon gets bigger and worse still Dad on the phone, standing on another dot, sounding tired and saying why do you have to do things like this to your mother, you know what her nerves are like. Tired in a way I have heard many times before. Tired, like you are always so far away, always have been so distant, we have always been stood on these dots getting further and further away from each other.
+==== Annotation 59 ====
-This is only the second time I have heard their voices since I left. I should call home more. But she is crying on the phone and yes it hurts a little, ''I miss you but you know I’d never say'', but also it feels good; she is crying but she can’t bring me home. The power of their summons has nothing on me now. I am becoming my own person apart from them.
+Lenin discussed this viewpoint crisis extensively in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''. Here Lenin discusses relativist reactions to new breakthroughs in natural science, which led even scientists (who proclaimed to be materialists) to take idealist positions:
-Before me her name was Jennifer and she worked as a secretary and before that she was as young as I am and she had ideas about who Jennifer was and what Jennifer wanted and what she wanted was to go to Italy and learn Italian and be an au pair and before that still she was a child, a little girl called Jennifer who wanted to be a ballerina, like she later wanted me to be. She had a whole self before me and I will never get to that part of her. She is a person with a name: Jennifer. Jennifer and Brian. Not just Mum and Dad. But I have always been Erin first and daughter after. Mum, Dad, Erin. Why is it we do that?
+<blockquote>
+We are faced, says Poincaré [a French scientist], with the “ruins” of the old principles of physics, “a general debacle of principles.” It is true, he remarks, that all the mentioned departures from principles refer to infinitesimal magnitudes; it is possible that we are still ignorant of other infinitesimals counteracting the undermining of the old principles... But at any rate we have reached a “period of doubt.” We have already seen what epistemological deductions the author draws from this “period of doubt:” “it is not nature which imposes on [or dictates to] us the concepts of space and time, but we who impose them on nature;” “whatever is not thought, is pure nothing.” These deductions are idealist deductions. The breakdown of the most fundamental principles shows (such is Poincaré’s trend of thought) that these principles are not copies, photographs of nature, not images of something external in relation to man’s consciousness, but products of his consciousness. Poincaré does not develop these deductions consistently, nor is he essentially interested in the philosophical aspect of the question.
+</blockquote>
-It is a burden to have a mother that wants so much of you, but it must also be a burden to be an overly attached mother, like why can’t I just shake the daughter from me? You grew out of me but you never really grew away?
+Lenin concludes by stating that the non-thorough materialist position has lead directly to these idealist positions of relativism:
-===== I am reminding you that your name is Jennifer. =====
+<blockquote>
+The essence of the crisis in modern physics consists in the breakdown of the old laws and basic principles, in the rejection of an objective reality existing outside the mind, that is, in the replacement of materialism by idealism and agnosticism.
+</blockquote>
-===== Daughter; my parasitic twin. =====
+With this historical background, in order to fight against the distortions of many idealists and to protect the development of the materialist viewpoint, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin simultaneously summarized all the natural scientific achievements in late 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup> century and built upon Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ thought to develop this definition of matter:
-==== THERE IS NO WORD FOR ANIMAL IN THE DAKOTA LANGUAGE ====
+''“Matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality which is given to man in his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”''
-There is the bigger picture and then there is sex. Having sex grounds you and brings you out of the bigger picture. It makes life more livable and less giant and incomprehensible. It makes sense why people settle down and have babies really. It makes sense to push an idea of love and stability to stop people from feeling so rebellious and righteous and born to save the world. I suppose that was why Thoreau and the Unabomber and all those guys took oaths of abstinence. Plus it was a handy way to illegitimise women.
+Lenin’s definition of matter shows that:
-Because when it suited men historically, sexuality was a thing that women had and they were above. In Greek times and in the story of the Fall, we were not allowed a say in decision-making because we were completely and utterly ruled by our sexy, lusty desires. Men could do without sex and did not see the point in dirtying themselves in such a way, and could therefore keep rational heads on their unsexy bodies.
+''First,'' we need to distinguish between the definition of “matter” as a philosophical category (the category that summarizes the most basic and common attributes of all material existence, and which was defined with the objective of solving the basic issues of philosophy) from the definition of “matter” that was used in specialized sciences (specific and sense-detectable substance).
-What must have happened in recent times is that the male genome mutated like a grasshopper driven into frenzy and meta-morphosing into a locust for lack of food. And now the clitoris is just a relic of that bygone time when women needed pleasure from sex to encourage procreation. Like the appendix is a relic of a time when people ate grass. No one eats grass any more.
+''Second,'' the most basic, common attribute of all kinds of matter [and under both definitions listed in the previous paragraph] is ''objective existence,'' meaning matter exists outside of human consciousness, independently of human consciousness, no matter whether humans can perceive it with our senses or not.
-Sam feels heavy to lie with. He feels anchored. He feels like he bends space–time and the groove of it pulls at me. He smells like dirt, in a good way, like his skin is smoothed over with clay. We were tentative and very precious, a bit clumsy also, like children holding tiny mice. He has a freckle on his right eyelid. It is in the crease of his eyelid so that you can only see it when he is sleeping. When I pointed it out to him he said, ‘Yeah, I know, my ex used to like that one,’ and this made me inconceivably sad for just a millisecond.
+''Third,'' matter, with its specific forms, can cause and affect mental events in humans when it directly or indirectly impacts the human senses; human consciousness is the reflection of matter; matter is the thing that is reflected by human consciousness.
-We started on the big talks that often come post-sex. The ones you use to excavate the depths of others. I said I did not know why everyone did not take themselves off to new places, that it didn’t even cost much if you did it right.
+Lenin’s definition of matter played an important role in the development of materialism and scientific consciousness.
-‘If everyone did it then the world would grind to a halt.’
+''First,'' by pointing out that the most basic, common attribute of matter is objective existence, Lenin successfully distinguished the basic difference between the definition of matter as a philosophical category and the definition of matter as a category of specialized sciences. It helped solve the problems of defining matter in the previous forms of materialism; it offered scientific evidence to define what can be considered matter; it layed out a theoretical foundation for building a materialist viewpoint of history, and overcame the shortcomings of idealist conceptions of society.
-‘Well, would that be so bad a thing?’
+''Second,'' by asserting that matter was ''“objective reality,” “given to man in his sensations,”'' and “''copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations,”'' Lenin not only confirmed the primary existence of matter and the secondary existence of consciousness [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88''] but he also affirmed that humans had the ability to be aware of objective reality through the “copying, photographing and reflection of our sensations” [in other words, sense perceptions].
-‘If everyone did it how would any culture preserve itself?’
+==== b. Mode and Forms of Existence of Matter ====
-I thought of Naaja then, walking herself into the big tundra all alone, waif-small on the grey iced turf, a burden on her tiny shoulders, my own so easily thrown off and abandoned.
+According to the dialectical materialist viewpoint, ''motion'' is the mode of existence of matter; ''space'' and ''time'' are the forms of existence of matter.
-===== And why does she not throw hers down? =====
+-----
-‘What about places you care about? Who would look after places? Most Indians were nomadic once, but now they sit around in poverty fighting oil and mineral prospectors off land they see as sacred.’
+==== Annotation 60 ====
-That one stumped me. A pang of guilt for the small cold ring of protesters gathered around the would-be drill site back home.
+<blockquote>
+Mode refers to the way or manner in which something occurs or exists. You can think of mode as pertaining to the “how,” as opposed to the “what.” For example, the ''mode'' of circulation refers to ''how'' commodities circulate within society [see Annotation 14, p. 16]; ''mode'' of production refers to ''how'' commodities are produced in society. So, mode of existence of matter refers to ''how'' matter exists in our universe.
-‘I just think if there’s something you don’t like about something you shouldn’t go off in search of something better just for yourself. You should fix it, take what you have and make it better for everyone. Things don’t change just by wanting them too,’ he said.
+Form comes from the category pair [see ''Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics'', p. 126] of Content and Form [see p. 147]. Form refers to how we perceive objects, phenomena, and ideas. So, form of existence of matter refers to the ways in which we perceive the existence of matter [explained below] in our universe.
+</blockquote>
-===== But you don’t understand that is what I am doing. =====
+''- Motion is the Mode of Existence of Matter''
-We lay awake talking and he started to tell me more and more, peeling away each layer of his skin, and in a way I wish he had not because now I have seen his innards I am going to end up really liking him. And that really will not do when I have to leave soon. He told me the story of the totem pole.
+As Friedrich Engels explained: ''“Motion, in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right up to thinking.”''
-‘On the bottom there is an orca, our family crest. It brings luck and will come to the help of the family when any of them are vulnerable. From my nana’s house you can see an ocean cove and sometimes when they are near, in the shallows herding fish to eat, you can see the orcas arching out of the water, you can go out in a boat to meet them. Underneath it is the salmon carving, the symbol of the reservation of Salmon Water because all of the family crests are water animals in Salmon Water.
+According to Engels, motion encompasses more than just positional changes. Motion embodies “all the changes and processes happening in this universe;” matter is always associated with motion, and matter can only express its existence through motion.
-‘We also have a guardian animal. This is the carving above that looks a bit like a dog but more like a bird with ears, I think. The wolf is a really charged animal and helps with sickness. Not so much physical sickness, that’s more the orca, this one stands for the sickness of our family’s heart, or sadness.
+-----
-‘And the otter is above the wolf. The otter is thought of as being mischievous and bright, happy and curious. The otter is my ma as a child because she was always sunny and laughing and hiding herself away so that my nana would get scared but my grandpa never did because he knew she would always let herself be found in the end. The otter is from the times they had before she got taken away.
+==== Annotation 61 ====
-‘And then the thunderbird stands above them. The thunderbird is a commemoration of bad things that are acknowledged but best not talked about. It brings thunder by beating its wings and lightning when it blinks its eyes, and it is a killer of the orca. We show reverence towards it. It broke apart our family.
+In Dialectical Materialist philosophy, “motion” is also known as “change” and it refers to the changes which occur as a result of the mutual impacts which occur in or between subjects through the negation of contradictions. Motion is a constant attribute of all things, phenomena, and ideas (see Characteristics of Development, p. 124).
-‘My aunt and uncle carved and painted it from a cedar my grandpa had picked out years before he died, because he knew she would let herself be found again one day even though they hadn’t seen her since she was three years old. The first time they met again was when she was twenty-six, they held a potlatch feast and gave her the totem, and my ma cried herself to sleep for days in secret.
+Because matter is inseparable from motion (and vice versa), Engels defined motion as the ''mode'' of matter — the way or manner in which matter exists. It is impossible for matter in our universe to exist in completely static and unchanging state, isolated from the rest of existence; thus matter exists in the ''mode'' of motion. Over time, motion leads to ''development'' as things, phenomena, and ideas transition through various stages of quality change [see Annotation 117, p. 119].
-‘She couldn’t move back to the reservation and neither could dad to his. They didn’t have the identity cards to prove their indigenous heritage, because when they were both children they were taken from their parents by Indian agents and put into adoption with white families. Dad only had his two sisters left when they repatriated. Before he got taken he was being brought up by his grandparents because his dad left and his ma died, and they are dead now too.’
+Matter exists objectively, therefore motion also exists objectively. The motion of matter is self-motion<ref>In the original Vietnamese, the word tự vận động is used here, which we roughly translate to the word ''self-motion'' throughout this book. Literally, tự vận động means: “it moves itself.”</ref>.
-He stopped talking but in a deliberate kind of way, like he was done now and that was all there was to say of the matter. I suppose he has rationalised it so well as to be able to talk it through, seeing as that is what his parents do, he says, with their speaking jobs. For the first time there was not a laughing cadence through every sentence he spoke.
+-----
-This made me sad for two reasons; because it was sad in itself, and because by telling me he was signifying that he expected never to see me again after my short stay and it was therefore entirely reasonable to open up so soon about something so personal.
+==== Annotation 62 ====
-He said he did not know how to feel about his white grandparents. That his mum’s adoptive parents were paid to take her in and his dad’s saw themselves as martyrs for saving him from the reservation where his real parents killed themselves with alcohol.
+It is important to note that “matter,” in the philosophical sense as used in dialectical materialist phlosophy, includes all that is “objective” (external) to individual human cosnciousness. This includes objective phenomena which human senses are unable to detect, such as objective social relations, objective economic values, etc. Objectiveness is discussed more in Annotation 108, p. 112; objective social relations are discussed more in Annotation 10, p. 10.
-He also at some point said something really specific that I have not ever thought about before. He says they are being disappeared, but no other culture gets worn on so many T-shirts. He was being light-hearted, so for something to say I thought it would be okay to bring up Rochelle and all the things she had said about her white boyfriend’s nicknames for her. I laughed and said it was kind of funny, and surely that is all you could find it now looking over it because it was so stupid.
+In ''Dialectics of Nature'', Friedrich Engels discussed the properties of motion and explained that motion can neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore, motion can only change form or transfer from one object to another. In this sense, all objects are dynamically linked together through motion:
-‘How did you manage to get into a reservation with a camera anyway?’
+<blockquote>
+The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existence extending from stars to atoms... In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion. It already becomes evident here that matter is unthinkable without motion. And if, in addition, matter confronts us as something given, equally uncreatable as indestructible, it follows that motion also is as uncreatable as indestructible. It became impossible to reject this conclusion as soon as it was recognised that the universe is a system, an interconnection of bodies.
+</blockquote>
-I had to tell him the whole story because I suppose that was the only credible way I was getting in there uninvited. He listened with a frown on his face. When I had finished he made me want to cry again by telling me a girl on his course at university had been researching murdered indigenous women who disappeared off the highways in Canada for her dissertation, and was murdered by two white men before she finished it. I just mumbled that it could have been a lot worse, then.
+In other words, every body of matter is in motion relative to other bodies of matter, and thus matter is inseparable from motion. Motion results from the interaction of bodies of matter. Because motion and matter define each other, and because motion can only exist in relation to matter and matter can only exist in relation to motion, the motion of matter can be described as “self-motion,” because the motion is not created externally but exists only within and in relation to matter itself. Engels further explains that if this were not true — if motion were external to matter — then motion itself would have had to have been created external to matter, which is impossible:
-He looked redder with the light from the window on him and my own arms looked yellow. I listened to the sound of my voice as if on playback and wondered how I had ever got there, in that unfamiliar room, feeling suddenly blank and inert.
+<blockquote>
+To say that matter during the whole unlimited time of its existence has only once, and for what is an infinitesimally short period in comparison to its eternity, found itself able to differentiate its motion and thereby to unfold the whole wealth of this motion, and that before and after this remains restricted for eternity to mere change of place — this is equivalent to maintaining that matter is mortal and motion transitory. The indestructibility of motion cannot be merely quantitative, it must also be conceived qualitatively; matter whose purely mechanical change of place includes indeed the possibility under favourable conditions of being transformed into heat, electricity, chemical action, or life, but which is not capable of producing these conditions from out of itself, such matter has forfeited motion; motion which has lost the capacity of being transformed into the various forms appropriate to it may indeed still have dynamis but no longer energeia, and so has become partially destroyed. Both, however, are unthinkable.
+</blockquote>
-==== MONOCULTURES OF THE SPIRIT ====
+So, motion can change forms and can transfer from one material body to another, but it can never be created externally from matter, and neither motion nor matter can be created or destroyed in our universe. Thus, matter exists in a state of “self-motion;” motion can never externally be created nor externally applied to matter.
-Agitations. Larus desperately in contact. Reiterated points: you’ve been stayed put a while, you’re planning on leaving soon, right, you need to keep well ahead of winter, don’t forget what you set out to do.
+To put it another way, motion results from the fact that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist as assemblages of relationships [see The Principle of General Relationships, p. 107], and these relationships contain opposing forces. As Lenin explained in his ''Philosophical Notebooks'':
-‘I haven’t. I’m still working on it here.’
+<blockquote>
+The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their ‘self-movement,’ in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.
+</blockquote>
-‘Do you not think you might be making excuses to stay put?’
-‘No, I think—’
+-----
-‘Just have a think about it. I’m surprised at you is all. Didn’t think you of all people would get distracted by a boy.’
+Based on the scientific achievements which occurred in his lifetime, Engels classified motion into 5 basic forms: ''mechanical motion'' (changes in positions of objects in space); ''physical motion'' (movements of molecules, electrons, fundamental particles, thermal processes, electricity…); ''chemical motion'' (changes of organic and inorganic substances in combination and separation processes…); ''biological motion'' (changes of living objects, or genetic structure…); ''social motion'' (changes in economy, politics, culture, and social life).
-Sam could tell I was irritated afterwards. He asked what Larus had said to make me so sour. I did not tell him in case he thought I had taken it to heart. He kept asking questions about Larus, like how much we talk, how old he was, things that irritated me more with their connotations.
+These basic forms of motion are arranged into levels of advancement based on the level of complexity of matter that is affected.
-‘I just wonder why a man old enough to be your dad, who begot five children and who probably thinks we we’re all “children of Earth” and that age sets no boundaries for kindred spirits, is interested in your “feminist project”.’
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-8.png]]
-‘I really don’t think that it’s any of your business.’
+The basic forms of motion each affect different forms of matter, but these forms of motion do not exist independently from each other; they actually have strong relationships with each other, in which the more advanced forms of motion develop from lower forms of motion; the more advanced forms of motion also internally include lower forms of motion. [I.e., biological motion contains chemical motion; chemical motion contains physical motion; etc.]
-I wanted to make it sting like I did not care what he thought. For a second he looked like a cat I had splashed with water for no reason other than to see it squirm. I should not have. It was my fault for making Larus sound worse than he is when I described him just for comedic effect, really.
+Every object exists with many forms of motion, but any given object is defined by its most advanced form of motion. [I.e., living creatures are defined in terms of biological motion, societies are defined in terms of social motion, etc.]
-Ah, the burden of being a feeling woman! But I am not about to let myself fulfil the very expectations I set out to subvert. I am fully committed to the project and ready to get on with it because winter is catching me up.
+By classifying the basic forms of motion, Engels laid out the foundation for classification and synthesization of science. The basic forms of motion differ from one another, but they are also unified with each other into one continuous system of motion. Understanding this dialectical relationship between different forms of motion helped to overcome misunderstandings and confusion about motion.
-I told Sam I needed to leave because his friend Ollie had mentioned driving to Dawson Creek via Prince George to make some deliveries in his pick-up, and it would be stupid to miss the lift. He said it was an indirect route to Dawson and that I could hitch later on or he would drive me. When I said I hadn’t been doing much on the documentary and I had to get on with things, he said, ‘Oh, of course, for art’s sake’ sarcastically.
+-----
-That was just one of his momentary lapses, he was soon right back to his jovial self, only being at the same time distant with me. In the morning I could not even tell if we was mad or not.
+==== Annotation 63 ====
-‘Well, I’m going, then.’
+In ''Dialectics of Nature'', Engels clears up a great deal of confusion and addresses many misconceptions about matter, motion, forces, energy, etc. which existed in both science and philosophy at the time by defining and explaining the dialectical nature of matter and motion.
-‘Have a nice trip, thanks for stopping by.’
+When Dialectical Materialism affirmed that motion was the mode of existence — the natural attribute of matter — it also confirmed that motion is absolute and eternal. This does not mean that Dialectical Materialism denies that things can become ''frozen;'' however, according to the dialectical materialist viewpoint, ''freezing is a special form of motion, it is motion in equilibrium'' and ''freezing is relative and temporary.''
-‘It’s been really nice to meet you.’
+''Motion in equilibrium'' is motion that has not changed the positions, forms, and/or structures of things.
-‘Yeah, same with you.’
+Freezing is a ''relative'' phenomenon because freezing only occurs in some forms of motion and in some specific relations, it does not occur in all forms of motion and all kinds of relations. Freezing is a temporary phenomenon because freezing only exists for a limited period of time, it cannot last forever.
-‘Aren’t you going to at least pretend to be sad that I’m going?’
+-----
-‘What, try to stop you? That wouldn’t be very feminist of me.’ It was a deliberate game of trying to be the most unaffected. So I shrugged and shouted bye to Berry and turned down the path towards Ollie waiting in his pick-up.
+==== Annotation 64 ====
-==== TOP TIPS ON HOW TO BE A TRAVEL WRITER ====
+Equilibrium can exist at any advancement of motion. Lenin discussed ''equilibrium'' as it pertains to the social form of motion in discussing an equilibrium of forces existing in Russia in 1905 in this article, ''An Equilibrium of Forces:''
-The highway was empty, and our headlights pooled out ahead. For miles we would see other vehicles in the opposite lane only, and only sporadically. A hump in the road appeared, so that we could not see the behind of it as we rose and trees spilled on either side to its edge. Mounting the rise, we saw a large dark shape up ahead, maybe twenty metres. Ollie slowed the van and as our light poured up and over it we saw it was a small black bear. It stopped in the opposite lane, one paw raised limply, and looked at us. Ollie stopped the van to let it pass.
+<blockquote>
+) The result to date (Monday, October 30) is an equilibrium of forces, as we already pointed out in Proletary, No. 23.
-The bear stayed put, lowering its head like a dog in submission. It was small and misplaced against the wide cut of the road. It tapped the ground with its paw, hesitant, testing the cool density of the concrete, warily reading the dead-eyed, no-legged creature that stood still before it. Then it bunched itself up and bounded in front of the van, its four legs gambolling, and we watched as its rump shimmied off into the trees.
+) Tsarism is no longer strong enough, the revolution not yet strong enough, to win.
-From outside Edmonton we had rejoined the Yellowhead Highway, a branch of the Trans-Canada Highway system which veers north-west, breaking off from the due westerly route and connecting Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta with British Columbia. The Yellowhead is named for Tête Jaune, aka Pierre Bostonais, an Iroquois-Metis fur trader and explorer who in turn got his name from his blond hair, homage to his part-white origin.
+) Hence the tremendous amount of vacillation. The terrific and enormous increase of revolutionary happenings (strikes, meetings, barricades, committees of public safety, complete paralysis of the government, etc.), on the other hand, the absence of resolute repressive measures. The troops are wavering.
-In 1819 Tête Jaune led a brigade of the Hudson Bay Company through a pass in the Rocky Mountains, a piper with a ditty of bounties and a whole band of rats to follow. The pass now bears his name and from this the highway takes its.
+) The Tsar’s Court is wavering (The Times and the Daily Telegraph) between dictatorship and a constitution.
-I was back on the road and it felt good to see the horizon reeling in, all the temporary things staying just where I left them. The feeling that had kept me still the past few weeks was less of a captivation and more like a rabbit trap, wire noose on my leg. It was not aligned with my purpose.
+The Court is wavering and biding its time. Strictly speaking, these are its correct tactics: the equilibrium of forces compels it to bide its time, for power is in its hands.
-===== And what is that exactly? =====
+The revolution has reached a stage at which it is disadvantageous for the counter-revolution to attack, to assume the offensive.
-From Edmonton the highway slides though the Rockies of Jasper National Park fast and sure like a river. The weather was sullen, and low clouds sulked around the grey and shadowed mountains, brooding thunder. Pine smells crept osmotically through the damp air and the open windows. Breaks in the cloud cover would stream down sun in spotlights, directing me further and further on the unfolding road, enchanting, pied-pipering me like Tête Jaune with all his little rodents. Big eagles perched on telephone wires, silhouetted in the low light.
+For us, for the proletariat, for consistent revolutionary democrats, this is not enough. If we do not rise to a higher level, if we do not manage to launch an independent offensive, if we do not smash the forces of Tsarism, do not destroy its actual power, then the revolution will stop half way, then the bourgeoisie will fool the workers.
-We arrived at our halfway point after Ollie had made a stop for his delivery.
+) Rumour has it that a constitution has been decided upon. If that is so, then it follows that the Tsar is heeding the lessons of 1848 and other revolutions: he wants to grant a constitution without a constituent assembly, before a constituent assembly, apart from a constituent assembly. What kind of constitution? At best (for ’the Tsar) a Constitutional-Democratic constitution.
-‘This is Prince George, where we leave the Yellowhead Highway and strike out north to Dawson. Yellowhead continues right the way into the Pacific, then by ferry onto Graham Island.’
+This implies: achievement of the Constitutional-Democrats’ ideal, skipping the revolution; deceiving the people, for all the same there will be no complete and actual freedom of elections.
-The Hudson Bay Company drew a straight line right across Canada, not even conceding to the ocean. A branding of ownership. The other side of Prince George is nicknamed the Highway of Tears for all the unsolved murders. Sam said between Prince George and Prince Rupert at the coast, from the sixties until the last one a few months ago, something like forty have happened. Women picked up off the side of the road. Almost exclusively indigenous women.
+Should not the revolution skip this granted constitution?
-Ollie said, ‘Bet ya glad you don’t have to hitch that highway.’
+-----
-Could I ever have hitched that highway? I mean, could it have been the same highway for me as for them?
+''- Space and Time are Forms of Existence of Matter''
+</blockquote>
-The next day we left the Yellowhead exactly where the designated murder zone started. Yellowhead spilled out, continuing Tête Jaune’s trail through the Rockies, stalking a century and a half behind him. Him stone cold dead and unaware of his namesake (and yes, well, at least he will be remembered for ever) or of the legacy of highways for indigenous women who have no namesake, only anonymous tears.
+Every form of matter exists in a specific position, with specific space particularity (height, width, length, etc.), in specific relation (in front or behind, above or under, to the left or right, etc.) with other forms of matter. These positional relations exist in what we call ''space.'' [Space is defined by positional relations of matter.]
-And along such a highway by 1 p.m. we had reached Dawson Creek. Ollie left me at Mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway, where Chris McCandless took a picture with the big road sign, extending 1,523 miles, all the way to Fairbanks, Alaska. Tomorrow just past Fort Nelson I will enter the Yukon, the crazy Wild North and the place that cast a spell on so many Mountain Men, where the ghosts of old miners made Kerouac wonder. The Klondike, where Jack London the wolf-man found himself.
+On the other hand, the existence of matter is also expressed in the speed of change and the order in which changes occur. These changes occur in what we call ''time.'' As Engels wrote: “For the basic forms of all existence are space and time, and a being outside of time is as absurd as an existence outside space.” Matter, space, and time are not separable; there is no matter that exists outside of space and time; there is also no space and time that exist outside of matter’s motion.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+-----
-[[Image:f0138-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-==== GOLD FEVER IN THE YUKON ====
+==== Annotation 65 ====
-From Fort Nelson I got completely stuck. Two full days to get a ride. I was not the only one trying to hitch and I had stayed down-road from the others in a long, sparse queue. There was a woman in first place who looked to be in her late twenties when I passed her in the morning after staying overnight in a hostel near the road. I wanted to interview her but she was not very approachable. She had been waiting for a lift for three whole days. Then I passed a guy who was maybe in his mid-thirties, scruffy with long, lank hair. He said he had been waiting two days but he felt good about today and he wished me luck. I watched him stand and wave and jab out his thumb, jumping up and down, and wondered how he thought he would ever get a lift acting like a crazy person.
+Space and time, as the forms of matter, i.e.: the ways in which we perceive the existence of matter. We are only able to perceive and understand material objects as they exist within space and time.
-The girl got a lift on my first day. I only counted fifty-four cars that day. There was one woman who gave me a look that was not just judgemental, it had, considering her strangeness to me, a terrible anger to it like I had not seen before. I gave her the finger and the woman gave an even angrier honk.
+Space and time, as forms of existence of matter, exist objectively [see Annotation 108,
-I felt bored and restless but of course there would be times when I did not get picked up right away. I imagine the guy has had a much less fluid journey from wherever he came from. The next day, monotonous, feeling quite hopeless, I set myself down again at a distance from the guy, who looked like he might have stayed out all night. Then a really bad thing happened. A lorry pulled in in front of where I was sat on my bag. The window rolled down and the guy inside said, ‘Hey, I can take you to Whitehorse.’ I could see down the road that the thirty-something guy was stood with his arms out above his head imploringly.
+p. 112], and are defined by matter. [Space is defined by the positional relations between material objects; time is defined by the speed of change of material objects and the order in which these changes occur.] Space has three dimensions: height, width, length; time has one direction: from the past to the future.
-‘Don’t take this the wrong way but I usually only pick up girls. You can’t always trust the guys. Especially if they look like bums.’
+==== c. The Material Unity of the World ====
-I tried to compute the ethics quickly as I collected my things from the ground as slowly as I could.
+Dialectical Materialism affirms that the nature of the world is matter, and the world is unified in its material properties. [In other words: the entire universe, in all its diversity, is made of matter, and the properties of matter are the same throughout the known universe.]
-===== It would be completely hypocritical to take advantage. =====
+The material nature of the world is proven on the following basis:
-Well, if I didn’t take the lift he certainly was not going to pick up the guy. I raised my hand to the guy in what I hoped was an apologetic salute, but I do not think he took it that way because he threw his rucksack to the floor and started kicking it.
+''First,'' there is only one world: the material world; the material world is the first existence [i.e., it existed before consciousness], it exists objectively, and independently, of human consciousness.
-‘Don’t worry too much about him, he’s just another bum trying to get to Alaska. They’re usually younger and sometimes they look sweet so someone picks them up. I reckon he’ll wait maybe a week. Maybe his luck will come in and it will rain, then some old dude might take pity on him.’
+''Second,'' the material world exists eternally, endlessly, infinitely; it has no known beginning point and there is no evidence that it will ever disappear.
-The driver’s name was Ron. Ron said sometimes there are ten hitchhikers at any one time trying to get to Fairbanks. He asked me where I was heading and I told him, Fairbanks. This made him laugh. I told him about the documentary.
+''Third,'' all known objects and phenomena of the material world have objective relations with each other and all objects and phenomena exist in unity with each other. All of them are specific forms and structures of matter, or have material origin which was born from matter, and all are governed by the objective rules of the material world. In the material world, there is nothing that exists outside of the changing and transforming processes of matter; all of these processes exist as causes and effects of each other.
-He said, ‘I like that. And why not ladies, hey? I got a little clue for you, though. You might not get a great reception when you tell the folk you meet in Alaska what you’re doing. Alaskans ''hate'' these guys.’
+-----
-‘Why do they hate them?’
+==== Annotation 66 ====
-He said they are hated because they flock from all over North America and some from Europe too. He said they hear the call of the wild and they come running like apostles to it. Usually they get themselves in trouble somewhere and some rescue team has to bail them out.
+The most important thing to understand here is that every object and phenomenon in the universe arises as matter, all material objects and phenomena are dynamically linked to one another in an infinite chain of causes and effects and changes and transformations, all governed by the material laws of our reality. This understanding is the material foundation of dialectical materialism.
-Is that not everyone’s problem the whole world over? Shall I call it ''saturation''? Like Larus’s yoga-mat tourists. We live in an overpopulated world now, much to the annoyance of Ted Kaczynski. There is almost not enough space left for the Mountain Men. Back when there were just a couple of hapless truth seekers then maybe they were viewed with a kind of affection. Maybe McCandless of hapless potato fame was viewed with a kind of affection, before his followers followed him.
+=== 2. Consciousness ===
-When we crossed into the Yukon after Fort Nelson Ron pointed out the little white sign and said ‘Welcome to Yukon!’ just as I read it. I pointed the camera at everything I was seeing, not much, just a long, long road lined with tall thin trees. I think he found it endearing or something. He started to talk pointedly, like he was giving me something useful for the camera, so I directed it at him. He spoke like an overly trained actor.
+==== a. The Source of Consciousness ====
-‘You know the ''real'' pull of the north has always been minerals. You know the Klondike Stampede, right? In the 1800s? Well, there’s a brand-new one going on right now.’
+According to the materialist viewpoint, consciousness has natural and social sources.
-He nodded confidingly.
+-----
-‘Not just gold, mind. Zinc and copper and uranium. It’s all different now, of course. Mostly the work’s done by big Chinese companies, with GPS and bulldozers. Ain’t as many beardy guys with pans. That’s what the north was built on. Guys came seeking their fortune and the hardy ones stuck around. But a bunch came and couldn’t hack it. Like these young guys now, they had this romantic idea of what it’ll be like. But it’ll kill ya. They went running home to the sunny south with scurvy and their toes missing.’
+==== Annotation 67 ====
-He paused for a bit to whistle and look out of the window. The trees to our left began to slope down and behind them a whole other sea of them rose up. Then we had a view of the mountains in the distance, the green trees blanketing right the way over them.
+Consciousness arises from ''nature'', and from ''social'' activities and relations.
-The first Klondike gold rush was in 1896. Adam Smith, the amoral moral philosopher, wrote ''The Wealth of Nations'' a century before that. Adam Smith saw the wilderness as if it were made of bricks of gold and timber, to be utilised to create wealth, and he saw the creation of wealth as a moral agenda and he reduced complexity to simple constituents as though the illusion of things could be stripped away to reveal their basic and authentic and truthful essences. But what he was doing was taking paper and cutting it to shape, saying ‘Look what shape I found when I trimmed away the excess, a chair!’, when what he really did was to cut the paper to the shape of a chair.
+''Natural'' refers to the material world. Without the material world of matter, material processes, and the evolution of material systems — up to and including the human brain — consciousness would never have formed.
-He broke the world into mechanical pieces and put the natural world outside the world of man so as to justify a particular form of economic and political organisation (capitalism) and philosophical position (individualism) as natural. He was trying to morally justify selfishness. A sperm whale is so called because stabbing one in the head with a harpoon makes it spurt forth oil in a way that reminded whale hunters of ejaculation. And if a sperm whale is just an oil ejaculator and not an emotionally complex being then it is okay to go about slaughtering them.
+''Social'' activities and relations also contributed to the development of consciousness. The social processes of labor and language were also prerequisites for the development of conscious activity in human beings.
-‘It’s beautiful, ain’t it? Don’t it look quiet? The last great wilderness.’
+''- Natural Source of Consciousness''
-He took it all in, sucked it all in through his nostrils. I am so close now and I can feel it. It feels like humming in your mouth, but masked by something loud like engine noise so no one else can really hear it but the vibrations take over your whole face and throat.
+There are many factors that form the natural sources for consciousness, but the two most basic factors are ''human brains'' and ''the relationship between humans and'' ''the objective world which makes possible creative and dynamic reflection.''
-‘But we got things like the Peel Watershed. Places like pristine wilderness. Mines’re leaking arsenic and crap into the water. Some folk think it’ll be a shame if the Peel gets contaminated. But Yukon is mining. It’s kind of its soul. It’s a place the little guy can make something of his lot. Cut down some trees, build himself a cabin, live a simple life. You know, still now in theory anyone can stake a claim to mine someplace out here. It’s a free country. Libertarian. And it won’t stop. Them people are crazed. They’re thinking, “I gotta go get it cus if I don’t then some other asshole will”.’
+''About human brains:'' consciousness is an attribute of a highly organized form of matter, which is the brain. Consciousness is the function and the result of the neurophysiological activities of human brains. As human brains evolved and developed over time, their neurophysiological activities became richer, and, as these activities progressed, consciousness developed further and further over time. This explains why the human evolution process is also a process of developing the capacity for perception and thinking. Whenever human neurophysiological activities don’t function normally because of damaged brains, our mental life is also disturbed.
-He chuckled to himself. Then a song came on the radio and he stopped talking to half-sing to it. He sang it quietly, and only the words he knew, which were not many, and the rest he kind of mumbled. He whistled the bridge to the chorus.
+''About the relationship between humans'' and ''the objective world which made possible creative and dynamic reflection:'' The relationship between humans and the objective world has been essential for as long as humans have existed. In this relationship, the objective world is reflected through human senses which interact with human brains and then form our consciousness.
-While he whistled I looked out of the window. Beautiful, yes, but in a different kind of way, with a creeping melancholy to it. My first felt elation had sapped away and left something hollowed out. I thought about the ghosts of miners that Jack Kerouac wondered about. What would they have said to Kerouac if they could have talked? Would they have told him that the emissions his exhaust was pumping, driving all over America and not giving much of a damn about anything but himself, were poisoning the air like the coal did their black lungs? That their mines had dug up uranium and mercury and cadmium, making bonds in his nostrils each breath he took? ''If we’d have known then what we know now'', maybe they would have said.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-9.png|''Consciousness exists as a dynamic set of relationships between the external material world, human sense perception, and the functions of the human brain.'']]
-And what would I have to say to the ghost of Jack Kerouac? It was all very well and good for you, Jack Kerouac, but things were different then. The not giving a damn thing is harder to get behind now. Not just because I am a woman, but because the yoke is not so easy to throw down when you know the weight just gets transferred to the many other beasts of burden.
+''Reflection'' is the re-creation of the features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction. Reflection is a characteristic of all forms of matter.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+There are many forms and levels of reflection such as [from more simple to more complex]: physical and chemical reflection, biological reflection, mental reflection, creative and dynamic reflection, etc.
-[[Image:f0142-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-==== ARE MUTUALISMS A FORM OF LOVE? ====
+-----
-My first lift took me as far as Haines Junction, where I had to wait only another couple of hours for a lift all the way to Beaver Creek. The roadside trees cloaked pools of water that held their own strange colours. Behind them the mountains grew again, some in the far parts ephemeral and almost-there, the snow on top like cut ice against the sharp sky today but probably gone tomorrow.
+==== Annotation 68 ====
-Then the road ran straight towards a big mountain, washed out by the sun, the huge long lake at its base luminously blue, bluer than the sky blue. Kluane Lake grew wider and wider as we got closer until it was as wide as an ocean and we were right on top of it. The water almost touched the road but just kept away, lapping against the gold sand for miles and miles. The road then curved over the sand towards the mountain, and for a moment there was so much of the sand that you could squint so as not to see the vague plant-life in it and pretend it was a desert and the rest was mirage.
+Change is driven by mutual impacts between or within things, phenomena, and/or ideas. Any time two such subjects impact one another, ''traces'' of some form or another are left on both interacting subjects. This characteristic of change is called ''reflection''.
-Then the road ran brassy under the foot of the mountain and around the lake edge as if to brag about what it had tamed, as though this great feat of engineering should be lauded for its arrogance. But the mountains and the lakes do not care because they can’t. And under the road the rivers flow on and on back to the sky.
+The concept of reflection, first proposed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, has been advanced through the work of various Soviet psychologists, philosophers, and scientists (including Ivan Pavlov, Todor Pavlov, Aleksei Leontiev, Lev Vygotsky, Valentin Voloshinov, and others), and is used as a basis for scientific inquiry up to this day by mainstream researchers in Cuba, Vietnam, China, and Laos. The information provided below is somewhat simplified and generalized to give the reader a basic familiarity with the theory of reflection and the development of reflection in nature.
-Online, a little yellow envelope flashed itself at me, from Sam. I did not open it. It is best to leave it for now. Soon I cross into Alaska. There is nothing to do but feel glad that things are back the way they were always supposed to be. And this evening the mountains look rich and blue and fully dimensional.
+Dialectical materialist scientists have developed a theory of the development of evolution of forms of reflection, positing that forms of reflection have become increasingly complex as organic processes and life have evolved and grown more complex over time.
-==== ENGLAND, JUST LIKE AMERICA, BUT DIFFERENT ====
+The chart below gives an idea of how different forms of reaction have evolved over time:
-TO REMEMBER: A deer on the road running from our vehicle, confused and running with the road, not from it. We slow the vehicle to a crawl, honking, trying to throw it off. It half turns, its eyes bulging in fear and confusion at its entrapment. And then its epiphany; it breaks away to the forest.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-10.png|''This chart outlines the basic development tendency of Forms of Reflection in matter which lead from inorganic matter, to life, to human consciousness and society.'']]
-From Beaver Creek the highway crosses the border and goes on a long way before it splits to Fairbanks or Anchorage. I took a lift across the border to get out where the road forks so that I could hitch with the traffic that was solely headed for Fairbanks. The geographical border had a ‘Welcome to Alaska’ sign and four flags erected. They were Canada, America, Alaska and I suppose the other must have been the Yukon’s flag. I almost forget that Alaska is a part of America; it seems to me a far nobler place.
+Obviously, not all subjects develop completely along the path outlined above. Thus far, to our knowledge, only human beings have developed entirely to the level of consciousness and society. It is also unknown whether, or how, human society may develop into some future, as-yet-unknown, form.
-I caught a ride with a young couple who seemed to have had an argument about picking me up. The man at the border inspection station was wearing a blue uniform instead of the nostalgic red one. He said, ‘Welcome to the United States of America,’ just to be pedantic. Ahead the sign read Fairbanks 298.
+-----
-After a couple of hours the road splits at Tok. I walked a little way out of Tok, where the couple dropped me, up the highway until I got to a layby and set down my bag. Right down the road, where it shrunk to a dot at the centre of perspective, with the line of trees dragged into it on either side, real Alaskan snowcapped mountains stood still behind and waited blue and moody. The sky had dimmed grey and heavy with rain and suspense and I hoped out loud that it wouldn’t fall.
+''Physical and chemical reflection'' is the simplest form of reflection, dealing with the ways in which inorganic matter is reflected in human consciousness. Physical and chemical reflection is the reflection of mechanical, physical, and chemical changes and reactions of inorganic matter (i.e., changes in structures, positions, physical-chemical properties, and the processes of combining and dissolving substances). Physical and chemical reactions are passive: when two objects interact with each other physically or chemically, they do not do so consciously.
-It felt colder already and different, as if every place becomes itself by virtue of how it is collectively imagined. It felt like Alaska. I tried to explain this with the camera but could not figure how. There is so much important feeling to it that is frustratingly unquantifiable. Words come closer to it because they can dance around it, etch it, bring it out in relief like a lithograph. Vast, empty but full, potent and good, full of understanding and unfathomable fathoms, deep, enigmatic, but everything you want of it absolutely. It is harder with images.
+-----
-The very next car gave me a lift. I swung my bag into the open back of the truck, next to some animal skins, and covered it with the tarp. We arrived in Fairbanks at around three. I rang my next host, Stan, to let him know I had arrived and went to grab a sandwich.
+==== Annotation 69 ====
-Stan is a guy I have been in touch with on the couch-surfing website. He had offered me a place to stay for a week while I figure out my little adventure. I am consistently surprised at the ease of finding a free place to sleep when I approach young men online. I just had to wait until the French girl he was hosting had moved on. Stan said he would come to pick me up from my spot just south of Fairbanks.
+Reflection occurs any time two material objects interact and the features of the object are transferred to each other. Below are some very simplified illustrations to relate the basic idea of the physical reflection of material objects.
-==== CHIVALRY ISN’T DEAD, GUYS JUST GET SICK OF UNGRATEFUL BITCHES ====
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-11.png]]
-Stan works in the Denali Park Centre. Got the job through his uncle, who is a park warden. Told me how he would come to Alaska as a child to live with his uncle in school holidays (he’s originally from Florida). He said even as a child he could not deal with the way of life down there. Said his father and he were nothing alike. He said his father has a Chevy and two jet skis and a speedboat on the lake they live on and that he wished his uncle was his father.
+'''Reflection as Change in Position:'''
-In the house there are trophy pictures of Stan or his uncle with big fish and stags. There is one of his uncle with his foot on a dead grizzlie’s head. His uncle the stereotypical Mountain Man, wearing buckskin and a coonskin cap, carrying a rifle and a scalping knife and with a big old bushy beard. Not forgetting the pipe.
+. Round Object moves towards Square Object.
-It turns out that Stan is the douchey kind of Mountain Man, the exclusionary, self-righteous kind. It started when I saw Stan had Jack London on the shelf and I thought I would try to make friends by letting him know I really like London. He had a pretty reductive interpretation of him, so I bated him a little.
+. Round Object impacts Square Object.
-‘Don’t get offended, but ''Call of the Wild'' is not really a girl’s book.’
+. Square Object changes position; Round Object “bounces” and reverses direction.
-‘Well, whose book is it? Is it a dog’s book? It’s a really good imagining of what’s going on in a dog’s head and it works because it is eerie when dogs howl at wolves on TV. And because they do look like they are dreaming about primitive things when they snarl in their sleep.’
+.Thus, Square Object’s change in position ''reflects'' the motion of Round Object (and vice-versa). Traces of both contradicting objects are reflected in the respective motion and position of each object.
-‘Yeah, but it’s not just a story about a dog, is it?’
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-12.png]]
-‘Well, it’s about a dog that wants to be a wolf.’
+'''Reflection as Change in Structure:'''
-‘You really think a book would be timeless and never out of print because it just makes people think about what their dog is thinking? This is what I mean, you just don’t get it because you’re a girl.’
+. Round Object moves toward Square Object.
-‘What?’
+. Round Object impacts Square Object.
-‘Girls are just naturally social. You could never know what it means to be called on by nature. Society is unnatural for men, it’s damaging for the spirit. The call of the wild is the call of the ancestors.’
+. Structural changes (traces) occur in both Round and Square Object as a result of impact.
-‘There is nothing more primordial than childbirth.’
+. These changes constitute structural, physical ''reflection''.
-He thinks I can’t understand what a dog feels because I am a girl! He thinks dogs and human men have analogous feelings! Stan is talking Darwin like Ted Kaczynski talks Darwin to shut up women, but Darwin was writing to justify capitalism! He wrote ''Origin of the Species'' eighty-three years after Adam Smith wrote ''The Wealth of Nations''. They are all cutting paper into chair shapes. They are talking large organisations, interpreted in terms of self-interest and the maximisation of personal well-being, like in the free market, where firms or individuals succeed or fail based on ‘survival of the fittest’. They think personal maximisation side-handedly benefits the rest of the society or ecosystem. Adam Smith called this the Invisible Hand. Darwin was channelling Smith like a medium; he was a product of his time and primed to think in terms of competitive individuals.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-13.png]]
-Russia called their automatically launched assured nuclear destruction machine the Dead Hand. The nuclear Dead Hand will automatically and amorally dish out justice to Russia’s enemy. It now behaves without them. Perhaps they were saying, well, if that is how you want to play it, this is where your Adam Smith’s logic takes you. Could be they were trolling when they called it the Dead Hand. (Dead hand also means an undesirable and persisting influence, which it is also.)
+'''Chemical Reflection:'''
-But there were other theories of the origin of the human species and it took thinkers who were outside the shadow of Adam Smith like ''women'' and ''communists'' to come up with them. Russian botanist Konstantin Mereschkowski came up with ''symbiogenesis'', the evolutionary theory that complex life came about because of a symbiosis of separate single-celled organisms. It takes symbiosis like the symbiosis of ectoparasites and sweetlips one step further and says that a whole new species can come out of the evolutionary dependence of two or more species. Darwin could not think like this because he was thinking too much Adam Smith.
+. Atom C is attached to Atom B.
-In the 1960s Lynn Margulis, the microbiolo-gist, expanded on Mere-schkowski and revitalised his and the ideas of her predecessors like they were all the collective author (in this way she not only lectured symbiosis but also lived it). She argued with all the neo-Darwinists like omniscient god-denier Richard Dawkins, who gave her the condescending, goddess-invoking nickname ''science’s unruly earth mother''.
+. Atom C detaches from Atom B and transfers to attach to Atom A.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+. This is a process of ''chemical reflection'', in which both molecules mutually reflect one another after A <sub>C</sub>B a process of chemical reaction (one molecule loses Atom C while the other gains Atom C).
-[[Image:f0147-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-Eukaryotic life is organisms with larger cells that have a bounded nucleus and organelles. Prokaryotic life is organisms without a bounded nucleus and these are the most abundant life forms on Earth. All eukaryotic life has a symbiotic relationship with prokaryotic life – think bacteria in your stomach.
+As dialectical materialists, we must strive to develop our understanding of the reflections of physical and chemical changes and reactions so that our conceptions reflect the material world as accurately as possible. For example: we must not ascribe consciousness to physical processes. Example: a gambler who comes to believe that a pair of dice is “spiteful” or “cursed” is attributing conscious motivation to unconscious physical processes, which is an inaccurate ideological reflection of reality.
-What Lynn Margulis said was that the emergence of eukaryotic cells billions of years ago happened because of ''symbiogenesis''. That a prokaryote + a prokaryote in symbiosis = a eukaryote. That a prokaryote + a eukaryote = a more successful eukaryote. That a more successful eukaryote x 2 = multicellular life (us). That the image of the tree of life should be reimagined to include the ''inosculation'' of its branches.
+-----
-Lynn Margulis was Carl Sagan’s first wife and they had two sons together. After her second divorce Lynn Margulis said ‘it is not humanly possible to be a good wife, a good mother and a first-class scientist, something has to go’, so it is not hard to imagine the kind of husband that Carl Sagan was. I think I have a girl-crush on Lynn Margulis.
+''Biological reflection'' is a higher, more complex form of reflection [compared to physical reflection]. It deals with reflection of organic material in the natural world. As our observations of biological processes have become more sophisticated and complex [through developments in natural science, the development of better tools for observation such as microscopes and other technologies, and so on], our conscious reflections of the natural world have also become more complex.
-On the Golden Records there is a sound piece that is like a load of firecrackers going off. It is a famous love story; Ann Druyan was thinking about how in love she was with Carl Sagan and now a token of their love floats for ever into the void with the Voyagers and will outlive us all. Carl Sagan volunteered her when it was suggested they put an electric reading of human brainwaves on the record. Then he called her up the night before the EEG to tell her he wanted to be with her, which was very coordinated of him. What is often missed out from this love story is that Ann Druyan had a boyfriend and Carl Sagan had a second wife, Linda Salzman; a forgotten and left-behind wife of history.
+Biological reflection is expressed through ''excitation, induction,'' and ''reflexes.''
-To rub it in a little bit further the couple were very public about their love token. Ann Druyan said, ‘For me Voyager is a kind of joy so powerful, it robs you of your fear of death.’
+''Excitation'' is the reaction of simple plant and animal life-forms which occurs when they change position or structure as a direct result of physical changes to their habitat [i.e., a plant which moves toward the sun throughout the day].
-Note: fear of death; immortalisation; conceptual colonising of Carl Sagan to usurp any future wife he may decide to have (''our love will live for ever''). They sent their love seed to pioneer into the absolute wilderness of deep, deep outer space, and it unravels this wilderness as it touches it. If Ted Kaczynski was thinking tactically he might have sent a letter bomb to Carl Sagan, who has maybe of all men ejaculated the very furthest.
+''Induction'' is the reaction of animals with simple nerve systems which can sense or feel their environments. Induction occurs through unconditioned reflex mechanisms.
-Stan was not interested in any of this. I asked him if he had read ''White Fang''. He said yes, he did not like that one as much. I pointed out that in ''White Fang'', White Fang domesticated himself because he realised that hanging out with people was easier than living in the wild (symbiosis). Dogs live with humans for mutual aid too. There were obvious inconsistencies to Stan’s dog-lore logic.
+-----
-The original bona fide Mountain Men were self-sufficient trapper/explorer types who lived alone in the North American wilderness. Their numbers were highest in the 1800s during the period of western expansion and homesteading and they were mainly found in the Rockies. They were drawn to the western wild by its virgin lands and the good old challenge to their manliness. They traded with the natives and often took native wives. This was pre-Jack London.
+==== Annotation 70 ====
-They are thought of as honourable and chivalrous loners with a high moral code. When the fur trade began to fail, owing to over-trapping and the silk trade, many Mountain Men had to get jobs as army scouts, guides and settlers, bringing the crowds of homesteaders into the wild land they had opened up through the Emigrant Trails they had established. They initiated the corrosion of their precious wilderness. A memory of Mountain Men still lingers in the portrait of the Real Modern American Man: resourceful, masculine, hardy, provider and ''free''.
+''Unconditioned reflexes'' are characterized by permanent connections between sensory perceptions and reactions. Such reactions are not learned, but simply occur automatically based on physiological mechanisms occurring within the organism. An example of an unconditioned reflex response would be muscles in the leg twitching at the response of a tap on the knee. Such responses are purely physiological and are never learned (“conditioned” into us) — these reactions are simply ''induced'' physiologically.
-My driver Ron told me that the modern Mountain Men living on the frontiers now, in cabins standing on the wilderness, get annoyed at other wilderness stander-on-ers, but they make the money they need to live as Mountain Men by working a few months a year on the pipeline. Really it does not matter if the pipeline fucks the future eventually, as long as the Mountain Men can live their lives alone in a pristine wilderness. They rely on machines like guns and snowploughs. But they pride themselves on their otherwise completely and utterly and totally unadulterated independence.
+''Mental reflections'' are reactions which occur in animals with central nervous systems. Mental reflections occur through conditioned reflex mechanisms.
-Stan is what you might call an environmental chauvinist. Like he thinks it is his job to open the door for nature. And when he becomes the warden he will become the benevolent King of Denali. Stan is a Real Modern American Man. But if running into the wild is so often a wounded retreat from societal constraints and oppressions, then shouldn’t anyone ''but'' straight white men be doing it more?
+-----
-==== BUT HE’S A HIPPY, HOW CAN HE ALSO BE A MISOGYNIST? ====
+==== Annotation 71 ====
-I have had to rein in the indignant feelings I have towards Stan because, as much as I hate to admit it, I need him. Maybe sometimes symbiosis is taken up reluctantly, calculatedly. I keep him sweet by acting dumb and playing up to his idea of himself. There are ways to have covert fun with him, though. For example, I had been thinking about all the parallels between him and Chris McCandless and about what Ron had said about that phenomenon. So I told Stan he reminded me of Chris McCandless.
+''Conditioned reflexes'' are reactions which are learned by organisms. These responses are acquired as animals learn to associate previously unrelated neural stimuli to elicit a particular reaction. The Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov famously developed our understanding of conditioned responses by ringing a dinner bell shortly before giving dogs food. After a few repetitions, dogs would begin to salivate upon hearing the dinner bell being rung, even before any food was offered. Any dog which did not receive this conditioning would not salivate upon hearing a dinner bell. This is what makes it a learned, conditioned response — a type of mental reflection.
-‘Chris McCandless? Fucking Chris McCandless?’
+''Dynamic and creative reflection'' is the most advanced form of reflection. It only occurs in matter that has the highest structural level, such as the human brain. Dynamic and creative reflection is done through the human brain’s nervous physiological activities whenever the objective world impacts human senses. This is a kind of reflection that actively selects and processes information to create new information and to understand the meaning of that information. This dynamic and creative reflection is called consciousness.
-‘The guy that died in the bus?’
+-----
-‘I know who fucking Chris McCandless is. You think I could work in Denali and not know who Chris McCandless is? Why do you think I remind you of him?’
+==== Annotation 72 ====
-‘Oh, I don’t know. Only slightly. Just, you know, coming to Alaska from the lower forty-eight and being all resourceful and everything?’
+Remember Lenin’s definition of matter from ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'': “Matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality which is given to man in his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”
-‘Chris McCandless was a suicidal idiot. A fucking greenhorn. Any true survivalist would have known to take a map and not go into the bush without knowledge. He died because of his own stupidity. And now his little cult wastes my uncle’s time, they waste Alaskan taxes, and the little piece of “wild” he went into is now a well-trodden mecca. Kids drown trying to cross the river to get there. Broken kids with stupid fantasies about how the wild will complete them.’
+An intrinsic property of matter is that it can be sensed by human beings, and through this sensation, ''reflected'' in human consciousness. Thus, all forms of matter share the characteristic of being able to be reflected in the human mind.
-Stan is not even Alaskan. The main difference between Stan and Chris McCandless is that Stan has had the luck to not have died yet. I wonder what the Athabaskans and the Eskimos have to say about guys like Stan.
+Criticizing Karl Pearson, who said that it was not logical to maintain that all matter had the property of being conscious, Lenin wrote in brackets: “But it is logical to suppose that all matter possesses a property which is essentially kindred to sensation: the property to reflect.” Understanding the concept of dynamic and creative reflection is critical to understanding the role of consciousness and the ideal in Dialectical Materialism. In particular, reflection differentiates Dialectical Materialism from the idealist form of dialectics used by Hegel [see Annotation 9, p. 10]. As Marx famously wrote in ''Capital Volume I'':
-Stan is also a lesser Mountain Man; he is a wannabe. He lives in a house! Made from bricks! In a town! There is a post office! And a health centre! The ratio in his fridge of shop-bought convenience over foraged/killed is 9:1! There are degrees, and more evolved Mountain Men get points for living in a house they built themselves in a place where, if their appendix burst, they would die.
+<blockquote>
+My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [craftsman/artisan/creator] of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
+</blockquote>
-I have made a list and am sourcing equipment for my trip from the outdoors shops in the town. Stan saw my list and tutted and added some things to it and I let him explain the particular merit of these items to me. I have to nurture his ego because he found me a cabin and he said he will lend me a gun and not tell his uncle that I am out there without a permit. Part of me wonders why he wants to help me when he does not seem to like me. The fact seems to be that he revels so much in his superior authority that he will subject me to the challenge he imagines me so unfit for, sadistically, just to prove himself right. He seems to find me amusing. He wants to see me fail.
+In other words, Hegelian idealism saw human consciousness as defining the material world. Dialectical Materialism inverts this relationship to recognize that what we conceive in our minds is only a reflection of the material world. As Marx explains in ''The German Ideology'', all conscious thought stems from life processes through reflection:
-I need to make my pack as light as it can be so I will remove all unnecessary items and leave them at Stan’s, seeing as I have to come back to return the gun anyway. He is taking my things hostage as a kind of deposit on the gun.
+<blockquote>
+Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
+</blockquote>
-==== REGRET IN RATS, ALTRUISM IN BONOBOS ====
+Marx and Engels argued that consciousness arose from the ''life-processes'' of human beings. Life-processes are processes of motion and change which occur within organisms to sustain life, and these processes have a dialectical relationship with consciousness: the processes of life, therefore, reflect consciousness, just as consciousness reflects human life-processes. Conscious activities (such as being able to hunt, gather, and cook food, build shelter, and so on) improve the life-processes of human beings (by improving our health, extending our life-spans, etc.); and as our life-processes improved, our consciousness was able to develop more fully. As a concrete example of the dialectic between life processes and consciousness, it is now widely believed by scientists that the advent of cooking and preparing food (conscious activity) improved the functioning of the human brain<ref>Source: “Food for Thought: Was Cooking a Pivotal Step in Human Evolution?” by Alexandra Rosati, ''Scientific American'', February 26, 2018.</ref> (a life process) which, in turn, developed human consciousness, and so on. Life-processes thus determine ''how'' consciousness reflects reality, while consciousness impacts back on life-processes, reflecting the dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness [see p. 88] and between practical activities and consciousness [see Annotation 230, p. 226].
-Before casting out I had to begin neatening up all of my frayed edges in order to disengage smoothly. I have told my parents that I am going to volunteer on a community project in an Eskimo village with no phone signal or internet for a few weeks because I do not know how else to put it to them. I sent them a link to a website that organises such excursions to make it more believable.
+Because consciousness arose from life-processes of human beings in the material world, we know that the material world is reflected in our consciousness. However, these reflections do not ''determine'' the material world, and do not mirror the material world exactly [see Annotation 77, p. 79]. It is also important to understand that, since life-processes in the material world predate and determine consciousness, consciousness can never be a first basis of seeking truth about our world. As Marx further explains in ''The German Ideology:''
-Then I Skyped Larus to tell him bye for now and to vent some of my pent-up frustration at Stan, but he took things in a very different direction and now I wish I had not at all. He was worrying about how we had not spoken in a while again. Then he got all strange about why he thought that was.
+<blockquote>
+Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations. This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i.e. to recognise it by means of another interpretation.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+In other words, Hegelian idealism makes the critical mistake of believing that the ideal — consciousness — is the first basis of reality, and that anything and everything can be achieved through mere conscious activity. Marx, on the other hand, argues that “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life,” and that we must understand the ways in which reality is reflected in consciousness before we can hope to affect change in the material conditions of human beings:
-[[Image:f0152-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-‘Does Sam not approve of our little chats? My girlfriend doesn’t like me talking to you so much either.’
+<blockquote>
+In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here [in the materialist perspective] we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.
+</blockquote>
-It was the way he said this, like so nail-pickingly nonchalant as to be glaringly pointed. I suppose I realised the conversation was going to go one of two ways from there. I guess part of me had known without wanting to all along that this had been building, like a bird sidling over for crumbs so slowly you don’t even notice until, oh, it is there.
+So, the work of the Dialectical Materialist is not to try to develop Utopian conceptions of reality first, to then proceed to try and force such purely ideal conceptions onto reality (see Annotation 17, p. 18).
-‘Your girlfriend?’
+Rather, we must understand the material basis of reality, as well as the material processes of change and motion which govern reality, and only then can we search for ways in which human beings can influence material reality through conscious activity. As Marx explains, the revolutionary must not be fooled into believing we can simply conceive of an ideal world and then replicate it into reality through interpretation and conscious thought alone. Instead, we must start with a firm understanding of material conditions and, from that material basis, determine how to build our revolutionary movement through conscious impact of material relations and processes of development in the material world.
-‘Yes, my American girlfriend Jose.’
+As Marx wrote in ''The German Ideology:'' “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” This distinction may seem subtle at first, but it has massive implications for how Marx suggests we go about participating in revolutionary activity. For Marx, purely-idealist debates and criticisms are an unproductive waste of time:
-I involuntarily said that he kept that one quiet.
+<blockquote>
+The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly ‘world-shattering’ statements, are the staunchest conservatives. The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against ‘phrases.’ They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world. The only results which this philosophic criticism could achieve were a few (and at that thoroughly one-sided) elucidations of Christianity from the point of view of religious history; all the rest of their assertions are only further embellishments of their claim to have furnished, in these unimportant elucidations, discoveries of universal importance.
+</blockquote>
-‘I’m just surprised, that’s all. That we’ve been talking for so long and I didn’t know that about you.’
+Marx also discusses the uselessness of idealist conjecture:
-‘There are lots of things you don’t know about me.’
+<blockquote>
+Moreover, it is quite immaterial what consciousness starts to do on its own: out of all such muck we get only the one inference that these three moments, the forces of production, the state of society, and consciousness, can and must come into contradiction with one another, because the division of labour implies the possibility, nay the fact that intellectual and material activity — enjoyment and labour, production and consumption — devolve on different individuals, and that the only possibility of their not coming into contradiction lies in the negation in its turn of the division of labour. It is self-evident, moreover, that ‘spectres,’ ‘bonds,’ ‘the higher being,’ ‘concept,’ ‘scruple,’ [terms for idealist conceptions] are merely the idealistic, spiritual expression, the conception apparently of the isolated individual, the image of very empirical fetters and limitations, within which the mode of production of life and the form of intercourse coupled with it move.
+</blockquote>
-This made my legs twitch because I did not know what to do with myself. I turned off the webcam so he could not see me flapping my hands. Neither of us said anything for an uncomfortably long time. I was unsure how to navigate my way back out of it, before anything said became an answer I did not want to hear to a question I had not even asked.
+What Marx means by this is that we should focus on the material processes and conditions of society if we intend to change society, because idealist speculation, conjecture, critique, and thought alone, at the individual level, will never be capable of affecting revolutionary change in our material world.
-‘She finds it strange that I talk so much to a girl young enough to be my daughter.’
+Instead, we must focus on the material basis of reality, the material conditions of society, and seek revolutionary measures which are built upon materialist foundations. Only by understanding material processes of development, as well as the dialectical relationship between consciousness and matter, can we reliably and effectively begin to impact reality through conscious activity. This begins with the recognition that conscious thought itself is a ''reflection'' of material reality which developed and results from ''life-processes'' of material motion and processes of change within the human brain.
-''Please stop talking.'' I could not think of anything to say. He waited, then carried on.
+This concept of reflection, pioneered by Marx and Engels, was significantly developed by V. I. Lenin in his response to Machian positivists who posited that what we perceive is not truly reality [see Annotation 32, p. 27]. In his ''Philosophical Notebooks,'' Lenin wrote: “Life gives rise to the brain. Nature is reflected in the human brain.”
-‘I explain to her that you’re a very interesting young lady and that I enjoy helping you with your project.’
+In ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', Lenin further defined the relationship between matter and consciousness through reflection.
-I want to cry. I try to make light. From here, maybe, I could back-paddle. I ask if she knows I am a friend of Urla’s and pointedly call him Uncle Larus.
+'''LENIN’S PROOF OF THE THEORY OF REFLECTION'''
-‘Don’t call me that.’
+In ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,'' Lenin offered the following arguments to back up the theory of reflection.
-‘Why?’
+<blockquote>
+) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our perceptions, outside of us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin [a chemical substance which was newly discovered at time of writing] existed in coal tar yesterday and it is equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this alizarin and received no sensations from it.
+</blockquote>
-‘Because it’s just weird, don’t you think?’
+Lenin is saying that the material world must exist outside of and independent from our consciousness. He cites as evidence the discovery of a chemical substance which until recently we had no sensory perception of, noting that this substance must have existed long before we became aware of it through sensory observation.
-I don’t dare ask why some more. I tell him I have to go because Stan is on his way through the door. I tried to make it convincing but do not remember what I said. As he hangs up the camera freezes and lingers on his face for three seconds. His left eye, no, right for him, left for me, is half closed where he got caught off guard.
+<blockquote>
+) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there can be no such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the thing-in-itself is “beyond” phenomena (Kant) or that we can or must fence ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume) — all this is the sheerest nonsense, [unfounded belief], trick, invention.
+</blockquote>
-I realised that it had been instinct twinging all along whenever I thought of Urla, and the way she changed so totally when we were the three of us, and how she emailed less and less. I had ignored it because I was stubborn to prove that it did not have to be like that, that two people can span a gender gap and a generational gap and have a level of understanding without any funny business, like a kind of apprenticeship arrangement.
+Lenin is referencing a centuries-old debate about whether or not human beings are capable of having real knowledge of a “thing-in-itself,” or if we can only perceive ''phenomena'' of things (characteristics observable to our senses). The “thing-in-itself” refers to the actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness. So the question being posed is: can we REALLY have knowledge of material objects outside of our consciousness, or does consciousness itself act as a barrier to ever REALLY knowing anything about material objects and the material world outside of our consciousness?
-And how Sam had put it, giving me a look like ‘yeah, really’ when he asked what Larus had to do with anything. And I got pissed at him for insinuating that I was being stupid and naive and that a person I held to be a friend and mentor was not just that. And Larus doing the same of him, the two of them like male narwhals clashing their horns together, telepathically. And it is like that but grosser still because he is old enough to be my old dad or even almost my very young grandfather. I got annoyed at Sam for denying me platonic camaraderie in such a reductive way, but god, he was right after all.
+Immanuel Kant argued that we can never know the true nature of the material world, writing: “we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing-in-itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.” This idea that the senses could not be trusted to deliver accurate knowledge — and thus, the “thing-in-itself” is essentially unknowable — was carried forward by later empiricists such as Bacon and Hume [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. In ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', Marx and Engels refute this notion, arguing that ''practice'' allows us to discover truth about “things-in-themselves:”
-And thinking of Sam and how I got angry at him, well, it makes my stomach flip and it also makes me squirm, like if I think of being back there and the last day and our plain shunning of each other I feel shit and I might have done a shit thing by behaving like that but so did he and I do not want to think about it, best really just to forget about it all. It’s not like we will ever see each other again anyway.
+<blockquote>
+The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical crotchets is practice — namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable “thing-in-itself”.
+</blockquote>
-And I am trying hard not to but if I do think about it, I can’t quite get my head around why it got so suddenly weird. It was after he tried to get me to stay and I did not because of course I had to carry on. As though he was hurt that I wanted to leave and carry on without him.
+Lenin expanded on this argument, explaining that the phenomena of objects which we observe with our senses ''do'' accurately reflect material objects, even though we might not know everything about these objects at once. Over time, as we learn more and more about material objects and the material world through practice and repeated observation, we more fully and accurately come to understand “things-in-themselves, as he writes in ''Empirio-Criticism and Materialism:''
-Left behind during the Apollo missions were all of the astronauts’ wives and children. This is perhaps more significant during the Apollo missions than on modern-day missions because they were so rushed what with the race on, all the nationalistic pressure, and so much could go wrong so easily. So the wives left behind had to go to lift-off with all their children in tow and smile for the media cameras and wave and say WE ARE PROUD, THRILLED AND HAPPY and watch their husbands and their children’s fathers and their monetary means of living shoot up into the sky in a hunk of aluminium and disappear into a dimension they might not have even been completely sure existed, maybe thought of in a very abstract way like my mum does.
+<blockquote>
+) In the theory of knowledge, as in every other branch of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as readymade and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.
+</blockquote>
-And if I had been an Apollo wife I would probably have thought ''fuck you'' in a lot of ways. Fuck you, husband, for wanting to risk giving up on our marriage bed and the beautiful faces of our children and my great cooking and our cosy life and our vows to stay together and try to see out this one life to its fullest, for some idea of eternal glory, and yeah, you will be remembered for all of history but the most you will remember of me is how I stopped sleeping at night and started getting craggy and how you eventually left me for a young fan girl and I had to spend the rest of the one life I have on this planet angry at another planet for taking you away. And maybe I would have liked to have gone up there with you too but I was just not allowed and on some level I am just jealous that you get the chance to abandon it all and be seen as a selfless hero and not a selfish egomaniac, and I do not, will not ever, I have to stay here and dress all our children for school.
+Here, Lenin further elaborates on the dialectical nature of knowledge: we must simultaneously accept that our knowledge is never perfect and unchanging, but we must also recognize that we are capable of making our knowledge more exact and complete over time. To further defend his ideas about reflection, Lenin cited Czech philosopher Karl Kautsky’s argument against Kant:
-Most of the marriages of the moonwalkers did not last through the strain of fame and affairs and, probably, some feeling of comedown on the part of the astronauts, a feeling of life having peaked and all nuclear-family-life-events paled in comparison; the births and the first words and the graduations and the first grandchildren, all the prototypical life-milestones. You would think they could have sent up bachelors to be fair to all the future absent-fathered children, but of course the astronauts had to be role models, they had to be figureheads of nice productive nuclear families. Even if there were other more suitable candidates (single and childless females included).
+<blockquote>
+That I see green, red and white is grounded in my faculty of sight. But that green is something different from red testifies to something that lies outside of me, to real differences between the things... The relations and differences between the things themselves revealed to me by the individual space and time concepts are real relations and differences of the external world, not conditioned by the nature of my perceptive faculty... If this were really so [i.e., if Kant’s doctrine of the ideality of time and space were true], we could know nothing about the world outside us, not even that it exists.
+</blockquote>
-So not to say that Sam is like my sore wife but that maybe in a very small way, on a very micro level, he felt a similar kind of anger-at-abandonment. And I get that. But historically it is women that have to deal with chronic desertion (I see you, Linda Salzman) and this is exactly what I am working against so Sam can just deal with it. I am doing this for all the bitter left-behind wives of history! (Close relatives of the commonly found dragged-around woman.)
+Lenin followed from Marx and Engels that, in order to further develop our understanding and knowledge of the material world, it was necessary to engage in ''practice'' [see Annotation 211, p. 205]. Engels wrote in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-Online a little envelope flashed at me from him. Maybe I miss him and maybe I wish he had made an effort to come with me or something but ha-ha! that would not do. He did not take me seriously. Neither does Stan and even Larus didn’t in the end, all that interest just feigned for an interest in something else. But it is my whole reason for being right now. And if I get disheartened then they all win and I let down all of the left-behind wives of history.
+<blockquote>
+The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we [use] these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.
+</blockquote>
-==== ATLAS SHRUGGED ====
+Notice that Engels is careful to use the words ''so far'': “its qualities, ''so far'', agree with reality outside ourselves.” Engels does not argue that human understanding of the material world is infallible: mistakes are often made. But over time, as such mistakes are discovered and our understanding improves, our knowledge of the material world develops. This is only possible if the phenomena of objects which we observe — the reflections within our consciousness — do actually and accurately represent material reality. Lenin elaborated on this necessity to constantly update and improve dialectical materialist philosophy as new information and knowledge became available:
-The more I think about the deal with Larus the more frustrated I get and the less I blame myself. I had come to see us as a kind of master and student, this is a well-established trope, and none of those guys ever had problems with sexual dynamics. Like Plato and Socrates, Harry and Dumbledore, Yoda and Skywalker. I thought Larus was in on this too.
+<blockquote>
+Engels, for instance, assimilated the, to him, new term, energy, and began to employ it in 1885 (Preface to the 2<sup>nd</sup> ed. of Anti-Dühring) and in 1888 (Ludwig Feuerbach), but to employ it equally with the concepts of ‘force’ and ‘motion,’ and along with them. Engels was able to enrich his materialism by adopting a new terminology.
+</blockquote>
-I can’t tell if I am noticing weirdness in retrospect because I am on to him or if I am seeing things where they were not because he has taken on a new face for me. Sigmund Freud, the phallusobsessed psychoanalyst, said people cannot hear or see things that do not fit with the way they see the world or themselves. Anyway, it is going to make this disappearing into the wilderness thing all the more easy to throw myself into.
+Engels provided further elaborations on how practical experience and mastery of the material world refutes the notion that it is impossible to have real knowledge of the material world in ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'':
-The park centre that Stan works in is Denali National Park, and within it is the Denali Wilderness Area. At the far north-east corner of this is the trail that McCandless took and where the bus he died in still is now, actually on the border of parklands. I will not be anywhere near it but it is strange to think of it existing across the tundra from where I plan to stay. As much as Stan despises him I feel a bit of a kinship with him. Like we are both allied idealists. We differ on a lot of things; for example, I will not be sending out overdramatic maybe-forever-goodbyes by postcard and phone call. I have not even told my parents what I am going to be doing because I know it would worry them sick. I do not intend to be stupid with my life either but I have read my Thoreau too, well, some anyway, and I get what McCandless was trying to find by going out there. It was a claiming of autonomy and a rite of passage that I want to go through too and I bet he died happy doing it.
+<blockquote>
+The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical fancies is practice, viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible or ungraspable... The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained just such thingsin-themselves until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the thing-in-itself became a thing for us, as for instance, alizarin [a dye which was originally plant-based], which we no longer trouble to grow in in the field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar.
+</blockquote>
-The area I will go to is trail-less. I can get a lift to the visitors’ centre with Stan, where I can catch a bus to drop me on the road that leads through the park. Then I can hike out from the road for a long day and hopefully arrive at the cabin that Stan has earmarked on the map for me by late evening.
+So, dialectical materialism holds that there is a material world external from our consciousness; that conscious thoughts are reflections of this material world; that we can have real knowledge of the material world through sensory observation; and that our knowledge and understanding of the material world is best advanced through ''practice'' in the material world.
-===== Part of me says you can’t trust Stan not to tell and another part says you can trust his obsession to see how far you can be pushed, to see you fail and a small part of me says is this a girlfriend test and if I pass I become worthy in his eyes of his tolerance which for him equates to kinship? If so, gross. =====
+-----
-When he dropped me he said, ‘So I’ll see you in around three days’ time, then,’ grinning in a way that was almost flirty. I laughed sweetly and he said, ‘No, really, what’s the limit past which if you haven’t turned up on my doorstep to bring the gun back I send the search parties out after you?’
+''- Social Sources of Consciousness''
-‘Five weeks, please.’
+There are many factors that constitute the social sources of consciousness. The most basic and direct factors are ''labor'' and ''language.''
-‘Okay, so honestly, why are you doing this? Did something bad happen to you?’
+''Labor'' is the process by which humans interact with the natural world in order to make products for our needs of existing and developing. Labor is also the process that changes the human body’s structure [i.e., muscles developing through exercise].
-‘What do you mean?’
+-----
-‘Well, usually that’s why people do things like this, they are running away.’
+==== Annotation 73 ====
-‘Why do you go camping, Stan? Did something bad happen to you?’
+In ''Dialectics of Nature'', Engels describes the dialectical relationship between labor and human development:
-‘No.’
+<blockquote>
+Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source — next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
-‘Exactly.’
+Before the first flint could be fashioned into a knife by human hands, a period of time probably elapsed in comparison with which the historical period known to us appears insignificant. But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.
-‘But like, you don’t even come from a place that would prepare you for this. You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for.’
+Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones that had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, more and more complicated operations, have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini.
-‘I thought you said you came from Florida?’
+But the hand did not exist alone, it was only one member of an integral, highly complex organism. And what benefited the hand, benefited also the whole body it served.
+</blockquote>
-‘You know bears in Denali maul twenty people to death every year, right?’
+-----
-Then I smiled at him and passed him my ''Collected Works of Jack London'' with all of the feminist and socialist stories and passages earmarked and annotated for his consideration. I know he is lying about the bear statistic because I already looked it up.
+Labor also allows us to discover the attributes, structures, motion laws, etc., of the natural world, via observable phenomena.
-What happened to me? Nothing. I think that that is the point. I need to experience something visceral to placate the hunger. And I am sick of the men that want to keep it from me. Maybe you could say patriarchy happened to me. So like a dog cast out into the rain maybe I do leave, to go cry myself a big fat fucking two-hearted river. To sleep in an open field! To travel west! To walk freely at night!
-=== {{anchor|Topofch04html}} INTO THE WILDNESS ===
+-----
-==== GOING FERAL ====
+==== Annotation 74 ====
-She stood out vivid and present in the temperature-controlled half-light of her glass coffin, upright and at full human stature, her cloak hung to give the impression of a human figure underneath. She radiated epiphany. She filled the room with a smell like the seal-fur blankets Naaja’s mother gave us and an undertone of perhaps honey. It was strangely familiar and pleasant, not at all sickly. Her staff with the two-pronged antlers, still velvety with fur, sashed to it. On little fronds she had tiny bird skulls and shells. If she weren’t so very still they would click together like a cartoon skeleton falling to pieces. Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack.
+We discover truth about the natural world through labor — through physical ''practice'' in the material world. See the discussion of ''practice'' in Annotation 211, p. 205.
-In the park centre where I waited for the bus, there were displays on the natural and cultural history of the park. I floated around the room; there was movement from nothing but me. Time had stopped, looking exactly about to happen. There were irides-cent wings clamped open, feigning flight, above italicised names I could not get my tongue around. There were eyes, but we had taken the real ones out to put glass ones in and they stared from inside mounted skins, on placarded walls, from under glass domes, contorted majestically on rocks, on wooden plates, in awkward glory. There were tiny mottled eggs in counterfeit nests that looked as though they were about to burst out into life. And there were Dall sheep horns, a grizzly’s paw pad, skulls which though dry had all once held tiny brains, capillaries and veins.
+All of these phenomena, through our human senses, impact our human brains. And through brain activity, knowledge and consciousness of the objective world are formed and developed.
-There were artefacts of the original human inhabitants too: Athabaskan shawls, pipes and pottery. A model of a traditional toboggan and a crusty, worn dog harness. Grainy photographs of vacant-looking Eskimo men and women stood limpidly side by side with priests in robes. The plaque said missionaries won their trust with magical gifts of tobacco and medicine.
+''Language'' is a system of material signals that carries information with cognitive content. Without language, consciousness could not exist and develop.
-<div style="margin-left:0.423cm;">''Prior to the arrival of Christian missionaries to the New World, indigenous religion was animistic, comprised of a worldview where humans are part of an on-going spiritual interchange between all manifestations of organic matter, often including the inanimate matter of the elements. A shaman was a human who was a seer into the spirit world.''</div>
+The birth of language goes hand in hand with labor. From the beginning, labor was social. The relationships between people who perform labor processes require them to have means to communicate and exchange thoughts. This requirement caused language to arise and develop along with the working processes. With language, humans not only communicate, but also summarise reality and convey experience and thoughts from generation to generation.
-<div style="margin-left:0.423cm;">''Both men and women could be shamans, but many of the shamans were of female form as the idea of creation was sacred and bestowed to the feminine. However men could also have ‘feminine’ attributes. Gender was considered fluid, and there were thought to be at least four genders approximately: masculine men, feminine men, masculine women and feminine women. People who embodied the two opposites were known as Twospirit People.''</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">In the rest of the world Eskimo is a pejorative term and Inuit is preferred instead, but in Alaska the Eskimos prefer to be called Eskimos. There was a poster, a kind of family tree of the Alaskan indigenous peoples. Eskimo and Inuit are both the collective terms for distinct but similar cultures like the Yupik and Inupiat. Other natives of Alaska of separate cultures mostly distinguished by language are the Athabaskans, Aleuts, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian.</div>
+==== Annotation 75 ====
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+From ''Dialectics of Nature'':
-[[Image:f0162-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-The distinctions are complicated because there are overlaps between the different cultures, and although they are distinguished by language, some of the languages are maybe not entirely separate languages. And why would the indigenous people care about absolutely distinguishing cultures if souls can transmigrate to rocks, are forever in animal-mineral-plant continuum?
+<blockquote>
+It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man’s horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed by modulation to produce constantly more developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another.
-On the 9 a.m. bus into the park, before disembarking, I kept my eyes porous out of the window, funnelling it all in. There were just two other people on the bus, a pair of middle-aged day hikers, and I could feel them staring at the gun leant against my seat while I jotted in my notebook.
+Comparison with animals proves that this explanation of the origin of language from and in the process of labour is the only correct one. The little that even the most highly-developed animals need to communicate to each other does not require articulate speech. In its natural state, no animal feels handicapped by its inability to speak or to understand human speech. It is quite different when it has been tamed by man. The dog and the horse, by association with man, have developed such a good ear for articulate speech that they easily learn to understand any language within their range of concept. Moreover they have acquired the capacity for feelings such as affection for man, gratitude, etc., which were previously foreign to them. Anyone who has had much to do with such animals will hardly be able to escape the conviction that in many cases they now feel their inability to speak as a defect, although, unfortunately, it is one that can no longer be remedied because their vocal organs are too specialised in a definite direction. However, where vocal organs exist, within certain limits even this inability disappears. The buccal organs of birds are as different from those of man as they can be, yet birds are the only animals that can learn to speak; and it is the bird with the most hideous voice, the parrot, that speaks best of all. Let no one object that the parrot does not understand what it says. It is true that for the sheer pleasure of talking and associating with human beings, the parrot will chatter for hours at a stretch, continually repeating its whole vocabulary. But within the limits of its range of concepts it can also learn to understand what it is saying. Teach a parrot swear words in such a way that it gets an idea of their meaning (one of the great amusements of sailors returning from the tropics); tease it and you will soon discover that it knows how to use its swear words just as correctly as a Berlin costermonger. The same is true of begging for titbits.
-I was waiting for the mountains to begin on the left and the treeline, which I knew to be mile 52 of the Park Road and the calculated point of my disembarkation.
+First labour, after it and then with it speech — these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man, which, for all its similarity is far larger and more perfect. Hand in inevitably accompanied by a corresponding refinement of the organ of hearing, so the development of the brain as a whole is accompanied by a refinement of hand with the development of the brain went the development of its most immediate instruments — the senses. Just as the gradual development of speech is all the senses. The eagle sees much farther than man, but the human eye discerns considerably more in things than does the eye of the eagle. The dog has a far keener sense of smell than man, but it does not distinguish a hundredth part of the odours that for man are definite signs denoting different things. And the sense of touch, which the ape hardly possesses in its crudest initial form, has been developed only side by side with the development of the human hand itself, through the medium of labour.
+</blockquote>
-The scenery flickered. It was gradual, like well-thought build-up in a feel-good coming-of-age story about a girl like me getting close to something sought. It was layer on layer. Each breaching hill might have been the one to reveal the mountains like a shroud, ghostly, slipping down. Each pre-emptive revealing was excited pressure hoarded.
+So, the most basic, direct and important source that decides the birth and development of language is labor. Language appeared later than labor but always goes with labor. Language and labor were the two main stimulations affecting the brains of the primates which evolved into humans, slowly changing their brains into human brains and transforming animal psychology into human consciousness.
-Finally they were there. Mountains as turnstiles, thresholds to becomings. What do these ones mark? The ground crawled meekly to them, green and a blemished kind of red like blood soaked into moss, up and up until it rendered at rusty brown and rocky tips. Behind, another sort of brown, and behind still grey and white-capped. Each row of mountains was coloured a little differently. Layered and assembled like a collage, foreground in green. But no background of sky, instead clouds that hung and panelled forward as an overlay, disturbing the order of the layers. The mountains encroached into the sky, a challenge to its separateness.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-14.png|''This diagram is based on work from an article titled'' “Evidence in Hand: Recent Discoveries and the Early Evolution of Human Manual Manipulation<ref>Written by Professor Tracy L. Kivell and published in ''The Royal Society''.</ref>.”''Modern research has discovered strong evidence<ref>''Stone Tools Helped Shape Human Hands'' by Sara Reardon, published in New Scientist Magazine.</ref> that the human hand evolved along with tool use, in line with Engels’ analysis in'' Dialectics of Nature.]]
-I do not remember stepping off the bus, in a way that slightly alarms. But I do remember the light and colour: dappled impressions of moss and blood. Like Monet. Up close and in cardinal parts, tiny flowers and perfect tiny tear-shaped leaves of purple. Tiny but integral parts of a bigger whole. Micro/macro and indivisible. The timid parts actually prettier, like my own lone small journey to me. At the same time whole and partial, sublime and obscure but sentimental.
+-----
-A couple of hours after disembarking from the bus and I am caught. Until that point I had been plodding along absent but receptive. Then it hits me very suddenly as I stop to drink some water from my bottle and sit on my haunches and look up at the sky, where a huge bloody eagle of some kind is wheeling about. This is it. This is everything. This is my moonwalk.
+==== Annotation 76 ====
-After the Apollo missions lots of the astronauts would talk about a similar sudden awareness of self. After giving all their concentration to lift-off and getting up there without exploding and feeling tense and so overridden by adrenaline that they were not even that aware of where they were and what they were doing, so that when it ''did'' hit them the feeling was potent and alarming. Others never experienced the feeling because they did not ever stop putting all their resources into the functionality of the mission. Many of the Apollo astronauts experienced their time in space not as selves but as detached scientists.
+It is also worth noting that, just as human consciousness derived from labor and language ''and'' social activity, so too did society itself arise from language and labor, as Engels explained in ''Dialectics of Nature'':
-The tundra is always whistling and it is very empty. I have enough freeze-dried food as base rations to sustain me with hunted stuff for four weeks – the ecologist Aldo Leopold said that three is enough time to get to grips with real solitude and become truly immersed in wilderness. To get into the rhythms of it. Technically past two is classed as ‘settling’ rather than a camping trip and is against park regulations, but I have it from Stan that no one will notice. Stan showed me how to use a radio like the one that would be in the cabin to get in touch if I need him. He has one back in his house for when nobody is in the warden’s office.
+<blockquote>
+The reaction on labour and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of conclusion, gave both labour and speech an ever-renewed impulse to further development. This development did not reach its conclusion when man finally became distinct from the ape, but on the whole made further powerful progress, its degree and direction varying among different peoples and at different times, and here and there even being interrupted by local or temporary regression. This further development has been strongly urged forward, on the one hand, and guided along more definite directions, on the other, by a new element which came into play with the appearance of fully-fledged man, namely, society.
+</blockquote>
-It took me around nine hours’ marching with only a slight deviation. Stan told me, ‘If you hit the river where it leaves the forest then you are too far north,’ but I couldn’t see the river and had to just hope that this was because I was south of it. I was.
+In other words, these factors of human’s physical nature and human society have a dialectical relationship with one another. Elements of human nature — in particular labor and language — led to the development of human society, which in turned played a key role in the development of human language and labor.
-The cabin is everything I dreamed it would be. When I finally saw it from across the tundra I yelped and felt proud of my own tenacity. It is sat just left of some evergreens and looks out onto the tundra. There is an empty smokehouse outside and a tiny toilet shed, a collapsed and moss-covered pile of logs, and a broken pair of skis. Inside there is a mounted fox head, a row of gun mounts, where I have mounted Stan’s gun, some pots, a canvas cot, a fire grate, the radio on a desk with a chair and the supplies I bought. When I move about and unsettle the dust that is uniform and thick I have a sneezing fit. I fitted the radio with the batteries I bought first thing, but I turned it off this evening and intend to keep it so.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-15.png|''Human language and human labor mutually develop one another through a dialectical process to develop human nature. Simultaneously, human nature and human society mutually develop one another through a dialectical process.'']]
-Of course, I also brought loads of books to the woods from a bookshop in town, a pile of the canonical texts on wilderness to help me decipher it. I have some Thoreau, Emerson, Hemingway, the Unabomber and a biographical book about various young male runaways. A heavy but a necessary burden. When Jack London went to the Klondike he read ''Origin of the Species'' (which explains a lot) and ''Paradise Lost''.
+Elements of human nature — in particular labor and language — led to the development of human society, which in turned played a key role in the development of human language and labor.
-Stan didn’t show me how to shoot the gun and I obviously did not ask. I have looked it over and it is pretty similar to a rifle I used to shoot with an ex-boyfriend whose family liked hunting. He used to say he was sad about hurting all the animals, and that was why he would just be the scarer that ran into the grass to get the pheasants up. The real reason was he was a terrible shot; he just didn’t want to say it to me because he was sore that I could shoot better than him. I would not shoot animals, mind, we just used to practise on targets in a field behind his house.
+-----
-I am the only human being for miles around as far as I am aware. At least, that is what I was told by the bus driver, who thinks I am a day hiker too and was concerned enough for my welfare as it was that I did not correct him. He told me to look out for reindeer, caribou, foxes, pine martens, hares, wolves, wildcats and bears. Most are technically edible but I only fancy the smaller things. I have seen Bear Grylls killing and gutting many large animals and it always seems so unnecessary and superfluous. I mean, Bear Grylls obviously eats bears, that is where he gets his name from, right? He eats bears because it is essential to his identity as a ''born survivor''. If he did not eat bears he would not have a job. I am only killing for one and I am only small. I think a hare a week will be more than enough to sustain me with the freeze-dried stuff.
+==== b. Nature and Structure of Consciousness ====
-Is it cheating to bring the ‘just add water’ survival packs? I had to really think about this before coming out. If I did not have them I would have to hunt for ''all'' my food. But people who do this kind of thing always bring supplies. Ernest Hemingway, writer of manly short sentences, took canned pork and beans. Inuits have supplies in the way of preserved foods. Modern Mountain Men buy sacks of pinto beans from Fairbanks. And if bringing supplies was cheating, maybe I should not really have technology like a gun or a radio. And that would not be survival technique, but a probable death-experiment. This thing, this authenticity, how close can you get to it? How pure can it be?
+''- Nature of Consciousness''
-I also would not be able to make the video diary, which would undermine the entire point of the trip. The diary might seem a bit false, might add an inverted voyeurism so that it is really like I have company out here, but I don’t really know how to avoid this. When Bear Grylls cut open a camel to demonstrate how to sleep inside it I doubt if he actually stayed in there all night, snug in his authenticity, with his cameraman asleep in a tent pitched next to him.
+''Consciousness is the dynamic and creative reflection of the objective world in human brains; it is the subjective image of the objective world.'' [See discussion of dynamic and creative reflection on p. 68]
-How do you really ''front the essential facts of life authentically''? Probably it is not even possible in our time of saturation. I can only try my best. Maybe writing is less inauthentic than the audience of a camera. But even then I am writing to be read, so again the ‘solitude’ is tainted by the inverse voyeurism. Go tell that to Thoreau and Heidegger and the Unabomber.
+''The dynamic and creative nature'' of reflection is expressed in human psycho-physiological activities when we receive, select, process, and save data in our brains. Within the human brain, we are able to collect data from the external material world. Based on this information, our brain is capable of creating new information, and we are able to analyze, interpret, and understand all of this information collectively within our consciousness.
-==== THE BEARD AND THE GUNS AND THE ====
+The dynamic and creative nature of reflection is also expressed in several human processes:
-'''LITTLE SHORT SENTENcES'''
+* The creation of ideas, hypotheses, stories, etc.
+* The ability to summarize nature and to comprehend the objective laws of nature.
+* The ability to construct models of ideas and systems of knowledge to guide our activities.
-I went for a walk around yesterday to get to grips with the area in order to draw my first rough map. I had taken for granted that it would be easy to find something to eat, but after a few hours it started getting dark so I had to head back without finding anything (I did find a water source, though, a spring that is only a ten-minute walk from the hut but took me hours to find). It is difficult because I spent a lot of time singing to myself so that the bears would hear me coming and keep out of the way but that also scares away the food. When I got back I settled into the hut, arranged all my blankets on the cot, and got a little fire going in the fire grate.
+''Consciousness is the subjective image of the objective world.'' Consciousness is defined by the objective world in both Content and Form [see Annotation 150, p. 147]. However, consciousness does not perfectly reflect the objective world. It modifies information through the subjective lenses (thoughts, feelings, aspirations, experiences, knowledge, needs, etc.) of humans. According to Marx and Engels, ideas are simply “sublimates [transformations] of [the human brain’s]... material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.”<ref>''The German Ideology'', Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1846.</ref>
-I tried for about fifteen minutes, rubbing sticks together, then gave up and used the gas lighter, and cooked some instant noodles. I did feel kind of fraudulent with my lighter and my sachet of flavour, but if it is good enough for Hemingway then it is good enough for me. I sat and watched the noodles bubble, then I sat and watched them cool as I fed Stan’s map to the flames in the grate, watching it curl to cinder. With it gone a pressure released; like McCandless I am alone, it is again a wilderness to me, the places I had not seen yet still to be discovered. Like vaporising Voyager 1 out of the sky with a laser beam, zap!
+-----
-Today I tried again, but I headed out first thing in the morning to give myself plenty of time, thinking ''immaqa''. I was awake for most of the night anyway. I had not given any thought to how it would feel the first night and alone. There was too much sound to sleep, sound I could not place, the cabin being saggy with age. Mostly I stayed awake because I had a feeling like something was about to happen, or like it had happened and I had not yet put my finger on it. Like everything for a while had been hyperreal sets and stage props but now I was in real real-life, everything with a shining core. It was so bright I could not sleep for it. It was not danger and I would not say I was scared. Just very, very awake.
+==== Annotation 77 ====
-Tips for being not-scared at night:
+In ''The German Ideology'', Marx and Engels refer to ideas somewhat poetically as “the phantoms formed in the human brain,” and explains that ideas arise directly from material human life processes [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. Lenin makes it very clear in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'' that consciousness is not a ''mirror image'', or ''exact'' reproduction of reality, quoting Engels:
-<div style="margin-left:0.847cm;">– Always sleep in tight corners facing outwards, towards the door</div>
+<blockquote>
+The great basic question of all philosophy,” Engels says, “especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being,” of “spirit and nature.” Having divided the philosophers into “two great camps” on this basic question, Engels shows that there is “yet another side” to this basic philosophical question, viz., “in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality?” “The overwhelming majority of philosophers give an affirmative answer to this question,” says Engels, “including under this head not only all materialists but also the most consistent idealists.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.847cm;">– Fill a rubber hot-water bottle with boiling water and curl around it like it is a live, heat-giving companion</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.847cm;">– Hum songs to trick yourself into feeling calm</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.847cm;">– Think of the cabin as a living guardian, then its creaks and groans will comfort not unnerve you. It affords you shelter. It is your best friend</div>
+Of extra importance is Lenin’s footnote to the above passage, regarding what he purports to be Viktor Chernov’s mistranslation of Engels:
-<div style="margin-left:0.847cm;">– If you hear an alarming noise, imagine it over and over again until it no longer alarms you</div>
+<blockquote>
+Fr. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, etc., 4<sup>th</sup> Germ. ed., S. 15. Russian translation, Geneva ed., 1905, p. 12–13. Mr. V. Chernov translates the word Spiegelbild literally (a mirror reflection) accusing Plekhanov of presenting the theory of Engels “in a very weakened form” by speaking in Russian simply of a “reflection” instead of a “mirror reflection”. This is mere cavilling. Spiegelbild [mirror reflection] in German is also used simply in the sense of Abbild [reflection, image].
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.847cm;">– If you are still alarmed, try being just as alarming. Go outside and confront everything. Yell at it all. Send any wild animals scurrying into the night. Look at it a while, to convince yourself it is still and unthreatening</div>
+Here, Lenin reaffirms and clarifies Engels’ idea that consciousness is not a perfect, exact duplicate of reality; not a “mirror image.” This, however, does not contradict the fact that we can obtain real knowledge of the real world in our consciousness, and that this knowledge improves over time through practice and observation. Indeed, Lenin’s passage on practice cited first in this annotation directly follows the above passage in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">I went out as soon as the sun was up enough. I did not do any of the singing this time so that I could go in stealth. First thing I came across apart from the things that ran away before I could see them was a caribou. She was standing behind a tree just ahead of me and had not noticed me, but as soon as I saw her I stopped and must have drawn in breath or something because she looked right at me. She stood there looking at me and kind of puffing cold air out and looking nervous. I thought about shooting her and just living off her for the whole four weeks so that I only had the guilt of one soul on my conscience. But then she stepped forward slowly and her little baby stepped out from behind the tree after her and I was shaking so bad I do not think I would have hit her anyway. They both trotted away and the baby tripped a bit in panic and I had to sit down for a whole minute to stop the shaking.</div>
+See: Natural Source of Consciousness, p. 64, and Annotation 32, 27.
-After I had been out for a good five hours, although I could not really say because I don’t have a way of telling the time apart from on the laptop, and the sun moves at a pace I am still not accustomed to, I started feeling tired, hungry and irritable and began to carry the gun less half-heartedly so that I could just go ahead and shoot the next thing I saw. I wound myself up being all stealthy and peeking round the trees and jumping out, when I saw something dark move just ahead. I shot it before I even had time to worry.
+-----
-I had not accounted for how loud the shot would be in the still air, how much the force would shock me backwards, how the jolt would hurt my shoulder. After the shot everything seemed to go really quiet, all the birds shut up as though they thought they might be next, and I ran over to where the thing was and got on my hands and knees by it. I was amazed to have even hit it because I had been knocked off balance by the force, and because I had only been half-truthing when I told Stan and the bus driver that I knew how to use it. It was very dead, which I was glad about, I did not want to see it half dead, twitching or whimpering.
+''Consciousness is a social phenomenon and has a social nature.'' Consciousness arose from real life activities. Consciousness is always ruled by natural law and by social law.
-I had never killed a thing before and had made a pact with myself to be stoic about it, not to drop the gun and stare at my hands in horror, all ‘what have I done?’ But as much as I wanted to make it a point of pride ''not'' to cry, because a Mountain Man would not cry, certainly, I cry very easily so of course I burst into tears.
+-----
-When you are a young child you cry for yourself, you cry for the attention of your parents. Growing up is feeling for the first time for the outside world, it is evolving out of your juvenile solipsism (if you are a girl anyway). I remember the moment it happened to me for the first time clearly. It was when the Columbia rocket blew to pieces over Texas on re-entry.
+==== Annotation 78 ====
-It was a really sunny afternoon in England. I was in the car, sat in the back behind Dad, so it must have been a weekend because I was school age. They announced it on the radio. The radio presenter’s voice was all choked up. I looked up at the bright blue sky, where there was an airplane making candyfloss trails, and I cried. They played David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ on the radio and I felt like I was mourning the Columbia rocket with the whole of the rest of humanity. I remember my dad’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. As I remember it he looked moved, misty-eyed, to see his young daughter cry for the first time at something so outside herself.
+''Natural law'' includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and other natural phenomena which govern the material world. Consciousness itself can never violate natural law as it arises from the natural processes of the natural world.
-So girls as a very general demographic cry more. Maybe you can say this is weak. Or maybe you can say that it takes a lot of strength to admit you feel so much all of the bloody time. Like how our pain threshold is higher from tidal womb pain.
+''Social law'' includes the objective and universal relationships between social phenomena and social processes. Human society was created through labor, and this labor was performed in very specific material relations between humans and the natural world.
-I recognised it from my fauna and flora book as a large snowshoe hare, its blood all stark on its side and in a little pool beside it. It was pale brown and looked paler in a different way, from its loss of animation. My impulse was to cover it with dirt and leave it be. It affected me greatly to think that the blood had been making its way to its heart moments before and now it was outside it, going sticky.
+''Note: social law is a key concept of historical materialism, which is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.''
-I felt myself shaking, like all my feelings had turned to energy, buzzing around my body instead of turning into something I could understand. It felt like that with no causal link. Before there was a brown hare and now there is this ''corporeal object''. The object is still and cold and looks like a hare, but different.
+In ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'', Marx explains how social existence and social laws govern the consciousness of individuals:
-What is a thing? Is it a different thing without the essence that makes it what it is? Is an essence a soul? Before it was a hare and now it is a body and soon to be a piece of meat. This is why I have to do this thing that I am apparently going to find very disturbing. I need to know that I have it in me to live by acknowledging that I am living where living = not dead. And again for that intangible thing this authenticity, for the documentary.
+<blockquote>
+In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
+</blockquote>
-Back at Stan’s I shot a video of him skinning, and I have it to watch back on the laptop. He said something snide about it but I really do not see the problem. I have never known how to do it because I have never lived in a place where I have had to learn, and it annoyed me that he was being smug when I was trying to rectify this.
-The first thing to do (I will gladly be the oracle because I believe in communal knowledge) is to squeeze the animal’s bladder area, for obvious reasons. Then you make a little V shape at the top of the breast to get the knife under the skin, and you cut right down its belly. When this opens up all the bits are just there like you have unzipped a purse full of guts. I have only gutted fish before and it made me feel unusual. I was expecting lots of blood to spurt out and it all to be chaos and mess but it is not at all. You let a little blood out then it is neat, as if the hare was made just for you to eat it.
+-----
-When the belly is open you just pull the guts out by running two fingers from top to bottom, which is a very odd sensation, and I don’t think I will be able to get the smell off my fingers for days. Then you take off the legs and head; without a meat cleaver not as easy as Stan made it seem. After that you take off the skin, disconcertingly easy, just like pulling a tight sock off apart from a few places that have to be picked apart with the knife.
+Consciousness is determined by the social communication needs of human beings as well as the material conditions of reality.
-You are left with a naked, headless, pawless ''thing'', which then needs the remaining entrails taken out, including the duct the poo goes through, which made me feel kind of embarrassed for the hare. I did make a bit of a mess of things but still did well for a first time, I think. I cut it into three pieces, two to keep inside the Tupperware box covered in the salt I brought, and the other to boil tonight then take off the bone and eat with some form of vacuum-packed carbohydrate. I made a fire pit for the guts and set them on fire because that is how you make sure the bears do not smell them.
+-----
-I had to stop myself from using up too much of the antibacterial hand rub to get rid of the death smell on my hands. I am going out to get some firewood and then I will cook and after some reading I will be very ready for bed, I am exhausted after not sleeping last night. I feel very resourceful. Like a bird must feel when it settles into its nest that it built with its own beak and claws. Birds must be capable of feelings of sorts. When a little bird settles down into its self-built nest and fluffs up its feathers and burrows into its own neck, it is the very image of immense satisfaction.
+==== Annotation 79 ====
-==== MORE SPACE WHERE NOBODY IS THAN WHERE ANYBODY IS ====
+The term ''material conditions'' refers to the external environment which humans inhabit. Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base<ref>See Annotation 3, p. 2 and Annotation 29, p. 24.</ref> of human society, and other objective externalities and systems which affect human life and society. Note that material conditions don’t refer to physical matter alone, but also include objective social relations and phenomena. In ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'', Marx argues that “neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life.”
-My plan is to make my map over four days. I already have my rough diagram but need to walk to each place to hone it and add finer details, like where is good for a lookout, or somewhere to maybe practise trapping. I want it to cover the area I am likely to use on a regular day so I will walk for half a day then turn back on myself. On day one I will head north, on day two east, and so on. I think I can walk about twenty miles in a very long day, so the map should cover approximately ten miles in radius from the hut at the centre.
+Consciousness is dynamic in nature, constantly learning and changing flexibly. Consciousness guides humans to transform the material world to suit our needs.
-Stan criticised Chris McCandless for the fact that he did not have an official map. If he had had an official map he would have seen that just downriver from where he could not make his crossing back to civilisation because of floodwater and subsequently ate the potato that killed him, there was a pulley system for transporting things and people across safely. But if Chris McCandless had had an official map, it would not have been his wilderness and he might as well have died anyway.
+-----
-I am not in danger of that because I know exactly how to get back to the road to get the bus back to the visitors’ centre, and I also have radio contact if I want to turn the thing back on. It would not take them long to find the cabin if they needed to, because they know I was headed out without camping gear. I am conceptually isolated and alone, but in trouble I could radio Stan for help. Although I had thought about going further in and leaving the radio behind, finding somewhere else to sleep. With each day I feel a little more certain that Stan will try to rescue me. Actually I am thinking about it a lot.
+==== Annotation 80 ====
-South of the hut the forest becomes dense and backs all the way to where the mountains start, in the south and arcing west. In the lower foothills the trees stop growing from the altitude, then just behind the mountains rise higher and are sooty black with stripes of white where the meagre snow is. Further behind still somewhere is Denali, the highest point in North America.
+Consciousness and material conditions have a dialectical relationship with one other, just as the base of society and the superstructure have a dialectical relationship with one other [see Annotation 29, p. 24]. Consciousness arises from material conditions, though conscious activity can affect material conditions.
-Mount Denali was until very recently named Mount McKinley, and is still called that by some bitter Ohioans. It was called Denali from the Koyukon-Athabaskan ''Deenaalee'', which means ‘the high one’. The Russians, when they owned Alaska, called it ''Bolshaya Gora'', which means ‘big mountain’. Then an American gold prospector came along and called it ''McKinley'', which means ‘President William McKinley’, bequeathed in a curious naming ritual used by colonising white men whereby the conquered entity is named after the conqueror or an adulated public figure.
+As Marx explains in ''Capital Volume I'':
-The gold prospector called the mountain ''McKinley'' because William McKinley was a proponent of the gold standard and the prospector wanted to get one over on the silver miners, who wanted the president to be William Jennings Bryan, the proponent of the silver standard.
+<blockquote>
+At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose.
+</blockquote>
-Then President William McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist called Leon Czolgosz because he was the ‘president of the money kings’ willing to exploit the poor to benefit the rich. So the name got officially etched into all of the maps in President William McKinley’s memory by the American government in 1917.
+In ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'', Marx explains how the development of material conditions eventually leads to conscious activity which will in turn lead to changes in society:
-Years and years and they will not stop arguing about it because for America Alaska is still very much in the process of construction. Alaskans want the name to be ''Denali'' from ''Deenaalee'', maybe mostly because they do not want to be out-Alaskaned by the Ohioans, who keep blocking the change because McKinley came from Ohio and they want their namesake on the biggest mountain in North America. In real life in Alaska people mostly just call it Denali. The Athabaskans never stopped calling it Deenaalee and maybe do not know what all the fuss is about, because they did not draw maps.
+<blockquote>
+At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
+</blockquote>
-In 2015 President Barack Obama officially finally changed the name to Denali to show honour, respect and gratitude to the Athabaskan-speaking people (as if naming is owning and he was giving it back). Donald Trump declared this ‘an insult to Ohio’ and vowed to change it back, so let’s see how long that lasts. Does an orca care if it gets shunted from one entire species to a separate species dependent on how it hunts (which is what Larus said may be the case)? Probably the Athabaskans just shrug and say you do what you want, we are going to just carry on calling it Deenaalee under your shouting chins. The orcas say yeah, whatever, we are just going to carry on swimming and flipping seals or not flipping seals.
+As Marx further explains, material conditions must first be met before such revolutionary social changes can be made through conscious activity:
-The tundra is always in soliloquy. Mostly it whistles and sings, but now and then the wind will die down suddenly and in the utter silence and still it feels like you are on stage. As though you did not know there were curtains until they just suddenly opened. Then the cacophony of noise again like applause.
+<blockquote>
+No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.
+</blockquote>
-From where the tundra and taiga meet you see right across to the east, but you do not see the road because it is too far. The sky was very blue and clouds dragged shadows over the tundra, dimming the glare of the lake.
-In the forest I worried about getting lost, but heading due south-west by the compass, towards the steeper foothills, I stayed on track fine. In this area the trees were dense. This route leads to a perfect fishing spot, where the stream is shallow enough to cross and brimming with fish. I headed further on past this in order to get to the foothills because I wanted to climb past the timberline to get a better look. The ground started to slope and the trees thinned so that I had a slight vantage, and I could see what I took to be a radio mast just a mile or so away in the east. I headed there instead for no reason other than that it intrigued me.
+-----
-The radio mast is really a fire tower. The foliage around it is thick overhead, and after going back into the thicker trees I could not really get a view of it until I was almost directly underneath. There was a little clearing, and when I came into it the sudden view of the tower shocked me. A radio mast was benign in my mind but a watchtower reeked too much of people. It isn’t that I am hermitised already, just that I do not want to lose this game I am playing with myself so soon.
+''- Structure of Consciousness''
-I hid back in the trees, where I was sure I could not be seen from above, and hunkered down to watch for movement in the lookout at the top. In real-life terms, I was also concerned that a park warden might ask to see my permit. Stan gave a resident permit from lost property to me, which he advised me to leave in my hut on the days I went out; that way if anyone dropped by they would leave me be thinking I was ‘P. S. Aldridge’. He did not actually explain what I should do if I met a warden while I was out, he just told me that where I was going was so far away and off-trail I would not meet one at all.
+Consciousness has a very complicated structure, including many factors which have strong relationships with each other. The most basic factors are ''knowledge, sentiment'' and ''willpower.''
-I stayed still, hunkered and watching for a good ten minutes. The tower was rusted and wind-battered. As I watched it, it gradually changed its appearance, began to seem hollower as its potential to expose me withered. But then the fire-watcher could just be sat where I could not see them, reading or sleeping or watching for fires. I decided the only way to know was to yell up. I would yell like some kind of animal from inside the trees and see if anything changed.
+-----
-I yelled stupidly. Only crows noticed, lifting off from the tops of the trees and cawing at me because they were annoyed at themselves for startling so easily. Then I felt less stupid. Nobody came to the window.
+==== Annotation 81 ====
-At the base of the tower, with my foot on the ladder, I shouted up again just to make sure. This time, in a human voice, I asked hello? Nothing. The steps were made of sheet metal, like the steps to a lifeguard’s chair, and were rickety. They wound around the four legs of the tower in an angular spiral.
+As with the concept of reflection (see Annotation 68, p. 65), the analysis of the structure of consciousness which follows is rooted in ideas first proposed by Marx, Engels and Lenin, and later developed through the work of various Soviet psychologists, philosophers, and scientists including Ivan Pavlov, Todor Pavlov, Aleksei Leontiev, Lev Vygotsky, Valentin Voloshinov, and others, and is used as a basis for scientific inquiry and development up to this day. According to ''Where is Marx in the Work and Thought of Vygotsky?'' by Lucien Sève (2018), much of this work, such as the groundbreaking work of Lev Vygotsky, has been heavily “de-Marxized,” stripped of all aspects of Marxism and, by extension, dialectical materialism, in translation to English.
-Towards the top the tower groaned against the slow wind. I came into the lookout through a trapdoor. The floor was coated with a coarse gristly dust, prints left where it came away on my hands. Apart from my marks it was print-less. Nobody had been up there for a very long time. I clambered inside and crawled to sit with my back to a wall.
+''Knowledge'' constitutes the understanding of human beings, and is the result of the cognitive process. Knowledge is the re-created image of perceived objects which takes the form of language. Knowledge is the mode of existence of consciousness and the condition for consciousness to develop.
-There was nothing inside and the glass in the windows was grimy. I looked around for a sign for when there was last a person in there. The dust was felt-like on the floor. Light came up through the boards, rendering all my movements gold-dusty and ethereal.
+-----
-I had the thought to maybe check the walls for some kind of graffiti. I imagine they turn up all over the place in spaces like this. There were two; they read:
+==== Annotation 82 ====
-<div style="text-align:center;">''Johnston Wills, 1952''</div>
+Marx and Engels discussed the relationship between language and consciousness extensively in ''The German Ideology'', explaining that language — the form of knowledge which exists in human consciousness — evolved dialectically with and through social activity, and that consciousness also developed along with and through the material processes that gave rise to speech:
-<div style="text-align:center;">''P Harris, 1999''</div>
+<blockquote>
+From the start the ‘spirit’ is afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’ with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.”So, language, physical speech organs, and human society all developed in dialectic relations with one another. Since language is the form of knowledge in human consciousness, this means that knowledge arose directly from these dialectical processes:
-If I had not found them I could have been the first person to set foot in there since whenever I wanted to imagine. Maybe not objectively, but that would not have mattered. Like how a scientific discovery is a discovery until a new discovery is made that refutes the original one, like how Denali stays Deenaalee to the isolated Athabaskans, who choose not to read maps. Really in this way no one ever discovers anything, they only invent things (we invented nuclear bombs but we say we discovered them because that sounds less evil). I could have invented this place as an unpeopled wilderness for myself. I sat down cross-legged and looked at them and wondered if maybe P Harris had thought the same. Maybe he wrote his name in defiance: ''you can’t have this place all to yourself, Johnston Wills''.
+Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious.
+</blockquote>
-Then I remembered the rock in the Greenlandic tundra that stood to hold me and Urla and Naaja until enough rain, time and rock plants had eroded our names. I wondered what they were both doing right then. If Urla had really thought Larus and I were close in the wrong way, if he let her think that, if she hated me.
+The fact that knowledge has a language-form in human consciousness is also important to understand because it shows that consciousness arose dialectically as, and through, social activity, and indeed, language and social activity gave rise to consciousness as a replacement for animal instinct in our relations with nature.
-If I came back with supplies I could camp out in the tower for a few days. I did not want to cook any food and use the portable propane so soon, so I would have to bring it already cooked and cold. I only have one kind of container for bringing it so I could do maybe two nights if I filled the tub, before I got hungry again. I was brain tired, and my legs ached, and it felt safe to be so high up off the ground, rocking gently, a bird in a tree. I thought of all the canopy creatures; bees in hives, pine martens in tree hollows, porcupine sat in branches, everyone safely elevated from the prowlers, a hovering biome. I felt a comfort like fellowship, and decided to stay put until the morning.
+-----
-==== HEROES FOR A GIRL SCOUT ====
+<blockquote>
+Man’s consciousness of the necessity of associating with the individuals around him is the beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all. This beginning is as animal as social life itself at this stage. It is mere herd-consciousness, and at this point man is only distinguished from sheep by the fact that with him consciousness takes the place of instinct or that his instinct is a conscious one.
+</blockquote>
-In my dream I am sat at the bottom of the mighty Mekong river talking to a giant catfish, who tells me he is one hundred years old. His eyes and scales are the same dirt-brown as the river, like over time the dirt that settled on him crawled underneath his skin and became his skin. His voice sounds like bubbling custard. All the dead men that fell in the water in the Vietnam War had sheened themselves with DDT to keep mosquitoes away. Agent Orange collected in the waters and the soil and the bodies of the living things.
+And, as language and social activity dialectically developed through one another, human society became complex enough to give rise to human societies and human economies:
-The bodies got eaten by the little fish, bigger fish ate the little fish, the catfish ate the bigger fish, all the DDT and Agent Orange from all their livers built up and up in the liver of the catfish. Now the catfish is poison. A hook and line plop and sink into the brown river to where I sit with the catfish. He takes the hook in his crêpe-like fin and pops it through his blubbery lip. Above, a little Vietnamese boy reels in his dinner.
+<blockquote>
+This sheep-like or tribal consciousness receives its further development and extension through increased productivity, the increase of needs, and, what is fundamental to both of these, the increase of population. With these there develops the division of labour…
+</blockquote>
-I was sleeping deeply and was jerked quite suddenly awake by a strange, long noise. A bell. I shook all over and my teeth clanked from panic. I imagined looking over the spruces like a crow sees them, stretching on and on, an unbroken sea of green and dark shadows. And then the tower.
-A bell needed somebody to ring it. From a vantage of anywhere over the forest, from the ridge or the semicircle of higher ground from the north, you need not be a crow. Had I lit the tower up like a beacon when I used the torch? Somebody had rung a bell.
+-----
-I sat up when it came again, peeling away on the wind. It sounded distorted this time. Then right away, it came again. Only this time it sounded nothing like I thought it at all. It was unmistakable: a mournful warble as timeless and familiar as the pentatonic scale.
+Knowledge can be separated into two broad categories: knowledge of nature, and knowledge of human society. Each of these categories of knowledge reflects its corresponding entity in the external world.
-I grabbed the camera and scrambled to open up the window and look down into the dimly visible clearing. It was empty but the wolves were near. The howl had come so clear, and besides I could feel them. The forest was heavy with anticipation, the spires of the evergreens whispering like a crowd as the lights dim.
+-----
-The howl came again, and it went right through me, could have been in the tower. It made my whole body shudder in a way that made me grin; a tingle of pseudo-fear like looking down from an airplane. My hackles raised of their own accord. Into the clearing came a dark shape, one, two, three, and then a white one, then one more black. They fanned around the base of the tower with their noses to the ground. I could hear an excited kind of whimpering.
+==== Annotation 83 ====
-Wolves are an animal I can trust. Their packs are hierarchical, but they are spearheaded by a male and female breeding pair, who rule together in equality. Wolf Wives are absent from ''The Call of the Wild''. Two she-dogs are friendly so get killed, and the only strong female sled dog – Dolly – goes mad and has her head smashed in. Mercedes, the sole female human character in the book, spends her cameo crying and complaining. This has left a lasting impression on men-who-think-like-dogs like Stan.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-16.png|''Each category of knowledge reflects a corresponding entity in the external world.'']]
-For a moment of delicious fear I toyed with the vision of the wolves staying put and waiting for me. Sitting on their haunches and looking up at the tower with hungry eyes.
+It’s also important to note that human society and nature have a dialectical relationship with each other and mutually impact one another, and, by extension, knowledge of nature and knowledge of human society also dialectically influence one another. So these categories of knowledge are not isolated from one another but rather dynamically shape and influence each other continuously through time.
-But they did not look up. One of them cocked his leg to the tower then yelped, and they filed away quickly into the trees with such a purpose I knew I would not see them again that night.
+-----
-==== THE TIMESCALES OF HUMMINGBIRDS ====
+Based on levels of cognitive development, we can also classify knowledge into categories of: daily life knowledge and scientific knowledge, experience knowledge and theory knowledge, emotional knowledge and rational knowledge.
-When I returned to the cabin I was glad to find everything as I left it. My permit was in the exact same place on the desk, so I am pretty sure nobody came by. I will go back to camp in the tower at some other point but I need some proper food and my mosquito net. Stan was smug when he added it to my list and I had thought it an arbitrary appendage to make him feel like he had had one on me. I have to give him credit now as actually I would have been fucked without it. In the tower so high up they were not so bad, but in the cabin and outside on evenings they come in swarms. I can slap my arm and kill four at one time. I feel a little bad doing this because I know that only female mosquitoes bite and they have to do it to get enough iron and protein to make their eggs. They are only trying to feed their babies, just like everything is trying to feed its babies.
+-----
-I decided to try fishing as I figured it would affect me a lot less than shooting a thing dead. I had bought some fishing line and hooks in Fairbanks, and for the rest I found a sturdy stick as my rod and tied the line to the end, where it splayed, so I could attach it around the adjoining part to make it more secure. I made the line long enough so that I could yank it out the water fast, but with no reel I can only use it in relatively shallow water.
+==== Annotation 84 ====
-I was stumped for a float until I remembered a redundant tampon at the bottom of my bag that I’d brought just in case I lost my Mooncup. It was still sealed with all the air in so it worked a dream. I attached this to the middle of the line before tying the hook to the end with a little ribbon of foil from a noodle packet just above it to act as the little fish-attracter thing. Then I upturned a log and collected myself some grubs and worms for bait in a rusty tin can.
+The following information is from the ''Marxism-Leninism Textbook of Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism'', released by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training:
-I found salmonberries (they look a little like raspberries, more seedy and juicy) and harvested as many as I could carry inside a clean sock. Along the way I managed to find lots of dandelion leaves that I washed in a stream and nibbled. There was also a plant I came across that looked like the plant the pamphlet called ''goosetongue'', but it warned that it also looks like ''arrowgrass'', which is poisonous. I have learned enough from Chris McCandless to know that eating anything I was not sure of would be a no-no, but it felt wholesome to be learning the things by their names just to look at and touch, their tactile truth.
+'''Daily Life and Scientific Knowledge'''
-Although to be fair to McCandless it does not seem he confused a lethal plant for another, it was just his own fauna and flora book did not tell him that this certain potato he was always eating actually contained lethal toxins. It was a taxonomical failing and not ignorance that killed him, as I said to Stan.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-17.png]]
-The course of the stream widens out where another joins it. The water runs clear and shallow; underneath it you can see the shadows of the fish holding themselves against the current. They hold then dart away suddenly for reasons kept from you by the mirage-making surface. I watched one fish that seemed to enjoy holding itself against the exact point where the two waters met and did not move from this meditative state for a whole fifteen minutes. Do fish feel meditative? Without awareness, just some primitive state of tranquillity?
+''Daily Life Knowledge'' is the knowledge we acquire in our daily lives to deal with our daily tasks. From our interactions with nature and human society, we cultivate life experience and our understanding of every aspect of our daily lives in relation to human society and nature.
-I set up the rod to dip into the water where shadow from the trees hung over. The forest was awake to me and gave its alarm call. I made sure the rod was wedged into the ground firmly and rested my leg against it so I could feel any movement. It is like all my senses are intensified, sounds are so loud they make me jumpy and my body reacts nervously to the slightest movement. I feel like an acrobat, every body part accountable for something.
+''Scientific Knowledge'' arises from Daily Life Knowledge: as our daily lives become more complex, we develop a need to understand the material world and human society more deeply and comprehensively. Scientific Knowledge is thus a developed system of knowledge of nature and human society. Scientific Knowledge can be tested and can be applied to human life and activity in useful ways.
-After not too much time the birds took up their usual quarrels with each other and ignored me, and the sound came thick from the trees. For some time I lay on my side with my ear to the cool, damp ground. I could feel how far down the layers of earth went below me like vertigo, with soil and crust and mantle, lithosphere and asthenosphere, all the way down to the fiery nut of the earth. I could almost hear it, a mellow, churning grumble.
+'''Experience and Theory Knowledge:'''
-You can’t feel that in a built-up place. In a built-up place the ground is thick with artificiality. In a place that has been built and rebuilt many times over, old towns fallen, redeveloped, retarmacked, returfed, that turf in ready cylinders like grass-and-soil Swiss rolls rolled out, plastered new again and again; it feels too structured to feel dizzying. This is a part of the reason I like my lime quarry so much. All its layers. At the lime quarry the earth is bare and cut open like a quiche and inside the quarry you can feel closer to the heart of the earth, like touching the pit of someone else’s scar.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-18.png]]
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+''Experience Knowledge'' is cultivated from direct observation of nature and human society. This kind of knowledge is extremely diverse, and we can apply this kind of knowledge to guide our daily activities.
-[[Image:f0180-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-The tundra is so big and open that animals are exposed everywhere, so they keep one eye on me warily, but go about doing their thing as I walk on past. How crawling with life the rough grasses are. Hares rush around and stand sentry, ground squirrels run in little bursts, stopping to gather fruits and buds in their cheeks. A weasel slinks through the grass after the voles, so frantic to gather food for the winter that they let their guard down. Summers are so short that everything is fighting against time to prepare, the predation of winter overshadowing that of everything else.
+''Theory Knowledge'' arises from Experience Knowledge. Theory Knowledge is composed of abstract generalizations of Experience Knowledge. Theory Knowledge is more profound, accurate, and systematically organized than Experience Knowledge and gives us an understanding of the laws and dynamics of nature and human society.
-In Britain we used to have wolves and bears and lynx and bison and even elephants and rhinos a long time ago, but we are such a tiny island that we quickly killed them all and became kings of our little kingdom. Accounts for some of our colonial hubris?
+'''Emotional and Rational Knowledge:'''
-The tundra is specked with water where the frost melts. The permafrost lies underground, starving the drier parts. Lusher grass surrounds waterholes, and elsewhere the grass is hardy and coarse and shrubs are dead-looking. It gives the tundra muted but multifaceted colour. The way the light plays on it from the big sky makes its depth and tone flicker.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-19.png]]
-As soon as I felt a tug I jumped up and had it over my shoulder before I even knew it and I am glad no one was around to see because the force from flinging it back brought the fish back at me and it hit my front as I turned to it, making me yell. The sound zigzagged away from me into the forest and took several birds with it. It took me a second to remember that there was no one around to hear, but when I realised I was alone, so utterly and completely alone, I laughed and laughed to myself, trying to hold the writhing fish.
+Less Developed More Developed
-And I could feel all of Jack Kerouac’s ghosts of the mountain cursing at me for desecrating the art. But if the art is to demonstrate skill rather than a simple utilitarianism then I don’t want to be a part of it. It is a man’s sport, a battle just to collect its name, possess its specificity, like the Enlightenment exotic specimen collector (one for the collection, a big one for the wall). And to do so ''skilfully'', whatever that means, probably with minimal splashing and squealing. They can keep their art.
+''Emotional Knowledge'' is the earlier stage of cognitive processing. Emotional Knowledge comes directly to us from our human senses. We obtain emotional knowledge when we use our human senses to directly learn things about nature and human society. Emotional Knowledge is usually manifested as immediate cognitive responses such as pleasure, pain, and other such impulses.
-Once I had it still against the ground I had to stun it to knock it out before I bled it, like Larus showed me on the pilot whale boat. I worried about this part because perhaps it ''did'' have more culpability than pulling a trigger and watching a thing drop. The fish lay still for me, looking up at the sky through the canopy with its empty orb of an eye. I have thought for a long time that anything I am willing to eat I should be willing to kill. And although I back the philosophy all the way, in practice it is as hard as I hoped it wouldn’t be. I am not sure I will ever be able to kill anything without crying at least a little bit.
+''Rational Knowledge'' arises from Emotional Knowledge. It is a higher stage of cognitive processing, involving abstract thought and generalization of emotional knowledge.
-After it was bled I laid it out flat and took out the ''Fauna & Flora of the Denali Wilderness'' book to identify it. It was an Arctic grayling, I could tell easy from the fin on its back like a Chinese fan. It was quite little for a grayling, but I can make it last me two meals.
+Rational Knowledge is usually manifested as definitions, conjectures, judgments, etc.
-In the tundra I stumbled onto a spruce grouse sat on a clutch of eggs. It occurred to me that I could take her eggs to eat. She looked at me imploringly through one beady eye. I left her.
+''See also: Principle of Development, p. 119; Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.''
-Other birds seen today:
+-----
-Osprey
+''Sentiment'' is the resonant manifestation of human emotions and feelings in our relationships. Sentiment is a special form of reality reflection [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Whenever reality impacts human beings, we feel specific sensations and emotional reactions to those impacts. Over time, these specific sensations and emotions combine and dialectically develop into generalized human feelings, and we call these generalized feelings ''sentiment.'' Sentiment expresses and develops in every aspect of human life; it is a factor that improves and promotes cognitive and practical activities.
-American kestrel
+-----
-Pintail ducks
+==== Annotation 85 ====
-Snow geese
+As Marx explains in ''Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844:'' “Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being — and because he feels that he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential power of man energetically bent on its object.” Marx further elaborates that sentimental emotion is essential to human nature: “The domination of the objective essence within me, the sensuous eruption of my essential activity, is emotion which thereby becomes the activity of my nature.”
-Tundra swans
+Depending on the subjects that are perceived, as well as our human emotions about them, sentiments can be manifested in many different forms such as: moral emotion, aesthetic emotion, religious emotion, etc.
-Ring-necked ducks
+-----
-Grey jay
+==== Annotation 86 ====
-Horned grebes
+''Moral Emotion'' is the basic manifestation of moral consciousness at an emotional level. For example: when we see people helping other people, we have positive emotional responses, yet when we see people harming other people, we have negative emotional responses. ''(Source: Nguyen Thi Khuyen of the National Institute of Administration of Vietnam)''
-Plovers
+''Aesthetic Emotion'' refers to the the resonant feelings which arise from our interaction with beauty, sadness, comedy, etc., in life and in art. For example: when humans encounter beauty, we feel positive emotional responses. When humans encounter ugliness, we feel negative emotional responses. When we witness pain, we feel sympathetic feelings of pain and a desire to help. When we witness comedy, we feel humorous emotions ourselves. ''(Source: Textbook of General Aesthetic Studies from the Ministry of''
-Mourning doves
+''Education and Training of Vietnam)''
-Cuckoo
+''Religious Emotion'' is the human belief in supernatural or spiritual forces which can’t be tested or proved through material practice or observation. However, belief in these forces can give human beings emotional responses such as hope, love, etc. ''(Source: Pham Van Chuc, Doctor of Philosophy, Central Theoretical Council of the Communist Party of Vietnam)''
-In the south the mountains stood resolutely, still and intangible as a painting, until at one point a light aircraft cut across them, a slow and deliberate finger through perfect dust. When this happens there is a noise with it, a loud droning that I noticed for the first time while watching the first plane. It was lucky that I did because I might have spooked from hearing it without knowing what it came from. I threw myself to the ground on impulse but it was too far away to make me out. From here you could not tell the cabin from the treeline.
+These are just a few illustrative examples; there are many other ways in which human emotion and sentiment can manifest.
-On the way back to the cabin I found my first bear print. It made my hairs stand on end; a first encounter. Its print a symbol of its self. A warning, a promise, a truth. But really it is just an imprint a big animal left without meaning to. How strange.
+''Willpower'' is the manifestation of one’s own strength used to overcome obstacles in the process of achieving goals. Willpower is a dynamic aspect of consciousness, a manifestation of human consciousness in the material world.
-==== LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS ====
+-----
-It confuses me to have nightmares about a thing I can barely remember now. I had thought it over so many times before that I could no longer tell what was memory and what got added or taken away. Then I stopped remembering it at all, but it came back last night in a bad way.
+==== Annotation 87 ====
-In the nightmare I found myself cold and dark. I was in an ice cave. In the Arctic. The walls were blue and jagged. It smelled like damp old fish and dead things. My breath billowed in silvery wisps in front of me. Then it would crystallise and fall to the floor in tinkles. On the back of my neck I felt my hair brushed to the side and hot sticky breath ran across it slowly. A hand came from behind and clasped over my mouth, a stubby, sweaty troll hand.
+An unnamed poem by Ho Chi Minh, written in 1950 for the Revolutionary Youth Pioneers, addresses the phenomenon of willpower:
-You are not in an ice cave. You are in the meat fridge at work. The hand is clasped tight over your mouth so your whimpering is muffled. The other hand fumbles with your small breasts over the top of the polka-dot starter bra your mum bought you because you are starting to blossom now. You can feel something hard pressing into where your thighs meet the crease in your arse. You know it will make it worse if you squirm but you want to get free. Then you get a chance because someone shouts at him from outside the fridge, his grip loosens and you dig your elbow into his bloated troll belly.
+<blockquote>
+Nothing in this world must be difficult
-He grunts a troll grunt. He puts his hand around your neck and calls you a little bitch. But then you know it’s over because she is shouting to him from the kitchen. He lumbers to the door and as he closes it he leans his face in and runs his tongue over his fat wet lips. The door bangs shut.
+The only thing that we should fear is having a waivering heart
-You can’t cry you can’t cry you can’t cry because they will shout and send you home, and then what? If you yell Sandra will hear eventually and she will open the door from the outside and let you out and laugh at you for being scared of the dark and getting yourself stuck in the fridge again.
+We can dig up mountains and fill the sea
-Was it as bad as the dream felt or was the dream just a collage from things the other girls had told you? No matter what you remember, it is nothing special, of course. Almost every girl you know has a troll to remind her that her body is not her own.
+Once we’ve willfully made a firm decision
+</blockquote>
-It tipped it down today so I stayed cooped up inside. The cabin is cosy with the little fire going, the tapping on the roof and sides adding sound contours that make it feel particularly safe, so I felt better. Because I had the time I made the fire with sticks from my kindling pile. I am very proud of the fire. It took me about ten minutes to get smoke, then another five to get it going properly. I have guarded and fed it all day like a little pet. Kaczynski complained in his diary that he failed to consistently make fire without striking matches and that it annoyed him greatly. I am more authentic than Ted Kaczynski!
+Today, this poem serves as the lyrics for anthem of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (formerly the Revolutionary Youth Pioneers).
-I did go out just to see how bad it was and got a headache from the hammering of icy raindrops on my crown. It was too heavy to see much and I got soaked through, so I will have to stay put until it slackens off. I have enough food to last and a bit of fish. Hopefully it will have stopped overnight, though.
+-----
-I watched back and edited a lot of footage and it is coming together but in a way I am not quite sure about. Mostly when I watch things back they do not feel like I remember them. People seem to be very different to how they really seemed at the time. There is so much responsibility in putting the pieces of what has happened together to follow a story. And there is Rochelle, who will not fit into my story. And then there are the things that can’t and do not say anything at all and lie vacant for my projections.
+Willpower arises from human self-awareness and awareness of the purposes of our actions. Through this awareness and through willpower, we are able to struggle against ourselves and externalities to successfully achieve our goals. We can consider willpower to be the power of conscious human activity; willpower controls and regulates human behaviors in order to allow humans to move towards our goals voluntarily; willpower also allows humans to exercise self-restraint and self-control, and to be assertive in our actions according to our views and beliefs.
-Am I pulling them out of the water like fish to look at? Like they are specimens and I am writing them into my field book? There is a gap between what they are and what I think they are and I am trying to talk about this gap with authority, declaring I know what I see and it is this.
+-----
-I did a lot of reading. Then I did a video diary entry. Then I got bored and decided to search around the hut for hidden things. I had figured it must be at least fifty years old, maybe even one hundred. I had not bothered to check it properly for signatures like I had the tower, aside from a quick sweep. I felt sure I had missed something.
+==== Annotation 88 ====
-I checked all the obvious places again first, the walls around the cot, the desk with everything taken off it. Then I found them in a corner of the room. Now I have found them I do not know how I did not notice them before. It was not an obvious place, sure, and most are really faint, but there were enough of them. They are mostly names and dates, the earliest being 1929 and the most recent P Harris again, 1999. I counted seven authors of six signatures and five quotes. Some of the classics:
+In ''Dialectics of Nature'', Engels explains how willpower developed in human beings as we separated from animals through the development of consciousness: “The further removed men are from animals, however, the more their effect on nature assumes the character of premeditated, planned action directed towards definite preconceived ends.”
-‘Going to the mountains is going home’ – John Muir
+In ''Capital Volume I'', Marx explains how willpower uniquely allows humans to consciously change our own material conditions to suit our needs according to pre-conceived plans:
-‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived’ – Thoreau
+<blockquote>
+Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.
+</blockquote>
-I checked, out of curiosity, behind the fox head (there is also the compulsion to leave a mark that no one will ever notice). It just said Caroline, in very tiny print, with no date. It was the only obviously female name in here. Even where the names were ambiguous, the handwriting on the wall was all very masculine. What I mean by this is that maybe the men who wrote on the wall had learned to express themselves as men, to express their ''man-sized'' ideas in a handwriting that was reflective of how they held and thought of themselves.
-Because they author these ideas like they ''belonged'' to them by virtue of being men. Thoreau and that bunch always talked, of course, in lofty terms of Man and He. In search of some inspirational wilderness quotes from women before I started the documentary most to be found came from low-brow memoirs of the self-help kind and had to do with inner journeys rather than the outer objective Truths of the Mountain Men, and had titles like ''The Single Woman: Life, Love and a Dash of Sass'' or ''Pink Boots and a Machete: My Journey from NFL Cheerleader to National Geographic Explorer''.
+-----
-I wanted Caroline to know, if she ever came back, that I liked that she had hidden herself. I drew a little smiley face next to [[Image:smile.jpg.png|top]]her name.
+The true value of willpower is not only manifested in strength or weakness, but is also expressed in the content and meaning of the goals that we try to achieve through our willpower. Lenin believed that willpower is one of the factors that will create revolutionary careers for millions of people in the fierce class struggles to liberate ourselves and mankind.
-==== MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE ====
+-----
-''INT. CABIN, AFTERNOON – Erin is sat on the cot – daylight bleeds inside, casts light over dust motes – camera is hand-held – in shot are cabin cot, Erin from shoulders up, and window – it is raining heavily –''
+==== Annotation 89 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' So this morning I found something really interesting.</div>
+In “''Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder'', Lenin explains how revolutions are born from the collective willpower of thousands of people:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">After the autograph wall that I found yesterday. And the signature behind the fox head. I was sure there could be other more hidden things but I wasn’t sure where else they could be. I was actually under the desk—</div>
+<blockquote>
+History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most class-conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes. This can readily be understood, because even the finest of vanguards express the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of thousands, whereas at moments of great upsurge and the exertion of all human capacities, revolutions are made by the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of millions, spurred on by a most acute struggle of classes. Two very important practical conclusions follow from this: first, that in order to accomplish its task the revolutionary class must be able to master all forms or aspects of social activity without exception (completing after the capture of political power — sometimes at great risk and with very great danger — what it did not complete before the capture of power); second, that the revolutionary class must be prepared for the most rapid and brusque replacement of one form by another.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– camera view turns towards the desk as Erin gets off the cot and directs the camera to it –''</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' As you can see, there isn’t anything there</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– camera sweeps the underside of the desk –''</div>
+All of these factors [knowledge, sentiment, and willpower] which, together, create consciousness, have dialectical relationships with each other. Of these factors, knowledge is the most important, because it is the mode of existence of consciousness, and also the factor which guides the development of all the other factors, and it also determines how the other factors manifest.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' But. In checking under the desk I found something else. If you look here—</div>
+=== 3. The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness ===
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– camera view turns to the floor – Erin is kneeling, her right knee moves against the floorboard, which gives – the opposite end of the board rises, around one inch – Erin prises underneath with her free hand –''</div>
+The relationship between matter and consciousness is dialectical. In this relationship, ''matter comes first, and matter is the source of consciousness; it decides consciousness. However, consciousness is not totally passive, it can impact back to matter through the practical activities of human beings.''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Oh. I can’t do it one-handed</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– camera is placed on the floor –''</div>
+==== Annotation 90 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' And underneath. I hadn’t thought to check under the floor because I was sure there was just the foundations underneath there. But here, as you can see—</div>
+Engels explained in ''Dialectics of Nature'' that “matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain,” which means that matter must necessarily come prior to consciousness.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– camera is picked up and view is directed towards the floor – the floorboard now removed and placed to the side – camera takes two seconds to focus in low light –''</div>
+As Marx explains in ''Capital Volume I'', matter determines conscious activity:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Someone has dug out the ground underneath the floorboards. And they have left a little parcel</div>
+<blockquote>
+The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– camera is now in focus – in the hole there is a package wrapped in tarpaulin, about the size of a shoebox – Erin takes the package out of the hole –''</div>
+However, it’s important to remember that the relationship between matter and consciousness is ''dialectical'', and that conscious activity — through the combination of willpower and labor — can also impact the material world; social change arises through the combined willpower of many human beings. See: Annotation 80, p. 81.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Isn’t this exciting? So I found this little package. And now I suppose I should open it</div>
+==== a. The Role of Matter in Consciousness ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– camera is placed on the desk with a view of the cot – Erin sits cross-legged on the cot with the package on her lap –''</div>
+Dialectical Materialism affirms that:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' It’s like Christmas</div>
+'''• Matter is the first existence, and that consciousness comes after.'''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she looks down at the package with her hands placed on top – pushes hair behind her ears –''</div>
+'''• Matter is the source of consciousness, it decides consciousness.'''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' I’m kind of nervous. I hope it’s not a letter bomb</div>
+We know that matter determines consciousness because consciousness is the product of the high-level-structured matter such as the human brain. Consciousness itself can only exist after the development of the material structure of the human brain. Humans are the result of millions of years of development of the material world. We are, therefore, products of the material world. This conclusion has been firmly established through the development of natural science, which has given us great insight into the long history of the Earth and of the evolution of living organisms, including human beings.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she looks at the camera – pulls one corner of her mouth down in mock-nervousness –''</div>
+All of this scientific evidence stands as the basis for the viewpoint: ''matter comes first, consciousness comes after'' [see Annotation 114, p. 116].
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Okay, then</div>
+We have already discussed the factors which constitute the natural and social sources of consciousness:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she starts to unwrap the parcel – carefully, particularly –''</div>
+'''•''' Human brains
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' I wonder how long it’s been down there</div>
+'''•''' Impacts of the material world on human brains that cause reflections
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– having undone the parcel string and peeled away each corner of the tarpaulin she takes out a fabric bundle – she carefully unwraps the fabric bundle –''</div>
+'''•''' Labor
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (ABSENTLY): I suppose they wanted to make sure it kept dry</div>
+'''•''' Language
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– inside the fabric bundle is a parcel wrapped in newspaper –''</div>
+[See Annotation 72, p. 68 and Annotation 73, p. 75]
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (ABSENTLY): It’s like a game of pass the bloody parcel</div>
+All of these factors also assert that ''matter is the origin of consciousness.''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she stops with a piece of the newspaper in her hand – studies it –''</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (ABSENTLY): Oh, I’ll check afterwards</div>
+==== Annotation 91 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she lifts the objects from inside the paper one by one and lays them out on the cot very carefully –''</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-20.png]]
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Okay, we have a roll of paper. A book. It’s maybe a diary. A folded piece of paper. Some postcards from Alaska</div>
+The material basis of consciousness is rooted in the following phenomena:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she picks up the book and opens it –''</div>
+<ul>
+<li><ol style="list-style-type: upper-alpha;">
+<li><p>The material structure of the human brain.</p></li></ol>
+</li>
+<li><ol start="2" style="list-style-type: upper-alpha;">
+<li><p>Impacts from the material world cause reflections in human consciousness.</p></li></ol>
+</li>
+<li><ol start="100" style="list-style-type: upper-roman;">
+<li><p>Human Labor — physical process which dialectically develops consciousness.</p></li></ol>
+</li>
+<li><ol start="500" style="list-style-type: upper-roman;">
+<li><p>Human Speech — physical process which dialectically develops consciousness.</p></li></ol>
+</li>
+<li><ol start="5" style="list-style-type: upper-alpha;">
+<li><p>Evolution of human brains and consciousness through material processes of the material world.</p></li></ol>
+</li></ul>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' It’s a diary. The first entry is dated the 14th of May 1986. It’s signed Damon. Then inverted underneath. Nomad</div>
+For more information, see: Nature and Structure of Consciousness.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she brings the book towards the camera and holds up the name, pointing with her forefinger – in spidery handwriting DAMON is written, then backwards underneath its mirror image – DAMON –''</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' I don’t know if that’s an alias or just a happy coincidence. Or a self-fulfilling prophecy</div>
+Consciousness is composed of reflections and subjective images of the material world, therefore ''the content of consciousness is decided by matter'' [see Annotation 68, p. 65]''.'' The development of consciousness is determined by natural laws and by social laws<ref>For a discussion of the material basis of social laws, see Annotation 10, p. 10, Annotation 78, p. 80, and Annotation 79, p. 81.</ref> as well as the material environment which we inhabit. All of these factors which determine consciousness are material in nature. Therefore, matter determines not only the content but also the development of consciousness.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she sits back on the cot and picks up the scroll – unscrolls it –''</div>
+==== b. The Role of Consciousness in Matter ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Okay. This is a manifesto. I won’t go into it now. We’ll look at it in detail later</div>
+In relation to matter, ''consciousness can impact matter through human activities.''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she studies it for a second then turns it to face the camera, holding it closer for inspection – then she turns it around and considers it again –''</div>
+When we discuss consciousness we are discussing ''human'' consciousness. So, when we talk about the role of consciousness, we are talking about the role of human beings. Consciousness in and of itself cannot directly change anything in reality. In order to change reality, humans have to implement material activities. However, consciousness controls every human activity, so even though consciousness does not directly create or change the material world, it equips humans with knowledge about objective reality, and based on that foundation of knowledge, humans are able to identify goals, set directions, develop plans, and select methods, solutions, tools, and means to achieve our goals. So, consciousness manifests its ability to impact matter through human activities.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Some kind of Ted Kaczynski manifesto</div>
+The impact of consciousness on matter can have positive or negative results.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she carefully rescrolls it and places it back on the cot – picks up the folded paper –''</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' And finally</div>
+==== Annotation 92 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she unfolds it and pauses, brow crumpling – studies it for seven seconds –''</div>
+“Positive” and “negative,” in this context, are subjective and relative terms which simply denote “moving towards a goal” and “moving away from a goal,” based on a specific perspective.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (ABSENTLY): Damn it. I should have known it. (REMEMBERING THE CAMERA) Erm. It’s a map. Predictably</div>
+From the perspective of revolutionary communism, “positive” can be taken as moving towards the end goal of the liberation of the working class from capitalist oppression and the construction of a stateless, classless society. Likewise, “negative” can be taken as moving away from that goal. See: Annotation 114, p. 116.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she frowns at it some more –''</div>
+Humans have the ability to overcome all challenges in the process of achieving our goals and improving our world, so long as our conscious activities meet the following criteria:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' It’s better than my map (LAUGHING). Goddammit</div>
+* We must perceive reality accurately.
+* We must properly apply scientific knowledge, revolutionary sentiments, and directed willpower.
+* We must avoid contradicting objective laws of nature and society.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she folds it pedantically and tucks it into the back of the diary – she places the diary back on the cot – she sits with her hands in her lap then distractedly places the newspaper over the top of the diary –''</div>
+Successfully achieving our goals and improving the world in this manner constitutes the ''positive'' outcome of human consciousness.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' That’s exciting. What an exciting find</div>
+On the contrary, if human consciousness wrongly reflects objective reality, nature, and laws, then, right from the beginning, our actions will have negative results which will do harm to ourselves and our society.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she looks directly at the camera, holds her gaze for four seconds – fidgets –''</div>
+Therefore, by directing the activities of humans, consciousness can determine whether the results of human activities are beneficial or harmful. Our consciousness thus determines whether our activities will succeed or fail and whether our efforts will be effective or ineffective.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' I’ll have to take a look at it all in more detail. Figure out this guy’s story</div>
+By studying the matter, origin, and nature of consciousness, as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness, we can see that:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she touches her face absently –''</div>
+* Matter is the source of consciousness <ref>See: Annotation 72, p. 68.</ref>.
+* Matter determines the content and creative capacity of consciousness <ref>See: Annotation 90, p. 88.</ref>.
+* Matter is the prerequisite to form consciousness <ref>See: ''The Role of Matter in Consciousness,'' p. 89.</ref>.
+* Consciousness only has the ability to impact matter, and this impact is indirect, because it has to be done through human material activities within material reality <ref>See: ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness,'' p. 88.</ref>.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Try and figure out if anyone found the package before</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-21.png|''Matter determines consciousness while consciousness impacts matter indirectly through human activity.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she twists her hair round a finger –''</div>
+The strength with which consciousness can impact the material world depends on:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (ABSENTLY): Yeah</div>
+* The accuracy of reflection of the material world in consciousness <ref>See:Annotation 68, p. 65.</ref>.
+* Strength of willpower which transmits consciousness to human activity <ref>See: ''Nature and Structure of Consciousness,'' p. 79.</ref>.
+* The degree of organization of social activity <ref>See: Annotation 93, below.</ref>.
+* Material conditions in which human activity occurs <ref>See: Annotation 10, p. 10.</ref>.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she stops twiddling her hair and stares into space, caught in a thought – five seconds – snaps out of it –''</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (SUDDENLY/BRIGHTLY): Anyway. Today is day three of the floods and the rain is still relentless</div>
+==== Annotation 93 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– looks out of the window –''</div>
+The importance of organization in determining the outcomes of human social activity is one of the most important concepts of Marxism-Leninism and is discussed frequently by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and nearly every other important communist revolutionary in history. Marx explains the connections between social organization and conscious human activity in ''Capital Volume I'' [see Annotation 80, p. 81].
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Doesn’t seem like it will subside very soon so no meat for Erin for a while. I’ll have to get outside today, though, because I’m almost out of water. I’ll wear my anorak. It will be nice to go outside. Yes</div>
+=== 4. Meaning of the methodology ===
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she sits for a few seconds looking out of the window then snaps to – approaches the camera –''</div>
+Dialectical Materialism builds the most basic and common methodological<ref>For discussion of the meaning of methodology, see ''Methodology,'' p. 44.</ref> principles for human cognitive and practical activities on the following bases:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Okay. Over and out. (MUTTERS) That was stupid</div>
+* The viewpoint of the material nature of the world [''matter comes first, consciousness comes after''].
+* The dynamic and creative nature of consciousness <ref>See: ''Nature of Consciousness,'' p. 79.</ref>.
+* The dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness <ref>See: ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness,'' p. 88.</ref>.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she fumbles with the camera to cut –''</div>
+All cognitive and practical activities of humans ''originate from material reality'' and ''must observe objective natural and social laws,'' however, our activities are capable of ''impacting the material world through dynamic and creative conscious activity''. [See ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88].
-==== CUT ====
+-----
-==== HOW THE MOUNTAIN GOT ITS NAME ====
+==== Annotation 94 ====
-I attempted a video diary entry and retook it about five times. None of them seemed right to me. I am thinking about how far I have come now and whether I am passing Leopold’s test yet. I certainly feel more ‘in tune’ with the ‘rhythms of life’. It is hard to talk about something so personal and unspecific. I was shooting a sequence on the map that was in the parcel. In the first cut I was saying that I had to burn this map too, like I did Stan’s pocket map, had to burn it as quickly as I could before it embossed on my mind and corroded the claim of ''pure invention'' so that this place could still be mine. Then when I had the lighter to it I just could not do it. And the more I held it out with my thumb, scratching at the friction wheel, ready to light it, the more I looked at it. And the more I looked at it the more it embossed on my mind. Then the integrity was gone anyway so I figured I might as well not burn it. My thumb hurt from rubbing and rubbing the lighter without actually striking it.
+The above paragraph summarizes an important methodological concept which is critical for undestanding the philosophical framework of Dialectical Materialism. Dialectical Materialism, as a philosophy, synthesizes earlier materialist and idealist positions by recognizing the fact that the material determines consciousness, while consciousness can impact the material world through willful activity.
-So then I had to soliloquise about why I was not going to burn the map. But the map glared at me, making itself more and more familiar, and as I got madder at it I thought that I might still get rid of it like I did the other map, because I had seen that one too. Besides I could not just leave it, knowing it was so heavy. I mean like the heaviness you must feel when you find Roman vases in the dirt and you just know that they are not any old broken pottery because you can feel their ''heaviness'' from just looking. I had to acknowledge it, like holding a tiny funeral for a mouse that the cat brought in because it does not feel right to just let it be.
+From this philosophical basis, the methodology of Materialist Dialectics has been developed to provide a deeper understanding of dialectical development, which is rooted in contradiction and negation within and between subjects. Materialist Dialectics is the subject of Chapter 2, p. 98.
-But Damon had made it and it was his time capsule and yet he would never know any better. And then again he left it here in the eighties and he could very well be planning on coming back for it one day. Maybe he really never meant anyone but himself to find it.
+-----
-So I could not burn it. I had to put it back in the ground and pretend I never found it. I left out the diary and the manifesto for now because I need to study them. I do not think there is hypocrisy in this. He will never know I read the diary and the manifesto wants to be read and the map I could just try to forget.
+According to this methodological principle [i.e., the Principle of the Dialectic Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness], if we hope to succeed in accomplishing our goals in the material world, then we must ''simultaneously'' meet two criteria:
-A thing I did notice is that our maps are different. He marked different features on his to those I drew on mine. He marked some that I have not found, and some of mine were missing. I just have to be careful not to let seeing his infiltrate on my personal wilderness.
+. We must ensure that our knowledge reflects the objective material world as much as possible, respecting the objective natural and social laws of the material world.
-==== I AM THAT I AM AND THE REST IS WOMEN & WILDERNESS ====
+. We must simultaneously recognize the dynamic and creative nature of our conscious activity.
-''INT. CABIN, MORNING – Erin is sat on the cot – camera is on desk opposite – in shot are cabin cot, Erin sat cross-legged, and the window – it is raining heavily still –''
+When we say that human activities ''originate from material reality'' and ''must observe objective natural and social laws'' we'''' mean that human knowledge must originate from the material world. This means that if we hope to be successful in our activities, we should respect the natural and social laws of the material world.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' I have been sat inside the cabin for five days now without leaving except to use the toilet. The rain is relentless. I have been thinking lots about what it’s like to be alone for so long. It feels like right now the whole experiment is being intensified because I am not even outside and around nature. The only time I am solitary really is when I am inside alone. This is the biggest test</div>
+This means that in our human perception and activities, we must determine goals, and set strategies, policies, and plans which are rooted firmly in objective material reality. Humans have to take objective material reality as the foundation of our activities and plans, and all of our activities must be carried out in the material world. Humans have to examine and understand our material conditions and transform them in ways that will help us to accomplish our goals.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– her voice is low and sleepy – she yawns –''</div>
+When we talk about ''impacting the material world through dynamic and creative conscious activity,'' we mean we must recognize the positive, dynamic, and creative roles of consciousness. We must recognize the role human consciousness plays in dynamically and creatively manifesting our will in the material world through labor. Impacting the material world through conscious activity at a revolutionary scale requires humans to respect and understand the role of scientific knowledge; to study laboriously to master such knowledge; and then to propagate such knowledge so to the masses to develop public knowledge and belief so as to guide the people’s action.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' It’s just me, myself and I</div>
+Moreover, we also have to voluntarily study and practice<ref>See: Annotation 211, p. 205.</ref> in order to form and improve our revolutionary viewpoint<ref>See: Annotation 114, p. 116.</ref> and willpower<ref>See: ''Nature and Structure of Consciousness'', p. 79.</ref> in order to have both scientific and humanitarian activity guidelines.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she frowns as if she does not know why she said it –''</div>
+To implement this principle [i.e., the Principle of the Dialectic Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness], we have to avoid, fight against, and overcome the diseases of subjectivism<ref>See: Annotation 222, p. 218.</ref> and idealism<ref>See: ''The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues,'' p. 48.</ref> through such errors as:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Oh, that was stupid. Reshoot</div>
+* Attempting to impose idealist plans and principles [which are not rooted in material conditions] into reality.
+* Considering fantasy, illusion, and imagination instead of reality.
+* Basing policies and programs on subjective desires.
+* Using sentiment as the starting point for developing policies, strategies, etc.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she stares at the camera long enough so that she can cut out the first part in editing and begin talking as though she were just starting –''</div>
+On the other hand, in cognitive and practical activities, we also have to fight against empiricism<ref>See: Annotation 10, p. 10.</ref>, which disregards scientific knowledge and theories, and which is also very conservative, stagnant and passive.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' It has been raining now for five days and I have been isolated inside the whole time. I don’t have much stimulation in here apart from these guys, who are sort of helping</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she nods to her pile of books –''</div>
+==== Annotation 95 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' I can pretend we are in conversation. In here I don’t have nature to make me feel small. I am surrounded only by all this male intellect. It is the only thing that stops me from disappearing. But it is maddening because their words are not mine. They keep reminding me that. The wilderness is not mine. And at the same time it is all I am. I keep thinking zone of middle dimension. I keep thinking, okay, Newton</div>
+Process of Developing Revolutionary Public Knowledge
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– her eyes keep darting to just next to the camera’s eye – she touches her face and hair, as though she is looking in a mirror, checking reflection – the viewfinder of the camera is probably turned towards her –''</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-22.png|''Developing revolutionary public knowledge must be preceded by mastery of knowledge and a firm grounding in the role and nature of knowledge.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' I am so wholly excluded from the communion. And without being outside all I have is these abstracted unattainable thoughts on nature. Why the fuck am I even reading this. URGH</div>
+In ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', Engels makes a scathing critique of idealist socialist revolutionary thought, writing:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she throws Emerson across the room –''</div>
+<blockquote>
+To all these [idealist socialists], Socialism is the expression of absolute truth<ref>See: Annotation 232 and ''The Properties of Truth,'' on p. 228.</ref>, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as an absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive of one another.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Am I doing it right? I need to get back outside</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she pauses then exhales suddenly through nose – puts face into hands – sits still, rubbing her eyelids with her fingers –''</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (TO HERSELF): Maybe I can’t do this. Will the spirit of the mountain disqualify me for wishing I just had someone female to talk to? Is a lone bird on a tree on a lonely mountain singing to itself? Oh, for fuck’s sake. Reshoot</div>
+Here, Engels points out the absurdity of the idea that some abstract, purely ideal “truth” could liberate workers in the material world. Engels continues on, explaining how such idealist socialism could never lead to meaningful revolutionary change:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she rubs her face with both hands – slaps her cheeks – takes a deep breath – looks right into the camera –''</div>
+<blockquote>
+Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' It’s okay to not be content one hundred per cent of the time. Right, mountain spirit? If it were easy then it wouldn’t be hardship. And maybe it’s right to feel lonely. I can do this. I am strong enough to do this. This is the hardest part. The rain will stop soon. The only time I am lonely is when I am inside too long. Besides. I am not lonely. I have the camera and my books</div>
+In other words, idealist revolutionary movements only tend to result in endless debate and meaningless theories which are divorced from objective reality and material conditions. Such theories and idealist constructions do not lead to effective action in the real world. Socialism must become ''real'' (i.e., based in objective material conditions and praxis<ref>See: ''Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness,'' p. 204.</ref> in the real world) to affect change in the material world, as Engels explains elsewhere in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'' [see Annotation 17, p. 18].
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– her resolute smile lingers and then fades –''</div>
+In ''Critique of the Gotha Program'', Marx lays out an excellent case study of the failings of incoherent, idealist socialism. He begins by quoting the Gotha Program, which was an ideological program which the German Workers Party hoped to implement. In this text, Marx cites the Gotha Program line by line and offers his materialist critique of the idealist principles presented. In the following passage, Marx refutes some key errors caused by idealism and offers materialist correction:
-'''ERIN'''(MUTTERING): Oh, I can’t use that. This is useless
+<blockquote>
+Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power... But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she gets up from the cot and reaches over for the camera –''</div>
+Here, Marx points out the importance of having a firm understanding of the material reality of ''labor'' and its relation to the material, natural world. Marx points out that the idea that labor, alone, is the source of all wealth is an idealist notion of the bourgeoisie, a false consciousness [see Annotation 235, p. 231] which prevents proper material analysis and props up the capitalist viewpoint. A failure to grasp the truth of the material basis of reality weakens the socialist position, and any movement built on such weak idealist foundations will lead to failure in trying to bring about revolutionary change.
-==== CUT ====
+We have already discussed the shortcomings of empiricism in Annotation 10, p. 10, but it might be helpful to see another case study, this time from Engels, pointing out the flaws of empiricist analysis in his text ''Anti-Dühring''. Engels begins by quoting the empiricist Eugen Dühring, who wrote:
-==== EMPTY THE TANKS! ====
+<blockquote>
+Philosophy is the development of the highest form of consciousness of the world and of life, and in a wider sense embraces the principles of all knowledge and volition. Wherever a series of cognitions or stimuli or a group of forms of being come to be examined by human consciousness, the principles underlying these manifestations of necessity become an object of philosophy. These principles are the simple, or until now assumed to be simple, constituents of manifold knowledge and volition. Like the chemical composition of bodies, the general constitution of things can be reduced to basic forms and basic elements. These ultimate constituents or principles, once they have been discovered, are valid not only for what is immediately known and accessible, but also for the world which is unknown and inaccessible to us. Philosophical principles consequently provide the final supplement required by the sciences in order to become a uniform system by which nature and human life can be explained. Apart from the fundamental forms of all existence, philosophy has only two specific subjects of investigation — nature and the world of man. Accordingly, our material arranges itself quite naturally into three groups, namely, the general scheme of the universe, the science of the principles of nature, and finally the science of mankind. This succession at the same time contains an inner logical sequence, for the formal principles which are valid for all being take precedence, and the realms of the objects to which they are to be applied then follow in the degree of their subordination.
+</blockquote>
-I am confused about the postcards in Damon’s parcel. The postcards are written in Damon’s handwriting but are addressed to different people at different addresses all across North America, Canada and Alaska. They are all dated September 1987 and are all of the same kind of sentiment. Damon is thanking people for their hospitality, help and friendship. He is telling them they are beautiful people with room for improvement. Then he is telling them they can improve by living for themselves. He is telling them to cast off their chains and live like he will live, purposefully and free. Then he ends with an ostentatious phrase about casting out into the unknown. He insinuates that they might never meet again.
+Engels then proceeds to critique this empiricist worldview, showing that it does not properly reflect the material world and amounts to idealism in its own right:
-I suppose this is what he would have liked to say to these people, as though they were parting words, but something stopped him. The strange thing is that the postcards are stamped and bent at the corners and marked like they have travelled. I think maybe he did more than one journey like this, and he brought them to the cabin with him as some kind of token.
+<blockquote>
+What [Dühring] is dealing with are therefore principles, formal tenets derived from thought and not from the external world, which are to be applied to nature and the realm of man, and to which therefore nature and man have to conform. But whence does thought obtain these principles? From itself?
-It is still raining. Last night I had the epiphany to leave out one of the cooking pans to fill up with rainwater so I did not need to venture out to get water from the spring. The rain battered against the hood of my anorak in a way that was exhilarating, an overload of stimulation after endless days inside the muted dry. I ran about in it yelping and laughing for a few minutes before retiring back inside like a fish that comes out from under its rock to dance a little in a flurry of excitement then catch itself and slink off back into the shadows. It was exhausting and after I wanted the stillness of the cabin again.
+No, for Herr Dühring himself says: the realm of pure thought is limited to logical schemata and mathematical forms (the latter, moreover, as we shall see, is wrong). Logical schemata can only relate to forms of thought; but what we are dealing with here is solely forms of being, of the external world, and these forms can never be created and derived by thought out of itself, but only from the external world. But with this the whole relationship is inverted: the principles are not the starting-point of the investigation, but its final result; they are not applied to nature and human history, but abstracted from them, it is not nature and the realm of man which conform to these principles, but the principles are only valid in so far as they are in conformity with nature and history. That is the only materialist conception of the matter, and Herr Dühring’s contrary conception is idealistic, makes things stand completely on their heads, and fashions the real world out of ideas, out of schemata, schemes or categories existing somewhere before the world, from eternity — just like a Hegel.
+</blockquote>
-Inside I peeled off my anorak and my sodden leggings and hung them up next to the grate. Then I coaxed a fire and set myself on the cot in view of the pan through the window, with my books. I quickly forgot about the pan, though, and did not remember it until late afternoon, when my mouth was feeling suddenly dry. My clothes had dried and I was loathe to get them wet again, so I took off my trousers to fetch the pan in just my anorak. It was brimming with water, with a couple of drowned insects for good measure. I picked these out and put the pot on top of the fire to boil.
+Lenin also heavily criticized empiricism in his work ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', which we discuss at length in Annotation 32, p. 27.
-I filled my canteen with the boiled water and set it to cool. Then I made a broth from the rest of the water with one of the flavour packets from the instant noodles. I curled up on the cot and wrapped myself in the blanket and my sleeping bag with a tin mug of the hot savoury water. I smelled must from the blanket, and savoury, and me. The little excursion earlier in the day had made me overwhelmingly sleepy. I fell into it and slept for the rest of the day and long into the evening.
+= Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics =
-I usually like to rise early and keep myself busy but with the rain I have been dead heavy all the time and dull and lethargic, but I wake in the middle of the night and I have an interlude of energy before falling back to sleep again. I use this time to read and write and draw, and wish the rain would stop so I could go night walking. I am dreaming lots again.
+Materialist dialectics is one of the basic theoretical parts that form the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism. It is the “science of common relations” and also the “science of common rules of motion and development of nature, society, and human thoughts... Dialectics, as understood by Marx, and also in conformity with Hegel, includes what is now called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology.”<ref>''Karl Marx'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref>
-A thing I have noticed is that they are all in the present tense. As in I am not dreaming about things from before here, no memories or other people or anything. No one I know, at least. Kind of spectral figures. Familiar strangers.
+[Note: Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge; for more information see ''Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism'', p. 204.]
-==== THE GOD PARTICLE, THE GOD TRICK ====
+== I. Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics ==
-LOCATION: wooden cabin; Denali wilderness; Alaskan tundra; Alaska; Earth; 3rd planet of Sol; inner rim of Orion Arm; the Milky Way; the Local Group; Virgo Supercluster; The Universe; Everywhere Ever and All Over Again.
+=== 1. Dialectics and Basic Forms of Dialectics ===
-The tundra is always whistling. wwwwWWWWWhhhHHHHhhh. The tundra is empty. The tundra is partitioned by colour. There is the green-grey flat ground that I am on, the cabin, then the white-blue mountains. The mountains look like a backdrop. I feel like Truman Burbank.
+==== a. Definitions of Dialectics and the Subjective Dialectic ====
-If I sit still for long enough the whistling sounds like words. Big snowflake tumbleweed rolls just under my line of focused vision. I blink and it is gone.
+In Marxism-Leninism, the term ''dialectic'' refers to regular relationships, interactions, transformations, motions, and developments of things, phenomena, and processes in nature, society and human thought.<ref>See Annotation 9, p. 10.</ref>
-If I sit still for long enough my eyes go blurry like a mirage. Like heat waves but cold, cold. It is hard to focus even when I blink hard.
+There are two forms of dialectic: the ''objective dialectic'' and the ''subjective dialectic.'' The objective dialectic is the dialectic of the material world, while the subjective dialectic is the reflection of objective dialectic in human consciousness. [See Annotation 68, p. 65].
-Another sound starts behind the whistling. It sounds like a plane; I look around for one. Negative. It sounds like a person humming; I look around for a person. Negative. It sounds like bees. My hand tickles and there is a bee on it. Affirmative. The bee sits happy. I must be dreaming. The humming is louder.
+According to Engels, “Dialectics, so-called ''objective'' dialectics, prevail throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature.”<ref>''Dialectics of Nature'', Friedrich Engels, 1883.</ref>
-In the shimmery mirage there is a dark shape coming closer. There is a figure in a cloak, furs, beads, skulls and with a staff. Her voice is very strange. I can’t see the features of her face because of the bees, which swarm in a flat mask. As if her face has no shape; no pits, no curves, no nose. It is hard to tell where the sound comes out from. There is a vibration on her voice, as if she’s speaking through a laryngophone, as if her voice emanates from all the tiny mouths of the bees in unison. It gives her what you might call an otherworldly aura. Almost techno-human. Like Professor Stephen Hawking. It is authorial.
+-----
-Stephen Hawking has a daughter called Lucy and she grew up to be a writer. She wanted to inspire children to get excited about space and physics and all the things she grew up in awe of. She writes adventure books about a little boy called George who likes space. Isn’t that frustrating?
+==== Annotation 96 ====
-She moves to sit by my side on my log, which does not budge under her, as though she is weightless. I look at her closely and, sure, she has this shimmering quality, buzzing and wavery and nearly not there, like a model of an atom spinning on its axis, just slow enough for you to see the falter, its constituent parts flickering visible. I reach out to touch her and can’t seem to, her contours blurring as my hand gets close, but hovering just above I can feel her. A kind of soft quivering, a pulsating that feels like sound, low sirens in my temples. She draws in the dirt with the end of her staff. The gravelly sound makes me hungry. Like Coco Pops without milk. Her voice has an ungraspable familiarity to it; it is hard to concentrate on what she is saying because of her bee beard.
+''Dialectics'' is an umbrella term which includes both forms of dialectical systems: ''subjective'' and ''objective'' dialectics.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''The circle is the antithesis of the triangle, because the circle stands for cycles which are even and infinite. In the centre of a circle you are always the same distance from the edge.''</div>
+''Objective dialectics'' are the dialectical processes which occur in the material world, including all motion, relationships, and dynamic changes which occur in space and time.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+''Subjective dialectics'', or ''dialectical thought'', is a system of analysis and organized thinking which aims to reflect the objective dialectics of the material world within human consciousness. Dialectical thinking has two component forms: dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics [see Annotation 49, p. 45].
-[[Image:triangle.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-''The ghost of Adam Smith sits on a triangle that is held upright by the shoulders of his crawling subordinates. He is hoarding all the power, and as it grows exponentially, the growth of others is depleted. But as the others are depleted, they are harmed to the point of abandonment (the bees are the first to leave him). As such, he loses his sense of self, which depended on a sense of the others.''
+-----
-So that is where the bees have gone. Around a week and a half has passed since I left Stan’s. I cannot be completely sure because I put a bit of tape over the date and time on the laptop for now and I have spent a lot of time sleeping when I should be awake and waking when I should be asleep. I have been inventing people for company, to talk to and mitigate the loneliness. Are invented people a corruption of solitude?
+''Subjective dialectics'' is the theory that studies and summarises the [objective] dialectic of nature into a system with scientific principles and rules, in order to build a system of methodological principles of perception and practice. Dialectics is opposed to ''metaphysics'' — a system of thought which conceives of things and phenomena in the world in an isolated and unchanging state [See Annotation 8, p. 8].
-I have bathed once in the stream in all this time, little splash washes on my smelliest parts now and then. I smell but I only notice this when I take off my pants in the toilet shed. The rest of the time my smell is enveloped into me by my clothes. It worries me when I take off my pants that I may attract bears.
+==== b. Basic Forms of Dialectics ====
-My face itches a lot because I keep touching it; I keep touching it because I think I am growing a beard; I think I am growing a beard because of the itching. There is not a mirror and the camcorder is just illusive enough to make me think I can see hair.
+Dialectics has developed into three basic forms and levels: ancient primitive dialectics, German idealist dialectics, and the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism.
-From the bee-figure dream I can pinpoint exactly in my subconscious the fodder for it. Back in the visitors’ centre at the entrance to Denali Park there were displays on all of the cultures indigenous to Alaska. I remember a diagram explaining the position of the individual in the Yupik Eskimo belief system in relation to the animals and plants it shared its home with, termed ''Cosmological'' ''Reproductive Cycling''. In the diagram the human was part of a sort of energy transferral web, in the shape of a circle. It made me think at the time of a diagram we had in biology class, a food pyramid used to describe energy transferral in the animal kingdom. On the biggest pyramid and at the top sat the human, the unchallenged dominant omnivore at the top of the food chain.
+''Ancient primitive dialectics'' is the earliest form of dialectics. It has developed independently in many philosophical systems in ancient China, India and Greece.
-Adam Smith casts himself as the dominant creature of the triangle and food chain and propagates this as the natural order of things. He eats a mass of lesser creatures who have themselves eaten a mass of even lesser creatures who have been grazing on chicken nuggets and apathy because their natural food source is inaccessible to them (these are the crawling subordinates). All of their power accumulates in Adam Smith. He uses this as an economic analogy, substituting for food or energy wealth or money.
+Chinese philosophy has two major forms of ancient primitive dialectics:
-The triangle food pyramid is used to explain hierarchy in nature and justify Adam Smith’s dominance. But it only looks that way because he said it does. The wolf does not sit on top of a pyramid. The wolf is dependent on the grass because when the grass dies the deer dies and when the deer thrives the wolf thrives and when the wolf overreaches the wolf is brought into check by its own hubris because the deer disappear and after a short period of thriving the wolf does too.
+* “Changing Theory” (a theory of common principles and rules pertaining to the changes in the universe)
+* The “Five Elements Theory” (a theory of the principles of mutual impact and transformation of the five elements of the universe) of the School of Yin-Yang. [See: ''Primitive Materialism'', p. 52]
-For the Yupik, like Naaja’s Inuit, nothing alive died but was reborn, and this was honoured in hunting ritual so power could never be accumulated but only transferred.
+In Indian philosophy, Buddhist philosophy is a quintessential [see Annotation 6, p. 8] form of ancient primitive dialectics, which includes such concepts as “selflessness,” “impermanence,” and “predestination.”
-''The orca and the wolf were seen as highly spiritual creatures that aided humans in hunting, and so offerings were made to both to maintain good relationships. The spirit that resided in each was interchangeable, in winter it was embodied in the wolf that brought the deer and in summer the orca that brought the walrus.''
+An ancient, primitive form of dialectics also developed in Ancient Greek philosophy.
-''When an animal was killed as prey, it was returned to the wild to become complete again. To aid this, the bones of the carcass remained unbroken, and there was a farewell ritual where the animal would be entertained with drum music. If the animal was pleased with its treatment as a guest, it would return again in the future.''
+Friedrich Engels wrote: “The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought… This primitive, naive, but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.”<ref>''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', Friedrich Engels, 1880.</ref>
-I am surprised Stan could retain his survival-of-the-fittest worldview when spending so much time in the park centre. I suppose he must not pay too much attention to the plaques.
+Engels also wrote of Greek dialectics: “Here, dialectical thought still appears in its pristine simplicity, as yet undisturbed by the charming obstacles which the metaphysicists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — Bacon and Locke in England, Wolff in Germany — put in its own way... Among the Greeks — just because they were not yet advanced enough to dissect and analyse nature — nature is still viewed as a whole, in general. The universal connection of natural phenomena is not proved in regard to particular; to the Greeks it is the result of direct contemplation.”<ref>The Old Preface to ''Anti-Dühring'', Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-==== THE WILD AS A PROJECT OF THE SELF ====
+-----
-During the night the rain stopped! I woke up to its lack of noise. It took me a while to realise it had not stopped completely. The gentler rain was white noise. I fell to sleep again feeling looser.
+==== Annotation 97 ====
-The rain was slack still when I woke up and I decided to try some fishing. It has been days since I have eaten anything that is not beige and the urge to get outside was so great that I twitched with it.
+Engels, here, is explaining how the ancient Greek dialecticians were correct to view nature as a cohesive system, a “whole, in general,” which they determined through direct observation of the natural world. The major shortcoming of this ancient Greek form of dialectics was a lack of inquiry into the specific processes and principles of nature. Engels laments that seventeenth and eighteenth century metaphysicists took us backwards by disregarding this view of nature as a cohesive, general whole.
-Walking through the forest the rain was less dense still. It fell in fatter drops and at a different tempo to the rain as it hit the canopy above. The noise of rain inside the forest was both dulled and intensified, like a storm from underneath a high church roof. It was much more peaceful in the forest and I felt a stillness come over again for the first time in days.
+Ancient, primitive dialectics had an accurate awareness of the dialectical characteristic of the world but with its primitive and naive perspective, it still lacked evidence-based forms of natural scientific achievements.
-I decided to try out on the lake in the tundra. I had been stupid to think I could just fish from the lake with my shoddy short rod. But lucky for me there was a rock that worked a bit like a jetty and let me sit with my short line in the deeper water. In the still water where the rod dripped, the beads skimmed on top for seconds like water beetles skating, before sinking.
+Jumping forward to the late 16<sup>th</sup> century, natural sciences started developing rapidly in Europe. Scientists began deeply analysing and studying specific factors and phenomena of nature which led to the birth of modern European metaphysical analysis. In the 18<sup>th</sup> century, metaphysics became the dominant methodology in philosophical thought and scientific study. However, when natural scientists moved from studying each subject separately to studying the unification of all those subjects in their relationships, the metaphysical method proved insufficient. Thus, European scientists and philosophers had to transition into a more advanced system of thought: dialectical thought.
-It was luckily an okay spot. It took less than an hour to hook something and I wished I had a way to make the fish keep better so I could stock up and get all the death over in one go for a while. I stunned the fish against the rock jetty, trying to do it without thinking too much. A large ant struggled a tiny caterpillar that was twice its size over my rock and back to its queen. I attached the dead fish to the hook so I could walk it back without having to carry it in my hands. I wiped my hands on some damp grass with lake water to get rid of some of the sticky smell.
+''The classical German idealist dialectics'' were founded by Kant and completed by Hegel. According to Engels: ''“The second form of dialectics, which is the form that comes closest to the German naturalists [natural scientists], is classical German philosophy, from Kant to Hegel.”''<ref>The Old Preface to ''Anti-Dühring,'' Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-When I looked up I went stiff. On the opposite side of the lake there was a bear come out of nowhere while I was busy with the fish. A bloody big grizzly. I forgot my entire body and the rod fell out of my hands and the bear stilled too. It watched me watch it from my plinth on the rock, its fur flittering in the wind. It was close enough to see that but it was still small across the big lake. There was a potent unreality to it. It was still and mysterious in an accidental way and I felt very suddenly that something in me was going to be different from then on.
+-----
-I put my hand on my chest to feel my heart beating vigorously but it was not. In fact I did not feel like I thought I would at all. Since I had got out to the cabin The Bear had existed like an aura, since before that even on the ice sheet, the Greenlandic tundra. It had felt conspicuous for not being there; lingering like a promise and quivering with anticipation and fear. And I had thought back then that it would feel like opening up, that I would see that Fire burning in its eyes and recognise myself in it. But instead after all there it was so suddenly. It looked so benign and abstract, an apparition. I wondered if perhaps it was.
+==== Annotation 98 ====
-===== I want to see myself in you. =====
+Engels discusses this history, and the shortcomings of the metaphysical philosophy of his era, in ''The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring.'' First, Engels explains why early modern natural scientists initially did not feel constrained by their adherence to metaphysics, since inquiries in the initial revolution of scientific study were limited to the narrow development of specific fields of inquiry by necessity:
-===== But we are very different. =====
+<blockquote>
+Empirical natural science has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for knowledge that the necessity of classifying it in each separate field of investigation systematically and in accordance with its inner inter-connection has become absolutely imperative.
+</blockquote>
-I felt like if I turned away it might disappear, and although some flight response was tugging me gently, telling me to get away, I did not want to turn my back on it. It seemed to be thinking the same of me. I started to think maybe we would be trapped like this for ever, perpetually watching each other watching in wary fascination.
+Engels goes on to explain that at the time he was writing, enough knowledge had been accumulated within specific, distinct fields that it becomes necessary to begin studying the connections and overlaps between different fields, which called for theoretical and philosophical foundations:
-My blood tingled vigorously and I could feel it filling me up all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes, so that the sensation of my feet in my shoes felt like containment, like what it must feel like to be liquid and formless but held in shape, my hands like rubber gloves full of water. Like zero gravity. Like proprioception.
+<blockquote>
+It is becoming equally imperative to bring the individual spheres of knowledge into the correct connection with one another. In doing so, however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical thinking can be of assistance.
+</blockquote>
-I put one foot behind the other on the rock, using my heel to feel out the stable parts, and climbed down off it without ever breaking contact with its eyes. I put down the rod in case it thought I was brandishing it. Then I started to tiptoe, desperately slow, closer towards it following the lakeside. I was trying to move so slowly that it might not even notice. To get closer to it and really feel its presence. To commune.
+Unfortunately, natural scientists were held back by the existing metaphysical theoretical foundations which were dominant at the time as, according to Engels, “theoretical thinking is an innate quality only as regards natural capacity. This natural capacity must be developed, improved, and for its improvement there is as yet no other means than the study of previous philosophy.”
-I have never felt such an acute kind of instinctual consideration of what it is to not be alive. It became clear then that any nostalgia that we feel from ''The Call of the Wild'' is the pang of what we remember but do not have, from where we are before we go in search of it. It is all of the prospects of having life taken and of not being and of things that you can never possess or control or put into words. In that moment I forgot the anxiety of having a body, I forgot the need to possess it.
+Metaphysical theory and formal logic were in common use by natural scientists at the time. As Engels explained in ''On Dialectics'' and ''Dialectics of Nature,'' metaphysics and formal logic could never be as useful as dialectical analysis for examining and unifying concepts from wide-ranging dynamic systems of overlapping fields of inquiry.
-While I was thinking all this I had got a lot closer and I could feel my heart then where I could not before, throbbing in my throat like a pulsar. I was shaking badly from concentrating so hard on my stealth. The grizzly bear stared at me, transfixed. Unmoved and hypnotic stare. We were both fixed on each other in fear and desire or morbid fascination. Or none of that. Just purely under spell.
+Unfortunately, dialectics had not yet been suitably developed for use in the natural sciences before the work of Marx and Engels in developing dialectical materialism, as Engels explained in ''On Dialectics:''
-===== But in that way I see me in you, in what I am not. =====
+<blockquote>
+Formal logic itself has been the arena of violent controversy from the time of Aristotle to the present day. And dialectics has so far been fairly closely investigated by only two thinkers, Aristotle and Hegel. But it is precisely dialectics that constitutes the most important form of thinking for present-day natural science, for it alone offers the analogue for, and thereby the method of explaining, the evolutionary processes occurring in nature, inter-connections in general, and transitions from one field of investigation to another.
+</blockquote>
-Then it jerked its head. A sudden lurch snapping the thread that had formed between us. It peeled its black lips back to show its teeth and it jolted me to notice I was so close as to see its teeth clearly. It padded one front paw behind the other, walking its front legs backwards into itself, then using the weight of the rest of its body and jumping a little to bring its forelegs up and stand bipedal, unfolding to its full height and stature. Huge. Fuck.
+The Idealist Dialectics of Hegel [see Annotation 9, p. 10] constituted a major development of dialectics, but the idealist nature of Hegelian dialectics made them unsuitable for natural scientists, who therefore discarded “Old-Hegelian” dialectics and were thus left without a suitable dialectical framework. Again, from ''On Dialectics:''
-I could see the matting of its fur where its underbelly was wet. It huffed through its nostrils, short, deep grunts.
+<blockquote>
+The year 1848, which otherwise brought nothing to a conclusion in Germany, accomplished a complete revolution there only in the sphere of philosophy [and] the nation resolutely turned its back on classical German philosophy that had lost itself in the sands of Berlin old-Hegelianism... But a nation that wants to climb the pinnacles of science cannot possibly manage without theoretical thought. Not only Hegelianism but dialectics too was thrown overboard — and that just at the moment when the dialectical character of natural processes irresistibly forced itself upon the mind, when therefore only dialectics could be of assistance to natural science in negotiating the mountain of theory — and so there was a helpless relapse into the old metaphysics.
+</blockquote>
-===== What am I doing what the fuck am I doing. =====
+Engels goes on to explain that, having rejected Hegel’s dialectics, natural scientists were set adrift, cobbling together theoretical frameworks from the works of philosophers which were plagued by idealism and metaphysics, and which were therefore not suitable for the task of unifying the disparate fields of natural sciences together:
-Abruptly out of trance now. I suddenly see myself from right up above, as though looking down. I am small and it is big and the lake is huge blue glass beside us and the grass goes on on on around us and there is nowhere for cover.
+<blockquote>
+What prevailed among the public since then were, on the one hand, the vapid reflections of Schopenhauer, which were fashioned to fit the philistines, and later even those of Hartmann; and, on the other hand, the vulgar itinerant-preacher materialism of a Vogt and a Büchner. At the universities the most diverse varieties of eclecticism competed with one another and had only one thing in common, namely, that they were concocted from nothing but remnants of old philosophies and were all equally metaphysical. All that was saved from the remnants of classical philosophy was a certain neo-Kantianism, whose last word was the eternally unknowable thing-in-itself, that is, the bit of Kant [see Annotation 72, p. 68] that least merited preservation. The final result was the incoherence and confusion of theoretical thought now prevalent.
+</blockquote>
-I keep absolutely still and try to think. What did the pamphlet say what did the pamphlet say. Direct eye contact. Did it not say never to make – very dangerous. I avert my eyes, lower my head, still trying to see it. Keep one hundred feet between you. Was it one hundred? Five hundred? Maybe fifty. How far is fifty feet? Either way it is too late now. What else? Do not go without pepper spray. Well, that one’s out. It said calm, monotone voice. Let it know you are human.
+Engels explains that this lack of a proper dialectical materialist framework had frustrated natural scientists of his era:
-Hi bear. Nice bear. Gratey-shrill with fear. Be submissive. Shoulders down. Bow head. Respect respect, bowing like a Tibetan prostrating, bow-crawling a pilgrimage. Slowly slowly up the mountain. Back away slowly.
+<blockquote>
+One can scarcely pick up a theoretical book on natural science without getting the impression that natural scientists themselves feel how much they are dominated by this incoherence and confusion, and that the so-called philosophy now current offers them absolutely no way out. And here there really is no other way out, no possibility of achieving clarity, than by a return, in one form or another, from metaphysical to dialectical thinking.
+</blockquote>
-===== Where the bloody hell am I? =====
+After explaining that Hegel’s system of dialectics came closest to meeting the needs of contemporary science, Engels explains why Hegelian dialectics were ultimately rejected by the scientific community:
-Rocks under heels making me unsteady. Cannot turn around cannot make it look like fleeing and initiate a chase. It does not come after me. It stands, watching me go. When I have reversed, undone my journey back where I started, let’s not do that again, it lets itself fall limply to its feet. Thud.
+<blockquote>
+Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line. Hence, with the fall of the idealist point of departure, the system built upon it, in particular Hegelian philosophy of nature, also falls. It must however be recalled that the natural scientists’ polemic against Hegel, in so far as they at all correctly understood him, was directed solely against these two points: viz., the idealist point of departure and the arbitrary, fact-defying construction of the system.”
+</blockquote>
-And then it walks away. And I have to say that I did not see the Fire and that its eyes were vague from where I stood. It has nothing to give me apart from its just being and its bear-ness. Probably it will never think of me again and I will remember it always. But that is because the bear does not have sensibilities because it does not need them. It already knows all of this. I did not have the camera for any of this so as far as the documentary is concerned it did not happen. Which makes me think, funny, it was the most ''happened to'' that I have ever felt.
+In other words, it was the idealism and the unworkable structuring of Hegelian dialectics that prevented its adoption by natural scientists. Engels finally explains how Marx was able to modify Hegel’s idealist dialectics into a materialist form which is suitable for empirical scientific inquiry:
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+<blockquote>
-[[Image:f0201-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
+It is the merit of Marx that... he was the first to have brought to the fore again the forgotten dialectical method, its connection with Hegelian dialectics and its distinction from the latter, and at the same time to have applied this method in Capital to the facts of an empirical science, political economy.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="text-align:center;">''I think a boreal owl?''</div>
-==== SISTER ====
+-----
-This morning the strangest thing happened. I was sat around in the cabin doing a video diary entry when my back started to tingle and the hairs on my neck and arms stood up, and I got the sure feeling that I was being watched. At first I put it down to being on the camera but then I felt I could feel its direction, as if it were coming from behind.
+These Classical German philosophers [Kant, Hegel, etc.<ref>Kant’s “transcendental dialectic” was used to critique rationalism and pure reason, but was not a fully developed dialectical system of thought. Hegel’s idealist dialectics were more universal in nature. See Annotation 9, p. 10.</ref>] systematically organized idealist dialectics into formal philosophies. Of particular note was Hegel’s belief that the dialectical process would eventually lead to an “absolute idea.” This foundational belief in an “absolute idea” is what chiefly defines Hegelian dialectics as idealist in nature [see Annotation 98, p. 100].
-I turned very carefully, as though whoever it was would not notice me turning if it was just slow enough. Outside the window, just inside the trees and standing half beneath a shadow, a reindeer was stood still as anything, its legs so straight the wind could knock it over. It just stood there looking and I stared back at it through the window and it just went on like that, looking right at me and not flinching a muscle.
+Hegel believed that the subjective dialectic is the basis of the objective dialectic. [In other words, Hegel believed that ''dialectical thought'' served as the ''objective dialectics'' of the material world.]
-Now I know there are not many reindeer in this part of Alaska at this time of year but here was this reindeer looking at me with an intensity and persistence. I went outside to it to see if it would turn and run away from me because it was creeping me out just standing there. I needed to get closer to see it was real and solid and breathing. I walked slowly towards it and my blood clunked in my ears every step I got nearer because it really was not budging any. Then, as I got within around five metres, it suddenly huffed and took a step backwards. It came to as if from out of a trance and started to back away, baby-step by baby-step. Then it half-circled around me as if at the distance of a force field, and loped slowly out towards the tundra. The whole time it kept looking back at me warily.
+According to Hegel, the “absolute idea” was the starting point of all existence, and that this “absolute idea,” after creating the natural world, then came to exist within human consciousness.
-But the strangest thing about it was that the reindeer came to me first in a dream. Last night I was outside just kind of staring at the forest moving in the wind, waving like water, at the pinkish tundra evergreens dotted like Christmas cake decorations, at the rust-red mountains glinting back the sun in streaks, the clouds behind their own snowy mountain range, just gently spinning round to get everything in panorama, when the figure appeared in front of me again.
+Engels wrote that in Hegelian dialectics: “... spirit, mind, the idea, is primary and that the real world is only a copy of the idea.”<ref>''The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, On Dialectics'', Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-===== Child must have a comrade animal in order to be protected from the bad spirits. =====
+-----
-My head reeled a little from the spinning. I must have looked scared at talk of bad spirits.
+==== Annotation 99 ====
-===== Not all spirits are bad. Most are good and watch over us. Besides, you will have the reindeer. I will find you one. =====
+In the above quoted passage, Engels was explaining why Hegelian dialectics were unsuitable for use in natural sciences. Here is a longer excerpt:
-===== Who are the bad spirits? =====
+<blockquote>
+First of all it must be established that here it is not at all a question of defending Hegel’s point of departure: that spirit, mind, the idea, is primary and that the real world is only a copy of the idea... We all agree that in every field of science, in natural as in historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms and the various forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science, too, the inter-connections are not to be built into the facts, but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.
-===== The bad spirits are spirits without forms. Just spirits that are waiting to be in bodies again. They are not really bad. Just envious. They like to cause mischief to keep themselves occupied. Sometimes that mischief is death but really death only means to be made to change form again. =====
+-----
-I was incredulous.
+The German idealists (most notably Hegel) built an idealist system of dialectics organized into categories and common laws along with a strict logic of consciousness.
+</blockquote>
-===== But I quite like my form. =====
+Lenin stated that: “Hegel brilliantly ''divined'' the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, ''nature'') in the dialectics of concepts.”<ref>''Conspectus of Hegel’s'' ''Science of Logic'', Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin, 1914.</ref>
-===== And this is the tragedy of death. But it is a short-lived one. =====
+-----
-She dissolved back into the forest, then promptly reappeared leading a reindeer.
+==== Annotation 100 ====
-===== This will be your reindeer. She is a herd mother so her imprint is very heavy. =====
+What Lenin means, here, is that Hegel inadvertently and unconsciously discovered the concept of reflection [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Hegel intuitively understood that the material world was reflected in human consciousness, and, by extension, subjective dialectics (dialectical thought) reflected objective dialectics (of the material world). Hegel’s error was an inversion of the ideal and the material. As Marx later pointed out in the Afterword to the Second German Edition of ''Capital Volume I,'' it is the material which precedes the ideal, and not the other way around:
-===== Imprint? =====
+<blockquote>
+My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [craftsman/artisan/creator] of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
-===== All things have an imprint. It is the weight of the energy. Some are heavy and others are lighter. =====
+-----
-===== What does it do? =====
+Engels also quoted and emphasized Marx’s thoughts [in ''the Old Preface to Anti-Dühring'', citing another quote of Marx from the ''Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I,'' further quoted in Annotation 100 above]: “The mystification which dialectics suffers in Hegel’s hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”<ref>Afterword to the Second German Edition of ''Capital Volume I'', Karl Marx, 1873.</ref>
+</blockquote>
-===== It defines your potency. A heavier imprint leaves more of an effect. But an imprint can be positive or negative. If you have a heavier imprint you have a responsibility to be positive. But you must also remember that others with a weaker imprint are just as important but in different ways. =====
-The bees droned around her. They bustled over each other, to the very edges of her eyes. I thought I knew those eyes, like a word trapped behind the tonsils. I touched the reindeer. Its fur was soft and downy like a kitten’s tummy and its skin hummed underneath with its charge.
+-----
-===== You can find imprint everywhere. =====
+==== Annotation 101 ====
-Seeing the reindeer today brought it all back. What is going on here? Women are after all irrational and mystical, so maybe I was just being a girl about it? Would an actual real-life visitation feel any different to a hallucination anyway? If a hallucination is a work of your subconscious, it is already a message from another realm in a way. How do you tell the difference? ''For human society I was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods'', said Thoreau of the days real people did not pop into his cabin by the pond at Walden.
+In ''the Old Preface to Anti-Dühring,'' Engels explains some of the contemporary currents of science and philosophy of his era. Engels explains that Hegelian philosophy had been dismissed by a newer current of natural scientists who dismissed “the idealist point of departure and the arbitrary, fact-defying construction of the system.” In other words, the natural scientists rejected Hegelianism because it was both idealist and was not built on a foundation of objective facts.
-The reindeer kept on loping and looking and stopping from time to time to turn and stare back at the hut. I stayed out there shivering in my pyjamas, watching it go.
+Engels points out, however, that Marx “was the first to have brought to the fore again the forgotten dialectical method” of Hegel.
-==== HOW TO KILL AND DIE ====
+The dialectical method was forgotten in the sense that the natural scientists ignored and dismissed dialectics along with the rest of Hegel’s philosophy. So, Engels is pointing out that one of the great contributions of Marx was salvaging the dialectical method from Hegel while rejecting the idealist and non-fact-based characteristics of Hegelian philosophy.
-After the reindeer incident the bee-figure keeps appearing to me in animal form. I will be walking through the woods and she will appear to me, for example as a brown ermine, springing from behind a tree so very suddenly there and sitting on her hind legs in a way that says ''I am no mortal brown ermine''. I can always tell it is really her, sometimes by ways like this, as though me and the animal are communicating, and sometimes even when she chooses not to acknowledge me in this way, by signs from the physical world. I would call this other kind maybe an increase in ''density'', like Roman-vase heaviness, for example the sudden pick-up of the wind when in the presence of the golden eagle, or a sudden stillness, or anything else that feels like it is hinting at significance.
+Marx, according to Engels, proved that the dialectical method could be separated from idealism by “[applying the dialectical method] in ''Capital'' to the facts of an empirical science, political economy.” This was the origin of dialectical materialism: the resurrection of the dialectical method and the development of a dialectical method in a materialist and scientific form.
-I went far into the tundra today for more food. I saw another golden eagle, or the same golden eagle, and a gyrfalcon. I had been hungry for the taste of meat that was not fish and had to kill by my own hand again if I was ever to build up enough karma points to eat meat back at home. I thought about what she had said and it gave me motivation to take full responsibility for the transferral that maintains my own energy.
+The idealist characteristics of classical German dialectics and Hegelian philosophy was a limitation that needed to be overcome [so that it could be utilized for scientific inquiry]. Marx and Engels overcame that limitation and in so doing developed ''materialist dialectics.'' This system of dialectics is the most advanced form of dialectics in the history of philosophy to date. It is the successor of previous systems of dialectics, and it arose as a critique of the classical German dialectics.
-The clouds were moving fast in the direction I was walking and if I stood still with my head up to face them they would glide over and I would feel my belly go as if I were still moving too. The sun was hanging evening-low and its angle filled the clouds up with colour, so that they were pink in its face and purple in shadow and it was a big ball of orange, opaque enough to look at, leaking its hue onto the grass and making it orange too. The sky felt close and low like a projection inside a planetarium, the tundra wide and empty, and walking north as I was, they went on together uninterrupted until they disappeared behind the curve of the earth, and it made me feel big and small to look at it all.
+Engels said: “Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception of nature and history.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', The 1885 Preface, Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-I did it like she says to. This time when I saw the hare I wanted, and I saw more of them because of the flat of the tundra, I considered my shot carefully and struck it in the hind. It had seen me and stood semi-wary, but I suppose it did not bolt because it was too unused to the sight of me to understand. It looked me in the eye before it took my bullet. I ran over to where it dropped to witness the magnitude of what I had done. It was still alive, like she said I should hope it would be. I picked up its warm limp body and held it up to face my face, and looked in at the life fading there. I poured some water from my bottle into its mouth so that it would not be thirsty. I shook from the sobs and tried to share in its suffering. And I am sure that its was much worse than mine, but it felt less like cheating to let it see me cry.
+=== 2. Materialist Dialectics ===
-I told it I was sorry. I thanked it for giving me its body. And I made a promise to it that when the time came I would offer my body back to the earth for it as nourishment and that I would be happy to do so. And in that moment, I knew it and I meant it and I felt the gravity of what it meant to say it.
+==== a. Definition of Materialist Dialectics ====
-==== REMEMBERING THE ANIMA MUNDI ====
+Materialist dialectics have been defined in various ways by many prominent Marxist-Leninist philosophers.
-''INT. CABIN – VIEW THROUGH WINDOW – camera is in hand-held – position: on cot facing out of the window – outside a reindeer is stood, grazing, very close to the window –''
+Engels defined materialist dialectics as: “nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society, and thought.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (EXCITEDLY): Look. Look, there it is again</div>
+Engels also emphasized the role of the principle of general relations.<ref>See p. 107.</ref> As John Burdon
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– the camera jerks with her hands and she moves to get a better view, cot squeaking – camera is steadied – focuses in on reindeer –''</div>
+Sanderson Haldane noted in the 1939 preface to ''Dialectics of Nature'': “In dialectics they
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' I’m going to go out to her</div>
+[Marx and Engels] saw the science of the general laws of change.”<ref>''Dialectics of Nature'', Friedrich Engels, 1883.</ref>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– view of camera scrambled, bed, ceiling, floor, as Erin clambers off the cot – floorboards – padding feet – pause – readjust – door –''</div>
+Lenin emphasized the important role of the principles of development<ref>See Annotation 117, p. 119.</ref> (including the theory of cognitive development) in the dialectics that Marx inherited from Hegelian philosophy.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (WHISPERING): Got to be really quiet and careful. Don’t want to scare her</div>
+Lenin wrote: “The main achievement was ''dialectics'', i.e., the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest, and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge that provides us with a reflection of eternally developing matter.”<ref>''The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.</ref>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– door is pushed open and outside light spills in – camera adjusts to light – camera moves around the door – reindeer in view from behind, about five metres distance – it can be heard huffing into the dirt as it tears the grass up – door creaks –''</div>
+==== b. Basic Features and Roles of Materialist Dialectics ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (WHISPERING): Shhhhhssh</div>
+There are two basic features of the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism:
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– reindeer suddenly picks up its head – turns to look directly at camera – bolts forward in surprise –''</div>
+''First, the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism is a system of dialectics that is based on the foundation of the scientific materialist viewpoint.''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Oh no oh no come back don’t go</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– camera jolts side to side with her movement – jogging after it as it trots away into tree cover –''</div>
+==== Annotation 102 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Hahahaha</div>
+Remember that ''scientific'' in Marxism-Leninism refers broadly to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding [see Objects and Purposes of Study, p. 38]. Remember also that ''materialism'' in Marxism-Leninism has specific meaning as well, which differentiates it from other forms of materialism [see ''Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism'', p. 52]. Here, materialism includes an understanding that the material is the first basis of reality, meaning that the material determines the ideal (though human consciousness can impact the material world through willpower and labor [see ''Nature and Structure of Consciousness'', p. 79]). Materialism is also built upon scientific explanations (rooted in empirical data and practice, i.e. systematic experimentation and observation) of the world. And finally, remember that ''viewpoint'' is the starting point of inquiry [see Annotation 11, p. 12].
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she stops running after it, watches it go – reindeer disappears into the black of the dense trees –''</div>
+Thus, a ''scientific materialist viewpoint'' is a perspective which begins analysis of the world in a manner that is both scientifically systematic in pursuit of understanding and firmly rooted in a materialist conception of the world.
-==== CUT ====
+''Note:'' Materialist Dialectics contains ''Twelve Basic Pairs of Categories'', ''Two Basic Principles'' and ''Three Universal Laws''. These are summarized, respectively, in Appendix A (p. 246), Appendix B (p. 247), and Appendix C (p. 248), and explained in depth throughout the rest of this chapter.
-==== WIKI HOW TO FIND YOUR POWER ANIMAL ====
+In this way, materialist dialectics fundamentally differs from the classical German idealist dialectics, and especially differs from Hegelian dialectics<ref>See Annotation 98, p. 100.</ref> (as these dialectics were founded on idealist viewpoints).
-Your power animal may come to you in a dream or meditation or in its actual physical form in waking life. Have you noticed unusual behaviour from a particular animal? Or do you keep encountering the same animal or the same animal species an amount that surprises you? Maybe you are noticing them regularly, as an image or as an object. Does the orca, for example, appear to you in the image form, emblazoned on everyday objects like T-shirts? Did you hear someone talking about going to watch Shamu at SeaWorld? Was ''Free Willy'' on when you turned on your television?
+Moreover, it also has a higher level of development compared to other dialectical systems of thought found in the history of philosophy going back to ancient times. Such previous forms of dialectics were fundamentally based on materialist stances, however the materialism of those ancient times was still naive, primitive and surface-level.
-What animal intrigues and captivates you? What animal do you notice most, not only out in wild nature, but also in your everyday life as an image? If you feel attracted to an animal and it keeps appearing, in the physical world or in a dream, it may be a sign that the animal is seeking to reveal itself to you.
+''Second, the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism unifies dialectical materialist viewpoints and materialist dialectical methodology, so it not only explains the world, but is also a tool humans can use to perceive and improve the world.''
-How does the animal make you feel? When you see the animal how does its presence make its impact on you? Do you feel its presence before you see it? What emotion does it evoke? Does it scare you? Does it elate you? Do the feeling and the apparitions/appearances coincide with particular situations in your life? Is there a sense of déjà vu? Do you feel about the animal as you feel about the situation?
+Every principle and law of Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics is both:
-The power animal could represent your feelings, or a situation that recurs in your mind, or a person or an event from your past, present or future.
+. An accurate explanation of the dialectical characteristics of the world.
-If you answered mostly yes to the above in relation to a particular creature, then you have found your power animal! Learn to honour your power animal.
+. A scientific methodology for perceiving and improving the world.
-Another thing Sam said that I had never stopped to think about was that it is actually pretty offensive that suddenly young people on the internet want to know their ‘power animal’, a New Age corruption of a particular native belief, through an online quiz. What I wanted to say back but didn’t was that maybe aside from being appropriative and corruptive in its associations, this signifies a suppressed and lost desire for closer affinity with the animals. That rather than stealing a tradition because we think it sounds enlightened, maybe there could be a more careful way to go about remembering a connection that was always there before?
+By summarizing the general interconnections and development of all things — every phenomenon in nature, society and human thought — Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics provides the most general methodological principles for the process of perceiving and improving the world. They are not just objective methodological principles; they are a comprehensive, constantly developing, and historical methodology.
-It is hard to feel a connection with ''any'' animal in a spiritual way as a British person when the only animals you are surrounded by are domesticated cats, dogs, cows, sheep, horses and then symbols or images of animals. If symbols are mostly what we have to go on, is this uselessly inauthentic, just too far removed? A symbol of a symbol, not a direct one like a bear track in the mud? Do they lose their potency when you take them from an advert on television?
+This methodology can be used to analyze contradictions [see Annotation 119, p. 123] in order to find the basic origins and motivations of both motion and developmental processes. Therefore, materialist dialectics is a great scientific tool for the revolutionary class to perceive and improve the world.
-But if we are to feel affinity in order to care, which we must, then symbols are all we have to work with. And if we each held an animal in affinity, a comrade animal, wouldn’t we care more about the continuation of its species? Maybe at birth we should all be given a comrade animal selected at random from a vast database. If you knew that a sea cucumber is an echinoderm from the class ''Holothuroidea'' and you were born into symbolic kinship with it, you would likely care more that it carried on slinking along the sea floor. You would feel the responsibility to help it along.
+With these basic features, materialist dialectics plays a very important role in the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism. Materialist dialectics are the foundation of the scientific and revolutionary characteristics of Marxism-Leninism and also offer the most general worldview and methodology for creative activities in scientific study and practical activities.
-An animal’s symbolic meaning can be as potent an acknowledgement of our shared invention of that symbol as the animal itself, and maybe more so. Ted Kaczynski made a comrade of the snowshoe rabbit. He called it Grandfather Rabbit. Whenever he shot a snowshoe rabbit he would say ‘thank you, Grandfather Rabbit’. He would get a mystic desire to draw them. He drew and thought about them so much that he actually began to think like a rabbit.
+== II. Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics ==
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+-----
-[[Image:f0208-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-==== THE ATOMIc PRIESTHOOD ====
+==== Annotation 103 ====
-I am back on the old estate. As in most of suburbia there are always a lot of cats. Maybe every third house has a cat and almost all the rest have dogs. Only everyone is gathered around a fire pit that has been dug out of the concrete in the centre of our cul-de-sac. The limp little cat bodies are thrown into the pit because they are full of an invisible death.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-23.png|''The Principle of General Relationships and the Principle of Development are the most basic principles of materialist dialectics. These two principles are dialectically related to one another.'']]
-There is a potion that has brewed itself from all the chemical run-offs, the Roundup and the Miracle Gro from every impossibly green lawn, trim as porn pubes, then the bleach from the sparkling toilet bowls, the suds of Fairy and Colgate, the nail varnish remover on cotton buds, the Dettol-soaked cloths. Carefully measured so as to be harmless alone but altogether in the cesspits under the roads forming new chemical combinations, transmutations, chance alchemies augmented by years of accumulation. Then pouring over the tarmac when drains fill up in rain, distributed as anomalies in the chain, distilled and distilled up and up, a fusion of the inorganic that leaves its mark as a ''negative imprint'' like she said, malignant and unseen, the tick that sucks the mouse dry.
+The following sections will outline the Principle of General Relationships and the Principle of Development, which are the most fundamental principles of materialist dialectics. These two concepts are closely (and dialectically) related:
-But no one knows where the invisible death comes from because they can’t see it so all the dead cats must be burned to save the live ones. Some of the afflicted cats, the ones still alive but coughing, are also thrown onto the fire. Children are kept inside.
+-----
-The voice comes from beside me, and I recognise it immediately, without the humming mediation. It is the voice that I had in my head the whole time I read ''Silent Spring'', scrapped together from a brief interview Larus showed us; undeviatingly calm and certain, a little drawling, with a trail of whistle to the end of every word. She holds a staff in her right hand; the tiny bird skulls and shells go clack-clack-clack. A few singular bees crawl about the lichen of her skin. ‘Cats, who so meticulously groom their coats and lick their paws, seemed to be most affected.’
+=== 1. The Principle of General Relationships ===
-‘It’s you, I knew it was you!’ but she says nothing.
+''a. Definition of Relationship and Common Relationship''
-We stand and watch as the last of the cats disappear into the flames. Some of the owners are weeping. Other cats watch from behind closed windows. The air smells that horrible smell, the one the adults would not answer for when you asked as a child, when all the pigs and cows had foot and mouth, and the significance makes you retch now. People file away back to their houses.
+-----
-‘In central Java so many were killed that the price of a cat more than doubled.’
+==== Annotation 104 ====
-I don’t know where Java is but I know it is far away. I wonder if the Javanese burned their cats too, to keep their problems atomised. Treating the maladies, treating the maladies like a very rational physician.
+The ''Principle of General Relationships'' describes how all things, phenomena, and ideas are related to one another, and are defined by these internal and external relationships
-Then I woke up. The fact that the light inside was moving might have infiltrated my dream and brought about the fires. It was darker, but still light with the midnight sun, a dusky twilight. Shadows toned up and down and across the floorboards. My first thoughts on waking: ''The world is burning down! The coloured lights of nuclear holocaust!''
+The ''Principle of Development'' relates to the idea that motion, change, and development are driven by internal and external relationships.
-What she has been saying about negative imprints and energy; we are a very potent species, we have a very heavy imprint. I think about what Larus said about aliens leaving messages in our DNA and, well, we have already left our own messages in the earth at Hiroshima. We made rockets to go to the moon and look at ourselves. But the technology that built the rockets to go to the moon was adapted from the same technology that the atom bomb was made from. Nuclear radiation is the negative imprint left by our glorious inventions. We did it! We made something to give us immortal remembrance!
+These two principles are dialectically linked: any given subject is defined by its internal relationships, and these same relationships drive the development of every subject.
-What is the message of this, our most enduring time capsule? Its content is senseless, it is a messageless symbol, a dead language. But even where a message fails, the time capsule itself still conveys an intent. It is a pointing finger, you just can’t see at what it points. What is the prerequisite for intent? Just a self-conscious marking? With the Wow! Signal they were looking for a pattern repeated enough for it to seem unlikely to be a coincidental and natural occurrence. In his whale graphs Larus was looking for the frequency with which certain distinct data occurred. Maybe these graphs could not be used to interpret our waste depository sites because we use pictorial symbols rather than language as language is one more degree of symbolism removed. But the pattern and symmetry and frequency of the pictorial symbols should also suggest ''intent''.
+Note: The foundation of the principles of Materialist Dialectics were laid out by
-So the symbols at the waste depository sites would have to be something that can’t occur naturally like giant sculptures, rock carvings, detailed pictograms. Something with the human stink about it (patterns suggest a maker). But if you don’t know what is the human stink, then maybe you will not smell it (there are patterns and symmetry in nature and these have already been used to argue for a teleological proof of god, which I know to be misleading).
+Engels in ''Dialectics of Nature''. Engels began working on ''Dialectics of Nature'' in February, 1870 and had to stop in 1876 to work on ''Anti-Dühring''. He then restarted work on ''Dialectics of Nature'' in 1878 and continued working on it until 1883, when Karl Marx died. Engels felt that it was more important to try and put together Marx’s great unfinished works, ''Capital Volumes 2, 3, and 4'', and so stopped working on ''Dialectics of Nature'' once again. So, unfortunately, Engels died before this seminal work on Materialist Dialectics could be completed, and what we have instead is an unfinished assemblage of notes.
-The occurrence of the waste depository sites would be infrequent, making them anomalies, and suggesting unnatural origin, unlike signs that are said to point to intelligent design, which are everywhere, so the intent would be recognised, and would colonise and corrupt the epistemological wilderness of the future. It says without saying SO THAT WE MAY LIVE INTO YOURS. Any attempt to share meaning and a message with the future will probably fail but what probably will not fail is this meaningless scribble. It is a desire that manifests itself a lot in our culture, the desire to leave a mark; graffiti in a bathroom stall, vandalism, a signature: all a defiance of time. We have sown our signature into the soil. We have survived time.
+What follows in the rest of this book is a cohesive system of Materialist Dialectics which was built upon the foundations laid out by Engels in ''Dialectics of Nature'' and many other works of political and scholarly writing from various sources. This is the system of Materialist Dialectics studied by Vietnamese students and applied by Vietnamese communists today.
-===== And what is your message? =====
+Because this text comes from predominantly Vietnamese scholarship and ideological development, we have had to translate some terms into English which are not derived from the “canon” of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. In some cases, various terms have been consolidated into one concept. For example: Engels used the term “interconnection” (German: ''innern'' ''Zusammenhang'', literally: “inner connections”) in ''Dialectics of Nature'', but Vietnamese political scientists use the term “relationship.” Where Engels uses the term “motion” (German: ''Bewegung'') modern Vietnamese communists tend to use the word “development.” Wherever this is the case, we have chosen to use the words in English which most closely match the language used in the original Vietnamese of this text.
-The light shapes shifted only slightly, it was their vague wave of intensity that had woken me up. As my eyes came to, their change in colour, at the shadows borders, dancing around the edges, rendered the billows of light like a petrol rainbow.
+In materialist dialectics, the word ''relationship'' refers to the regulating principles, mutual interactions, and mutual transformations which exist between things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as those existing between aspects and factors within things, phenomena, and ideas.
-The T-shirt I had tucked into the window to keep the light out was clinging on by one sleeve where the stitching bunched the fabric, like it does sometimes when the wind makes the old latches slide down a little.
+-----
-After having only seen the Northern Lights in time-lapse that is how I thought they moved. Licking the sky like a green flame. In real time they hardly move at all. Serves me right for knowing a natural phenomenon only by watching it on the internet. It jarred me, I had to move to check I was not having a sort of stroke and seeing everything in slow motion; a momentary lapse like climbing the last stair that is not there. They moved, but not in big winding ribbons, more rapid little flames within big ribbons that moved more slowly. There were different states of focus; a school of fish that ribbon like a sea serpent.
+==== Annotation 105 ====
-Eskimos think the lights are the spirits of the animals they hunted. Beluga whales, deer and seals. Native Americans from Wisconsin think that the lights are ''manabai’wok'', giants who are the spirit form of great hunters and fishermen. Other natives see them as the spirits of ancestors, and all interpret them as a benevolent force. And in a way they are all right, given metaphoric licence. The lights are the physical manifestation of a magnetic field that deflects high-energy solar radiation, protecting life on Earth. The lights are particles that have made it through where the magnetic field is weaker at the poles, and collide with gas particles.
+Throughout this book, ''phenomenon/phenomena'' simply refers to anything that is observable by the human senses.
-Cultures see in the constellation of stars things that feature in their vernacular of images. Carl Sagan said that when the ancient Egyptians saw the Big Dipper they saw a horse carrying a man leaning back followed by a hippo with a crocodile on its back. What will people of the future see in the nuclear trefoil? It looks a little like a peace sign, or an X-marking-the-spot.
+Materialist dialectics examines relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas and ''within'' things, phenomena, and ideas. A relationship which occurs between two separate things or phenomena is referred to as an ''external relationship''. A relationship which occurs ''within'' a thing or phenomenon is referred to as an ''internal relationship''.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+These terms are relative; sometimes a relationship may be internal in one context but external in a different context. For example, consider a solar system:
-[[Image:xmark.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-In the narrative of conception the egg is the conquest, but in a photomicrographic image of sperm cells meeting an egg, what really looks like the most ‘powerful’ on a comparison of constructed scales of significance? Why do we talk of sex in terms of penetration, rather than a cave mouth swallowing? What is our own significance against the vastness of space?
+When considering a solar system as a whole, the orbit of a moon around a planet may be considered as an internal relationship of the solar system. But when considering the moon as an isolated subject, its orbit around a planet may be seen as an external relationship which the moon has with the planet.
-Take something vague like the Lights and make it into something very specific depending on your myths. We are all saying the same thing in different ways. But that is just it; a vernacular. Aliens who find our time capsules would not share any kind of vernacular with we who are under the anthropological umbrella of ‘Life on Earth’, so Larus is wrong to be looking for pi in space. The Human Interference Task Force were wrong to try to find universal symbols.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-24.png]]
-Ah, Larus. The Northern Lights are super-rare in the Alaskan summer. I thought I must have still been sleeping. But then I remembered like an echo what he had said, that there was going to be a magnetic supercharge this year. He said that the sun’s activity goes in cycles that peak every eleven years, and that this year is the eleventh. I forgot everything for a second and got an urge to talk to him and tell him. He would have liked to know.
+The diagram above illustrates different types of relationships:
-In a way I am starting to feel a little bit better about the betrayal, because the flaws it gives him free me from his tether. He taught me a lot, but he is still quite blinded by his man-vision. John Lilly did not treat the dolphins with the reverence he preached they deserved, he was a hypocrite and he brought a lot of discredit to the study of cetaceans. But that can’t undermine the few really pertinent things he also said about other-than-human consciousness. Larus and his ulterior motive do not make everything that I ''did'' learn from him null. Because imagine if we took the personal lives of great thinkers as their oeuvre. Sure, we should hate them for it, but if we ''ignored'' all of the wife beaters, all of the wife silencers, all of the wife killers, wouldn’t we have some gaping holes in history?
+Object 1 has its own internal relationships (A), and, from its own perspective, it also has external relationships with Object 2 (B). From a wider perspective, the relationship between Object 1 and Object 2 (B) may be viewed as an internal relationship.
-==== HOW MUSHROOMS CAN SAVE THE WORLD ====
+This ''system of relationships'' (between Object 1 and Object 2) will also have external relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas (C).
-My comrade reindeer came back again. I know for sure it is real now because I have pinched myself when I have seen it and I have filmed it on camera and watched it back several times over just to make sure. I find it very strange that the reindeer is always alone. This is not the usual behaviour of a reindeer, and this fact makes me think it really is my comrade. But then, this is the part that cannot be theoretically tested. The reindeer could just be a lost and lonely reindeer.
+-----
-It has not tried to talk to me or tell my future like she said it might. But I do not know if maybe I am looking too hard and thinking too literally. Like looking too hard with my actual physical eyes instead of looking more indirectly with my third eye, which really only means feminine perspective, as in admitting there is not one truth, there are many narratives, there are many names for mountains, and by taking on the perspective of the reindeer I will actually see myself and my future. It is simple and rational, like how Jung said that you can predict the future if you just know how the present has evolved out of the past.
+Relationships have a quality of ''generality'', which refers to how frequently they occur between and within things, phenomena, and ideas. When we refer to ''general relationships'', we are usually referring to relationships which exist broadly across many things, phenomena, and ideas. General relationships can exist both internally, ''within'' things, phenomena, and ideas, and externally, ''between'' things, phenomena, and ideas.
-==== THE vANITy OF MODERN ExISTENcE ====
+The most general relationships are ''universal relationships'': these are relationships that exist between and within ''everything'' and ''all phenomena'', and they are one of the two primary subjects of study of materialist dialectics. [The other primary subject of study is the ''Principle of Development''; see page 119.]
-''INT. CABIN, SUNLIGHT – Erin on cot, camera on desk opposite – in shot are cabin cot, Erin and the window, legs draped over edge of cot, her hands stiffly under the diary as if at a lectern – she looks up from it and directly at the camera – there is something unsettling in the way her eyes look – wide, imploring/haunted –''
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' ‘KACZYNSKI IS GOD’ is scrawled in capitals on the title page of the diary. I have read the first half. Like the title suggests. Damon is pretty much Kaczynski</div>
+==== Annotation 106 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she looks down at the diary and pauses with a hand hovering over her bookmarks, little scraps of paper – she picks the first and carefully turns to its page – pages are stiff from years sat pressed together –''</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-25.png]]
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' So like here he says</div>
+The discussion of generality of relationships can seem confusing at first. What’s important to understand is that generality is a spectrum ranging from the least general relationships (''unique relationships'', which only occur between two ''specific'' things/phenomena/ideas) and the most general relationships (''universal relationships'', which occur between or within ''all'' things/phenomena/ideas).
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she takes a breath –''</div>
+Of particular importance in the study of materialist dialectics are ''universal'' relationships which exist within and between all things, phenomena, and ideas [see below].
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">Once upon a time there was a land covered with pristine virgin wilderness. Where colossal trees soared over lavish mountainsides and rivers ran crazy and free through deserts. Where eagles wheeled and beavers beavered at their dams and people lived in concord with bare nature. Achieving everything they needed to achieve by the day using only rocks. Bones and timber. Padding softly on the Earth and living to full personal potential. In a peaceful state of anarchy</div>
+''Translation Note'': In the original Vietnamese, the word “universal” is not used. Instead, the compound term “phổ biến nhất” is used, which literally means “most general.” In Vietnamese, this phrasing is commonly used to describe the concept of “universal” and it is thus not confusing to Vietnamese speakers. For this translation, we have opted to use the word “universal” because we feel it is less confusing and better explains the concept in English.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she looks back at the camera –''</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Which is lifted right out of Kaczynski. And then this</div>
+The universal relationships include (but are not limited to):
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she turns to another page –''</div>
+* Relationships between basic philosophical category pairs (Private and Common, Essence and Phenomenon, etc.). <ref>See ''Private and Common'', p. 128; ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156.</ref>
+* Relationships between quantity and quality. <ref>See Annotation 117, p. 119.</ref>
+* Relationships between opposites. <ref>See Annotation 190, p. 181.</ref>
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">That summer there were too many people around my old cabin so I decided I needed some peace. I hear there are handlebars and viewing plateaus specifically plateaued for viewing at Yosemite now. They think that wildness can be put in a box and looked at. John Muir was a douchebag</div>
+Together, in all forms of relationships in nature, society and human thought (special, general, and universal) there is unity in diversity and diversity in unity.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' Saturation again. Damon must have been in another cabin somewhere a bit less remote before he came to this one. Kaczynski did that too. He got upset when some bulldozers tore down his favourite thinking spot and that’s what sent him further out into the wilderness and into madness and made him send the letter bombs</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she sits looking at the diary in her hands with slumped shoulders – she looks back at the camera –''</div>
+==== Annotation 107 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN''' (QUIETLY): It’s really fucking sad if you think about it</div>
+==== Principle of General Relationships ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– then she smiles weakly, turning to another page –''</div>
+According to ''Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought: “''Materialist dialectics upholds the position that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in mutual relationships with each other, regulate each other, transform into each other, and that nothing exists in complete isolation. That is the core idea of the ''Principle of General Relationships''.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' And then this. Before the forgetting existence was a mosaic of beauty. It is the iron fist of technology that has smashed that to smithereens. And we are the shards. Each just a remnant of this beautiful mosaic. Discordant from our true nature</div>
+From this Principle, we find the characteristics of ''Diversity in Unity'' and ''Unity in Diversity''; the basis of Diversity in Unity is the fact that every thing, phenomenon, or idea, contains many different relationships; the basis of Unity in Diversity is that many different relationships exist — unified — within each and every thing, phenomenon, and idea.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she stares at the page – looks up –''</div>
+==== Diversity in Unity ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' And it’s all very hyperbolic but I get it</div>
+There exist an infinite number of diverse relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas, but all of these relationships share the same foundation in the material world.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she turns to another page –''</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-26.png|''An infinite diversity of relationships exist within the unity of the material world.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">Technological society is a leech on the soul. Existentialism is its result. Primitive man had a challenging existence. He had to fight off predators and other men and hunt and kill. He was raw and fully alive. He was not safe from failure but he was not hopeless to all of his threats. He could act on them. Modern man is under constant threat by things he has no power to control. Nuclear weapons. Pollution. Carcinogens. Our environment is already radically altered from its natural state. Soon man will be as radically different as his modern environment</div>
+The material world is not a chaotic and random assortment of things, phenomena, and ideas. Rather, it is a system of relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas. Likewise, since the material world exists as the foundation of all things, phenomena, and ideas, the material world is thus the foundation for all relationships within and between things, phenomena, and ideas. Because all relationships share a foundation in the material world, they also exist in unity, even though all relationships are diversified and different from one another.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' He man he. Of course. But he goes into this more. He says that</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she turns to another bookmark –''</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-27.png|''Universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas manifest in infinitely diverse ways.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">Nature is not a feminist. Nature is ruled by chaos and competition. Strength and cunning. Nature made a human creature that must fill the roles of care and duty to offspring. So that the species may flourish. They are weaker and domestically minded. This obviously makes them social beings and so more suited to civilisation. This is why the mountains are not peppered with women. They will be more cumbersome during the revolution and will also fare worse. But of course they will be necessary after the revolution. So we must take care to recruit them</div>
+'''Unity in Diversity'''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she frowns down at the diary – makes a kind of ‘huuumph’ sound – bounces the diary a little in her hands, absently – chews the inside of her lip – she turns to another bookmark – the pages stick together – she peels them apart –''</div>
+When we examine the universal relationships that exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">The enemy is the machine. We should not make enemies of ourselves</div>
+''Paraphrased From: Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she looks back to the camera, bouncing the diary in her hands again – the stiff pages hardly move –''</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' You can see the way his philosophy develops. He starts going then into how the revolution should work and what his idea of utopia after will be like. All the time going back to this idea of freedom freedom freedom, which he always writes in capitals. He wants to destroy everything institutional and symbolic. Factories, of course, but also hospitals. And libraries. And he says there will be many casualties. He says that death and chaos are the sacrifice needed. That freedom and dignity are more valuable than a life free of pain. That to die fighting for survival is more fulfilling than a life void of purpose</div>
+==== b. Characteristics of Relationships ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– she is absorbed in her trail of thought – she does not notice the book in her hands – her hands play with it absently – apparently she does not notice because she does not treat it with the delicate reverence she did before –''</div>
+Objectiveness, generality, and diversity are the three basic characteristics of relationships.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' And then if you follow his logic. And you end up with this post-technological society. Then doesn’t feminism have what it wants anyway? Because if like I believe there is no natural way of being. And patriarchy is just scaffolding. Then does taking down the scaffolding not solve the problem?</div>
+''-'' ''The Characteristic of Objectiveness of Relationships''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– the diary slips from her hands and lands on the floor face down – a page is dislodged and slips across the floor with the gust the book’s landing made – Erin looks reproachfully at the piece of paper – she bends and reaches to pick it up, gathers the diary as she does – she sits back on the cot and looks at the paper, places the diary besides her – then she unfolds the piece of paper – her lips move silently as she begins to read –''</div>
+According to the materialist dialectical viewpoint, relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas have objective characteristics.
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– her face caves in on itself – she brings her hand to her mouth and the other begins shaking – she lets out a whine that is broken and animalistic –''</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– then her eyes dart suddenly to an area behind the camera and to the left – she brings away her hand as though to talk – her face has a receptivity to it now, like it is in the act of communication, all parts expressive in a way that had not been in evidence to the inanimate camera – as though there is someone in the room with her whom she is addressing –''</div>
+==== Annotation 108 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' He… He killed himself</div>
+In materialist dialectics, objectiveness is an abstract concept that refers to the relative externality of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every thing, phenomena and idea exists externally to every other thing, phenomena, and idea. This means that to each individual subject (i.e., each individual thing/phenomena/idea), all other things, phenomena, and ideas are external objects
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– and then, shaking her head desolately –''</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-28.png|''All things, phenomena, and ideas have the relative characteristic of objectiveness.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">'''ERIN:''' I don’t. Don’t know</div>
+All together, the collection of all things, phenomena, and ideas in the universe create the external reality of any given subject. So, objectiveness is relative. In the case of human beings, every individual person exists as an individual subject to which all other things, phenomena, and ideas (including other human beings) have ''objective characteristics.''
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– in the background through the window looking out into the trees that get denser and denser until they are forest a dark shape comes forward from the obscurity – it is small because it is in the distance, it would be easy to miss – Erin slowly shakes her head at the point behind the camera with her mouth a big ‘O’ – eyes are drawn to it because it is sudden movement in a previously inert space – in contrast to the space around it it becomes clear – a large animal with long spindly legs –''</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-29.png|''Alice and Bob are external to one another; each is objective from the other’s perspective.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.004cm;">''– Erin’s expression droops and her eyes slip diagonally down to the camera – she blinks at it then slowly rises, slowly, like her body is almost too heavy to lift – she leans across the floor and reaches out –''</div>
+Of course, objectiveness is always relative. Something might be external from a certain perspective but not from another perspective. For example, say there are two people: Bob and Alice. From Bob’s perspective, Alice has objective characteristics. But from Alice’s perspective, Bob would have objective characteristics.
-==== CUT ====
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-30.png|''The relationship between Alice and Bob has objective characteristics to both Alice and Bob.'']]
-==== WEST, WEST, WEST, DESTINy, DESTINy, DESTINy ====
+As all relationships are inherently external to any given subject (even subjects which are party to the relationship), relationships also have objective characteristics.
-After I read it I went a bit dizzy like I had to sit down and get moving acutely at the same time. I got the fear/adrenaline that perhaps a rabbit feels being run into the ground by a fox; a chemical consolation prize for its oncoming doom. And there must be one, a payoff, I think, otherwise the rabbit would just lie down and let the fox take it, not prolong its own suffering. There must be a small part to the death chase that feels good.
+-----
-I packed up my bag to move back out to the fire tower. Damon’s quest and the distance he went on it had put my own feeble experiment into perspective; in contrast a glorified camping trip. He too saw the hypocrisy of the Mountain Man but he actually followed through on it with frenzied sincerity. A distance so far and so absolute as to never come back. In fact the ''only'' absolute solitude.
+Whenever two things, phenomena, or ideas have a relationship with one another, they form a pair. The relationship is inherent to this pair and external to any subject which exists outside of the pair. The mutual interaction and mutual transformation which occurs to the things, phenomena, or objects within the pair as the result of the relationship are ''inherent'' and ''objective'' properties of the pair.
-An event horizon is a place in space-time and events beyond this point can’t reach an observer who is outside of them. It is a point of no return and on the other side of this point the gravitational pull turns so intense that escape is impossible. This is a black hole.
+-----
-Here in the cabin there is always looming the possibility that Stan will come to find me. This is reason enough to leave for somewhere more authentically ''distant''. And I shall not take my map. A map is a corrupting thing, an imposition on the wilderness it tames, translates to the symbolic. And it is a mapping for others to follow, like Thoreau mapped for others to follow him on his ''philosophical'' terrain but by talking about it he took away its agency, its pure wildness. Because pure wildness is the absence of words, is self-willed. Damon found this out and had to give up all of his words.
+==== Annotation 109 Translation note: ====
-I cannot take the camera because it is more than the documentary now. Documenting too throws a quadrant on a thing, pins a thing down like a specimen for dissection. You cannot document a wilderness because that undoes its wildness, its being apart and for itself, and now I understand this. To document is to litter, to litter photographs of the tundra in the tundra behind you. And besides, it diminishes the directness of the experience, which becomes once removed via a superficial lens of viewing. Can you even have a feminist documentary on wilderness? Can you even have a word for wilderness? Do the Eskimos and the Inuits have one?
+In the original Vietnamese text, the word for “objective” is ''“khách quan.”'' This is a compound word in which ''“khách”'' means “guest,” and ''“quan”'' means “point of view.” Therefore, ''“khách quan”'' literally means “the guest’s (or outsider’s) point of view.”
-It is like Sam told me; the categorising of indigenous people is a colonial pursuit that controls their identity with words. Like in the Indian Act. It is a way to distinguish in white law who gets status or non-status, who gets what.
+Thus we translate this to “objectiveness/objective,” the characteristic of being viewed from the outside.
-We map them out, draw out their boundaries, like when I entered Denali Park or you enter any park and there is a visitors’ centre roping off the inside from the outside, nature from non-nature. Gender is another act of division, deciding who gets what admirable qualities. There are no Mountain Women because the Mountain Man will not call her Mountain Woman. The Mercury 13 were ready for space flight, but NASA wasn’t ready to call them astronauts. (Side note: Athabaskans had a matrilineal society before rights were given to their men in white law.)
+The word “inherent” in the original Vietnamese is ''“vốn có.”'' This is another compound word: ''“vốn”'' is a shortened form of the word ''“vốn dĩ,”'' which means “by or through nature,” “naturally,” and “intrinsically.” ''“Có”'' means “to have” or “to exist.” '''''“Vốn có”''''' thus means “already existing naturally” or “already there, through nature.”
-All along I have been catching butterflies, pinning them in a glass case and putting a name to them: my own name. I had thought it so innocent, the calling of things by their real names. The good truth of speciesism; helping me to see difference. But it is not, it pins the animal to a system that pretends to be truth, static and mechanical, it reduces the luminous and the complex. This makes the thing, the animal, lose its deeper truth. William Blake the poet got upset at Newton and the Enlightenment scientists for ‘Unweaving the Rainbow’. I have been trying so hard to put it into words but I have been struggling because it can never really be worded without making its immediacy dissipate. I have been unweaving rainbows.
+So we use the word “inherent” to mean “existing intrinsically or naturally within, without external influence.”
-I set fire to the pile of man books like I did the animal guts, because I do not want The Bear to smell them either. In words they keep the wilderness from me. I am sick of their authority. I am sick of their exclusion, their air of expertise, their colonial intent. I am sick of their wording that which should not be worded. Maybe we need some gaping holes in history! I hate them! And I hate them all the more for being so hypocritical, with Damon so painfully true!
+-----
-I watch the guts crackle but the books do not light because I threw them on whole in anger and the flames lick at them but do not take hold and snuffle and die. Are they fucking immortal? I pick them up one by one and tear the pages from them, reignite the flames, feed them in gently. They curl to black in my fingers, page by page.
+Human beings can’t change or impact external things and phenomena — and the relationships between them — through human will alone. Humans are limited to perceiving relationships between things and phenomena and then impacting or changing them through our practical activities.
-But I have to do something with this, running away like a little squirrel who takes a strange object to its dray, and what to do with it when I have it there? A voyage that leaves everybody else behind. A voyage to see the moon’s second face.
+''-'' ''The Characteristic of Generality of Relationships''
-Mike Collins was the astronaut left behind to see to things in the command module while Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. He drifted for a day in a hunk of metal that he had little control over, alone in the dizzy void, velvety infinity making him sick with perspective or lack of, no anchor for his soul and a brain telling him that whatever he thinks he can see he is probably still falling. And when he got to the dark side of the moon and he could not see Earth any more, he lost radio contact with Houston for forty-eight minutes.
+According to the dialectical viewpoint, there is no thing, phenomenon, nor idea that exists in absolute isolation from other things, phenomena and ideas.
-''Not since Adam has any human known such solitude'', the loneliest man at the beginning of the world or in the world or out of it. Only, Mike Collins says he did not feel loneliness but awareness, satisfaction and exultation. The most crystalline and private solitude. Oh, Eve, why did you have to show up and tamper with the clarity?
+-----
-We always had a preoccupation with the moon as this symbol of a philosophical island. A man is an island on the moon. It is so far away it is definitive exile. Is that Cain on the moon? Is he lonely? Is he drunk?
+==== Annotation 110 ====
-The moon has not been an island since Apollo, or it is an island like Crusoe’s but after the footprint. Someone already flew up and touched it and saw it from all sides and figured out there are no green men and no cheese. A solitude to be felt by no one since Adam and now Mike Collins.
+Although all things, phenomena, and ideas have the characteristic of ''externality'' and ''objectiveness'' to all other things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112], this does not mean that they exist in ''isolation''. Isolation implies a complete lack of any relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas. On the contrary, according to the ''Principle of General Relationships'' [see p. 107], ''all'' things, phenomena, and ideas have relationships with ''all other'' things, phenomena, and ideas.
-And yet it could always have been purer still. If Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had died like they easily might have, and Collins had to do a return journey to Earth on his own, first the dark face then the burden and relief of being the survivor, the only one to escape the shipwreck, returned without the heroes empty-handed. But how pure would have been the level of solitude on that return? Does that thought corrupt it? Like it could always go deeper still? Like smashing the atom of solipsism to find out it does smash and it is actually made of weird squiggly things.
+Simultaneously, there is also no known thing, phenomenon, nor idea that does not have a systematic structure, including component parts which in turn have their own internal relationships. This means that every existence is a system, and, moreso, is an ''open'' system that exists in relation with other systems. All systems interact and mutually transform one another.
-In Chinese mythology there is a woman on the moon and she has a whole band of moon rabbits for company. I felt spacey as I left the cabin, but much less heavy than when I walked out here. A flock of geese made a ‘V’ in the sky. This is called a skein.
+-----
-==== NOW COMES GOOD SAILING MOOSE INDIAN ====
+==== Annotation 111 ====
-I stayed up all day and part of the night reading Damon’s journal to its end, only leaving the tower a couple of times to pee and just to stretch my cramping legs. I was sore all over from just sitting still, and so exhausted from crying and reading that I fell into a nightmare sleep that I could not pull myself out of until late this morning. The diary does not elaborate on how he chose to do it. It only suggests that he would not ever be found.
+As explained above, a ''systematic structure'' is a structure which includes within itself a system of ''component'' parts and relationships. It has been postulated by some scientific models that there may be some “fundamental base particle” (quarks, preons, etc.), which, if true, would mean that there is a certain basic material component which cannot be further broken down. However, this would not contradict the Principle of Materialist Dialectics of General Relationships (which states that all things, phenomena, and ideas interact with and mutually transform one another — see Annotation 107, p. 110).
-Damon is hanging by the neck from a tree, its branch groaning against the pull of his body, but it groans less and less with his diminished mass. The bears and the wolves found him before the ranger, like he planned. His legs are torn away where the lower-standing creatures have managed to reach, from his waist down, a hula skirt made of strands like earthworms, which wriggle as the torso sways. It takes a big bear to stand on its hind legs and wrench the forlorn body to the ground, where the lower-standing creatures wait with yelps and warbles that sound like ecstasy and pain at once. They feast on his body, frenzied but harmonious, creatures great and small.
+''- The Characteristic of Diversity of Relationships''
-''Humankind has been the biggest leech on this planet. No creature has ever dominated so unanimously or pervasively.''
+In addition to affirming the objectiveness<ref>See Annotation 108, p. 112.</ref> and generality<ref>See p. 108.</ref> of relationships, the dialectical viewpoint of Marxism-Leninism also emphasizes the ''diversity'' of relationships. The characteristic of diversity is defined by the following features:
-It had crossed my mind that maybe his suicide was faked so that he could truly cast off all ties and live in his wilderness with no one ever coming after him. To be dead and mourned as the most unconditional form of liberation. But reading the diary, and especially towards its end, he writes so convincingly about how it feels to follow the deduction of his philosophy all the way to its conclusion, and know there is no way back, that I really have to believe he was there.
+* All things, phenomena, and ideas have different relationships. Every relationship plays a distinct role in the existence and development of the things, phenomena, and ideas which are included within.
+* Any given relationship between things, phenomena, and ideas will have different characteristics and manifestations under different conditions and/or during different periods of motion and/or at different stages of development.
-''We are heading for collapse. Eventually the fortress we built will cave in on itself. But not until everything outside of it has been absorbed into it, remodelled in its image. Not until we have corrupted everything that is beautiful and whole and pure.''
+-----
-He talks and talks about how there is this innate thing, this selfishness in us, and that no matter our good intentions it always overrides. And it gets me thinking about the parallel on a macro-cosmic scale. That really, if there is no changing the course of our ‘advancement’ and its inevitable conclusion, why even struggle against it? Maybe we should meet it running, we should just run at death and the death of civilisation yelling and flailing like Damon did. The planet could regenerate with new interpretations of life, like after the dinosaurs or all the sea creatures in the Silurian period or everything in the Great Dying in the Permian period when 96 per cent of life forms perished and the 4 per cent that did not went on to become all life as we know it now.
+==== Annotation 112 ====
-And if at that end of it, when all the glittery dust motes settle and the black mushrooms start to metabolise the fallout, if there is nothing left that could contemplate our loss, then is nothing really lost? Even those with the capacity to ''feel'', would they even care? Would the dolphins be sad to see us go if any of them survived?
+One of Marx’s most critical observations was that things are defined by their internal and external relationships, including human beings. For example, in ''Theses on Feuerbach,'' Marx wrote that “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.” It is only through relationships — through mutual impacts and transformations — that things, phenomena, and ideas (including human beings and human societies) change and develop over time. All of these relationships — which both define and transform all things, phenomena, and ideas in existence — exist in infinite diversity [see Annotation 107, p. 110].
-The Doomsday Clock is a clock whose time is agreed upon by a group from the ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists''. Midnight represents the apocalypse. The clock indicates the planet’s vulnerability to apocalypse from human-made existential risks, their main concerns being nuclear weapons and climate change.
+Just as things, phenomena, and ideas change and transform through the course of relations with one another, the nature of the relationships themselves also change and develop over time.
-Nuclear contaminates time and future wildness and will outlive us as a time capsule. Climate change permeates the now, every fibre of being on the surface of the planet touched and corrupted by it, even if only by the colour change of its cast shadow. Human-made change is already written into every little bit of wilderness.
+''Characteristics'' refer to the features and attributes that exist ''internally'' within a given thing, phenomena, or idea.
-No part of the planet will be untouched. Not the deepest ocean trench, not the never-seen portion of Siberian forest, not the unknown and unnamed underwater cave or the blind crabs living in it. All will bear our dirty fingerprints. We have left our negative imprint everywhere. And the first and worst felt of the human species losing their identity and culture will be the Eskimo and Inuit, who did very little to bring it about. The rocks will testify against us to the future, speaking of us as geomorphic agents.
+''Manifestation'' refers to ''how'' a given thing, phenomena, or idea is expressed ''externally'' in the material world.
-The Mountain Men are dead now. All purity has been proved untrue. Alaska is owned privately, by natives, or is federal land. Can a wilderness ever be wild if it is owned? Does the wilderness reserved lose its self-will, its wildness? The human stink is everywhere, the smell is enough to almost paralyse me and at the same time frenzy, make me want to limp-run away, run towards, a cliff-lemming suicide tendency.
+For example, a ball may have the ''characteristics'' of being made of rubber, having a mass of 100 grams, and having a melting point of 260℃. It may ''manifest'' by bouncing on the ground, having a spherical shape, and having a red appearance to human observers.
-The clock has recently been set at three minutes to midnight, the closest it has been since the Cold War. In a press release, when they moved the clock hand, the scientists said ''the probability for global catastrophe is very high''.
+If ten such balls exist, they will all be slightly different. Even if they have the same mass and material composition, they will have slightly different variations in size, shape, etc. Even if each ball will melt at 260℃, the melting will manifest differently for each ball — they will melt into slightly different shapes, at slightly different speeds, etc.
-They sat around in a board meeting with other minds representing the frontiers of scientific knowledge, sitting around with dozens of Nobel laureates agreeing on that conclusion and feeling the full weight of its implications. How do the people building the way we know the world manage to stagger on with the weight on their shoulders so heavy?
+Relationships also have characteristics and manifestations. For example, the moon’s orbit around the Earth is a relationship. It has characteristics such as the masses of each related body, forces of gravity, and other factors which produce and influence the orbit. The same orbital relationship also has manifestations such as the duration of the moon’s orbit around the Earth, the size of its ellipse, the orbit’s effects on the tides of the Earth’s ocean, etc.
-''There are just too many people on this finite planet now. I can only dream that there will be some virus, some superbug, a disaster, an earthquake along the fault lines of civilisation. Something to restore equilibrium.''
+''Characteristics'' and ''Manifestation'' correspond, respectively, to the philosophical category pair of ''Content'' and ''Form,'' which is discussed in section page 147.
-''And yet one cannot orchestrate this. One cannot inflict this philosophy onto others and remain sincere. Kaczynski got this wrong. For to be a human being is to be part of humankind. And to be part of humankind is to be in the ranks of the enemy. And so what is to be done? What can an individual do but quit the army that fights for a cause he does not believe in? He cannot hurt his brothers in arms whose only fault is their ignorance.''
+Therefore, no two relationships are exactly the same, even if they exist between very similar things, phenomena, and ideas and/or in very similar situations.
-He is right and Kaczynski was wrong and even Thoreau was inauthentic. Thoreau’s writing was a time capsule and with it he colonised his wildness. It is to write intent everywhere, to sow it around like bad seeds. Wilderness is an absence of these seeds, or more than absence – the inexistence of them. A dead Damon is wilderness. Even more absolute wilderness is a Damon never born.
+It is also important to note that the characteristic of diversity also applies to things, phenomena, and ideas themselves. In other words, every individual thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence also manifests differently from every other thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence, even if they seem quite similar.
-In the opinion of Stephen Hawking if we can just cling on for long enough to wait for the technology that will take us to space, we will come out okay. We can bugger off to Mars and live happily ever after. A select group of us on even finiter finite resources. As though moving the problem elsewhere could solve the problem. But we can’t escape the problem when it is inside us, plaited through us, inextricable.
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-After all I have said and thought about his diary and the parcel I really have to reassess because they were not left there as his intention. And without intent they can’t really said to be his time capsule. More an archaeology of him. There is no ego in an accidental archaeology.
+Based on the objective and popular characteristics of relationships, we can see that in our cognitive and practical activities, we have to have a ''comprehensive viewpoint''.
-The postcards were an obvious giveaway. I feel stupid for not having clocked it at all before. Of course he would not have sent them all and then collected them back. Somebody else had collected them for him, and along with his diary, brought them to his holy place as a little shrine.
+Having a ''comprehensive viewpoint'' requires that in the process of perceiving and handling real life situations, humans have to consider the internal dialectical relationships between the component parts, factors, and aspects within a thing or phenomenon. We also need to consider the external mutual interactions they have with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Only on such a comprehensive basis can we properly understand things and phenomena and then effectively handle problems in real life. So, the comprehensive viewpoint is the opposite of a unilateral and/or metaphysical viewpoint [see Annotation 51, p. 49] in both perception and practice.
-''It pains me to be here at the edge but I would fail my beliefs if I were not to do this. Is this not really the meaning of life and everything? Is it not the end of the quest, to have found your own truth and really lived by it? I feel fulfilled.''
+Lenin said: “If we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all of its facets, its connections, and ‘mediacies [indirect relationships].’”<ref>''Once Again On The Trade Unions'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.</ref>
-From what is said in the diary I think what must have happened is he left a letter for his family, presumably inside the cabin with a postal address to which it should be sent, for the next person who found it, or for the search party sent out for him.
+-----
-He believed in something so hard that it undid him and he loved it so much he had to give it up. Maybe in part so he could not see it diminish (gouge out eyes, see less suffering). A lover’s suicide before the fervour subsides and a death in innocence before the debasement and a perfectly embalmed and beautiful corpse.
+==== Annotation 113 ====
-He came to the wilderness in the first place to claim his freedom and then found the only thing he could do to be true was to renounce it. He took his own life to repent for ''our'' sins, like Jesus minus the wide-open arms and the preaching and the son-of-god complex.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-31.png|''The comprehensive viewpoint sees the subject in terms of all of its internal and external relationships.'']]
-There is a sad kind of beauty in it, like a deep blue bruise that came from nowhere and you want it to go away but then again you don’t because you like how it makes you feel sad to look at it, and more real to touch it and hurt. And in his last days of life he must have felt so free finally of the burden, once he had made up his mind, so cathartically pure. So free of the burden of being because he had decided to do the one and only true thing he could do to live by what he believed in. He had found his truth.
+Consider a factory. A factory exists as a collection of internal relationships (between the workers, between machines, between the workers and the machines, etc.) and external relationships (between the factory and its suppliers, between the factory and its customers, between the factory and the city, etc.). In order to have a comprehensive viewpoint when examining the factory, one must consider and understand all of the internal and external relationships which define it.
-I want to try to conjure what he did near the end so that I can try to live it too. If he went wandering, where he went wandering. From the window of the tower the mountains sit pink blue grey behind the trees, always chameleon to the sky. Was he drawn to them, sat impassive and anchored and true, did he climb to the top to see the world he had let go of, the entire world over?
+-----
-He will not ever know that there was a girl from a small town in middle England to know and understand the sacrifice he made, because he did not want it to be known. What he wanted was an act of nothingness.
+The diversified characteristic of relationships [see Annotation 107, p. 110] shows that in human cognitive and practical activities, we have to simultaneously use a comprehensive viewpoint and a historical viewpoint.
-And I feel a little fear at the danger of my quest now. I am a little scared at the intensity of the ache and camaraderie I feel for this man I never knew. I find myself thinking by proxy about how I would do it, hypothetically, if I wanted to do it in the most sincere and poignant way.
+Having a ''historical viewpoint'' requires that, in perceiving and handling real life situations, we need to consider the specific properties of subjects, including their current stage of motion and development. We also need to consider that the exact same methods can’t be used to deal with different situations in reality — our methods must be tailored to suit the exact situation based on material conditions.
-What it would need: personal significance and the least amount of suffering and the fewest traces left behind. A desire to be eaten back up by the earth, to dissolve back into the quantum soup that you came from with the smallest smidgen or trace. Rocks on your feet to join Rachel Carson under the water and nourish the fish kingdom.
+-----
-But what does personal significance matter if the act’s sole purpose is to deny completely your individuality? The one thing I have to lay down to offer is me, bye-bye, me, bye-bye. But then, if you are going to underwrite your life with that one act, and no one else is ever to know about the circumstances of it anyway, you might as well allow yourself poetic justice, right?
+==== Annotation 114 ====
-Did Rachel Carson choose not to intervene in her cancer to underwrite her whole life’s work for ever? Or did the universe perceive so much ''charge'' in her as a pinnacle figure in her sphere of existence that it attached this significance to her dying?
+While the ''comprehensive viewpoint'' focuses on internal and external ''relationships'' of subjects, the ''historical viewpoint'' focuses on the specific ''properties'' of subjects — especially the current stage of motion and development. In order to have a proper historical viewpoint, we must study and understand the way a subject has developed and transformed over time. To do this, we must examine the history of the subject’s changes over time, hence the term “historical viewpoint.” In addition, it’s important to understand that no two situations which we might encounter will ever be exactly the same. This is because the component parts and relationships that make up any given situation will manifest differently.
-And the burning question: how do I go back from here? When I can see it so painfully wither to touch, and when just by my presence everything is undone? I am not alone here, there is something I bring with me. My bad seeds, and this place so easily inoculated.
+So, in order to properly deal with situations, we have to understand the component parts and relationships of examined subjects as well as their histories of development so that we can develop plans and strategies that are suitable to the unique circumstances at hand.
-===== Alfred Worden of Apollo 15 wrote a poem about the moon that went: she is forever moving just out of reach and I sail on/never touching, only watching and wanting to know. =====
+For example, it would be disastrous if communists today tried to employ the ''exact same'' methods which were used by the Communist Party of Vietnam in the 20<sup>th</sup> century to defeat Japan, France, and the USA. This is because the material conditions and relationships of Vietnam in the 20<sup>th</sup> century were very different from any material conditions existing on Earth today. It is possible to learn lessons from studying the methods of the Vietnamese revolution and to ''adapt'' some such methods to our modern circumstances, but it would be extremely ineffective to try to copy those methods and strategies — ''exactly'' as they manifested then and there — to the here and now.
-Alfred Worden wanted to stalk, wanted to get his sticky fingers on that coy temptress, wanted to word the moon. I think of my map and my documentary and all of my lists, my collecting. Because the map is not just not the territory, it is also something rather sinister.
+-----
-When we draw a map we are sewing our signature into it. When we map we divide and parcel. When we divide the forms of life in taxonomy and name them in our image, we set ourselves outside, omniscient. We structure our difference; we say, we are the only animals that name and order the other animals, the rest of them just exist. But how do we know the dolphins are not swimming around shouting ‘coral’ at coral in sonar?
+In order to come up with suitable and effective solutions to deal with real life problems, we must clearly define the roles and positions of each specific relationship that comes into play, and the specific time, place, and material conditions in which they exist.
-And naming the animals and knowing the animals, it did not make us look after them better. It is another way for each ‘namer’ to survive time. Our separateness allowed us to bring everything to the brink of mass extinction, to say, oh well, we can do without them.
+-----
-I might have learned to don a fraud penis to go to Scott’s Antarctica, but why would I want to now that I know what that entails? What Thilda was saying when she said you don’t need a penis between your legs is that you don’t need one there to make you a good ''coloniser'', but why would I want to be a coloniser at all?
+==== Annotation 115 ====
-My documentary is a sinister and selfish one, a fraud penis. That is just it. There is a point of footage specifically that I watched back where Rochelle said ‘the freedom to roam free like a white man’.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-32.png|''A historical viewpoint focuses on the roles and positions of relationships and properties of subjects as well as their development over time.'']]
-I am wearing a big heavy robe and walking around and there is a line of faceless people trailing behind me and they are all dressed in white tunics. I am at the head of a glorious procession: roll up, follow me, throw off your imaginary shackles, the world is your oyster! Quit your job, sell your stuff, you can conquer the world, life is too short for regrets! They follow me everywhere in a long winding file like ants, my followers. There are so many of them. When we walk through grass the grass gets trampled to a dirt-dry path. When we walk through snow there are only sludge dirt tracks left after. When we walk through the deserts there are wagon tracks in the red sand.
+The role of a relationship has to do with how it functions within a system of relationships and the position refers to its placement amongst other subjects and relationships.
-The trail has been opened, stomp stomp stomp. Best-guarded travel secrets, too good not to share! Secluded beaches, untouched forests, pristine crystal mountain streams! And despite the lack of authenticity there are those that come to seek it anyway. In trying to find something authentic of their own they leave a well-worn trail behind.
+Consider once again the example of the factory [see Annotation 113]. In addition to its internal and external relationships, the factory also has various roles — it functions within various systems and from various perspectives. For instance, the factory may have the role of financial asset for the corporation that owns it, it may have the role of place of employment for the surrounding community, it may have the role of supplier for various customers, etc.
-My own time capsule, my documentary, my baby, like President Carter’s baby sent into space to colonise the wilderness of the future. The reason Damon’s legacy is different to Chris McCandless’s is that there was no time capsule sent out by or for Damon. This is the tragedy of Chris McCandless, because it was not him who wrote a book and made a film and brought the crowds to his wilderness. If I were to make one with the documentary then Damon too would become a mecca, and that would undermine his entire point. And mine.
+The factory is also ''positioned'' among other subjects and relations. If it’s the only employer in town then it would have a position of great importance to the people of the community. If, on the other hand, if it’s just one of hundreds of factories in a heavily industrialized area, it may have a position of much less importance. It may have a position of great importance to an individual factory worker who lives in poverty in an economy where there are very few available jobs, but of less importance to a freelance subcontractor for whom the factory is just one of many customers, and so on.
-I guess I knew deep down but I could not admit it to myself because it was my baby and no one thinks their own baby is ugly. And it gave me purpose-propulsion-direction in striking out and living vividly when I had none. And I did not want to kill my baby.
+These positions and roles will change over time. For example, the factory may initially exist as a small workshop with a small handful of workers, but it may grow into a massive factory with hundreds of employees. It is vital to understand this Principle of Development, which is discussed in more detail on the next page.
-For the Eskimos secrecy holds potency and is essential in the continuum of magic. For example, if a hunter were to witness a singing animal, and the animal were an omen of good hunting in that area, the hunter could not tell other people of his or her discovery because this would make the magic lose its power.
+In summary, proper dialectical materialist analysis requires a ''comprehensive and historical viewpoint'' — we must consider subjects both ''comprehensively'' in terms of the internal and external relationships of the subject itself as well as ''historically'' in terms of roles and positions of subjects, as well as their relationships, material conditions, and development over time.
-Inside the forest where the trees are densest and the air is damp with exhumed gases condensing like inside closed windows, Damon had dug himself a hole. He got rid of the spade once the hole was dug, took it away from the grave so as not to leave a marker. Then he buried himself to the shoulders with dirt. His right arm stays outside to bury the other with. It is not perfect but it is the best he could do on his own. He knew enough botany to know which of the plants are poisonous.
+So, in both perception and practice, we have to avoid and overcome sophistry and eclectic viewpoints.
-Weeks later a whole ecosystem of microbes has made good work of his meat and tendrils of plants are redirecting his nitrogen to their leaves and ants march off, shards of him on their backs. Wasps have made a nest of his brain, they enter and leave through his nostrils and his eye sockets and the gateway to his soul becomes a wasp flyway. The buzzing and humming and pulsating are the sounds of rage and passion, of nature claiming back her flesh voraciously. It is exactly as he wanted.
+-----
-==== SEEKING BUT NEVER QUITE FINDING ====
+==== Annotation 116 ====
-I am too confused and upset to reason over it any more, so I go for a walk. When I jump-turn down from the last rung of the ladder there it is, stock still as always. I have never seen it that far from the tundra, never. And right at that instant I hate the bloody thing, for being so illusive and taunting me so, and how fucking dare it appear with nothing to say when it knows I am struggling.
+''Sophistry'' is the use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.
-I yell at it. I bend for a stone and throw it at it. It is a pathetic throw, it bounces on the ground to the side of it and the reindeer flinches and sidesteps, eyeing me warily.
+''Eclecticism'' is an incoherent approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject, applying different theories in different situations without any consistency in analysis and thought. Eclectic arguments are typically composed of various pieces of evidence that are cherry picked and pieced together to form a perspective that lacks clarity. By definition, because they draw from different systems of thought without seeking a clear and cohesive understanding of the totality of the subject and its internal and external relations and its development over time, eclectic arguments run counter to the comprehensive and historical viewpoints. Eclecticism is somewhat similar to dialectical materialism in that it attempts to consider a subject from many different perspectives, and analyzes relationships pertaining to a subject, but the major flaw of eclecticism is a lack of clear and coherent systems and principles, which leads to a chaotic viewpoint and an inability to grasp the true nature of the subject at hand.
-I yell at it some more, shouting, go on, then, go. Then sob.
+=== 2. Principle of Development ===
-But it doesn’t. It does not move. It stands just grazing a little for minutes on end with me just watching and sniffling snot onto my sleeve.
+==== a. Definition of Development ====
-And then I think to myself that multiple exposures to coincidence accumulate into destiny. It ''must'' have something to show me, I only have to try my very hardest to follow it this time. Why else would it keep coming back and standing so persistently? It is ready to speak to me.
+According to the metaphysical viewpoint, development is simply a ''quantitative'' increase or decrease; the metaphysical viewpoint does not account for ''qualitative'' changes of things and phenomena. Simultaneously, the metaphysical viewpoint also views development as a process of continuous progressions which follow a linear and straightforward path.
-Sometimes it runs so then I run, only I can’t run too far until I get a stitch, but then it slows too, as though waiting for me to catch up.
+-----
-Hours of this through the forest finds us out on the tundra and by the river, where it cuts deep against the banks before it becomes braided with sandbanks further down. The sun is in the centre of the sky. The insects come up from the grass in little clouds. The reindeer lopes into the river without even stopping for a thought.
+==== Annotation 117 ====
-It only takes it around ten seconds to make it across, being moved at a diagonal by the water only slightly because it is gliding so fast, then it struggles a little out the other side, its bandy legs tremoring slightly, a forlorn old man trying to lift himself off the floor with crutches. When it has heaved itself out, it turns to face me. There it stands, shakes itself down, and looks at me. It lowers its head and snorts.
+In materialist dialectics, it is important to distinguish between ''quantity'' and ''quality''.
-So I hold my breath and jump in before I can think any better. The water is cold as hell, from running off the mountain after sitting around as ice up there. It is much harder to swim when your ears and mouth are full of ice water that makes your brain freeze and there are sirens in your ears and the water in your mouth makes you gasp and choke. And the sudden and real shock from the water brings me rapidly into the reality of the situation. For all of ten seconds I am flailing in the water in panic, being dragged along and not much able to sort myself out.
+''Quantity'' describes the total ''amount'' of component parts that compose a subject.
-Flapping my arms down to bring my body up, I try to turn my head to where the reindeer had been but I cannot see it. Obviously it is not going to jump in for me, we are not about to have one of those inter-species rescue moments of empathy and connection. My comrade reindeer has renounced its one job, and I lose all hope.
+''Quality'' describes the unity of component parts, taken together, which defines the subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.
-I have thoughts like ''I had better think about my life in retrospect'' like you are supposed to and remember the time I found an injured squirrel and fed it water from a syringe and wrapped it in socks in a cardboard box but it died in the night. I wonder if my mum will feel a psychic maternal twinge, stop stirring her tea and drop the spoon. I see her ears prick up like Beethoven the St Bernard dog from the film franchise, when the little girl falls in the swimming pool ten blocks away. Thinking about things like this I feel so far away and apart as though I am in another life altogether, having a look through the eyes of some girl called Erin.
+Both quantity and quality are dynamic attributes; over time, the quantity and quality of all things develop and change over time through the development of internal and external relationships. Quantity and quality itself form a dialectical relationship, and as quantity develops, quality will also develop. A given subject may be described by various quantity and quality relationships.
-And in an instant I realise it is the first time I have really thought about elsewhere since being here. And in an instant I see everything all at once. ‘It was in this state that I experienced “myself” as melded and intertwined with hundreds of billions of other beings in a thin sheet of consciousness that was distributed around the galaxy. A ''membrain'',’ said John Lilly from his isolation tank.
+'''''Example 1:'''''
-I see a bright light every time I go under the water and screw my eyes shut hard and watch the green shapes like in a lava lamp then emerge and the sun bursts through for my having been starved momentarily and therefore malnourished and more susceptible to its intensity.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-33.png|''In the process of development, Quantity Change leads to Quality Change'']]
-But then the adrenaline kicks in and my body takes over and being the rational one manages to get me right and make me swim with my head up. My rucksack has the dry-bag inside, which is full of air along with all my valuables and is buoyant so keeps me from going too far under. I had the foresight to pack it in case I got caught in the rain. I am heavy with all the water in my boots and it crosses my mind to take them off to stop them dragging me down. But I cannot stay out here without shoes. I honestly think in that moment that I actually would rather die than give up and go home without having found out whatever it is I am trying to find out.
+A single football player, alone, has the quantity value of 1 football player and the quality of ''a football player''. Eleven football players on a field would have the quantity value of 1 and will develop the quality of ''a football team''. This subject, ''football'' ''team'', is composed of the same component parts as the subject ''football player'', but the quantity change and other properties (being on a field, playing a game or practicing, etc.) change the quality of the component parts into a different stable and unified form which we call a ''football team''.
-The crew of Apollo 13 did not get to land on the moon. An oxygen tank exploded and they had to abort their landing, spending almost a week in space trying not to die. They had limited power, only enough to propel themselves around the moon back towards Earth then float on unaided, hoping they would hit the exact angle they needed so as not to skim off the atmosphere like a flat pebble off a placid lake. They essentially had to catapult themselves and hope for the best while steadily running out of oxygen and freezing.
+The relationship between quantity and quality is dynamic:
-While I am gulping water I wonder if they thought about making a suicide mission to the moon instead. With sudden clarity, as if seeing the moth that had been camouflaged against the tree’s bark, I get it. Looking down on the surface as they circled around, this place that they had seen as their life’s pinnacle, and everything built up to that promise of standing on the moon’s face, basking in majesty and in singularity; it might have seemed worth abandoning living for. To end at the crescendo.
+If one of the players doesn’t show up for practice, and there are only ten players on the field, it might still have the quality of ''football team'', but in a live professional game there will be a certain threshold — a minimum number of players who must be present to officially be considered a ''team''. If this number of players can’t be fielded then they will not be considered a full ''team'' and thus won’t be allowed to play.
-But for whatever reason they chose to try to go back, even at the risk of miscalculating and veering off into the void. They said ‘Let’s go home’ and the whole world stopped turning to wait to see them tearing through the roof of the sky. It is strange how it is framed as what could have been the loneliest death in history. Not a death in solitude for the envy of Mike Collins and Adam.
+Likewise, if there are only one or two players practicing together in a park, they would probably not be considered a ''football team'' (though they might be described in terms of having the quality of being ''on the same team).''
-The difference is the element of choice, of ''intent''. It is not a casting out with purpose but a getting lost. It is the difference between solitude and loneliness. Newton’s ball was lonely because he drew it, the ball did not will itself there. And like Newton’s ball a woman’s body like Rachel Carson’s body is not her own to choose to keep in chastity or solitude.
+'''''Example 2:'''''
-Marianne Moore said that solitude is the cure for loneliness, which was very crafty of her, and perhaps my trip’s whole mantra. She was saying take your lonely body and reclaim it as your own, think it solitude!
+Quantity: 1 O + 2 H atoms Quantity: Billions of H2O Molecules Quantity: ~5,000 Drops of Water Quality: Water Quality: Drop of Water Quality: Cup of Water
-But drowning is hardly reclamation. That is why I do not want to let the river take me, or give up my shoes. After clambering onto the grassy bank, I lie panting on my back, trying to get steady, watching the clouds pass overhead in indifference. The mosquitoes are quick to jump on me like carrion. I am too tired to swat them away and get bitten to a pin-cushion through the fabric on my forearms.
+DEVELOPMENT: QUANTITY CHANGE LEADS TO QUALITY CHANGE
-It is a long walk back because I was dragged downriver quite fast, and my body is lead-heavy and stiff from cold. I fall over in the mud that goes slick when the rain starts pouring. I have to laugh at the sky opening up minutes after I start walking. I could wade my way back up the river and end up drier than I am. I go despondently back to the cabin and not the tower because in the cabin I can make a fire.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-34.png|''All of these have the quality of water because of the molecular quantities of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, however, from the perspective of volume, quantity changes still lead to quality changes.'']]
-It takes me into the evening to get myself there and then it is all I can do to make the little fire in the grate to try to get warm by, because once I stop moving my body will not really do what I want it to. I just about peel off all my clothes and shake them out at the door, then place them on various surfaces and protrusions next to the fire. I lay down a makeshift rug and dry myself with my scanty micro-towel, not allowing myself the blanket until the fire has properly dried my skin off. My hair is matted with river bits in.
+The properties of quantity and quality are relative, depending on the viewpoint of analysis.
-The panic starts when I notice that my feet are blue, like really blue, and it dawns on me that I have not yet stopped shaking. I remember reading a survival manual that went into the stages of hypothermia. The first stage that signals the onset of the severe and death-causing kind of hypothermia is called ''Paradoxical Undressing'', where a person’s brain tells them wrongly that they are really warm, so that they take all their clothes off and seek out snow to roll around in. I try to decide if I feel warm or cold, and if my undressing could be classed as paradoxical. It is hard to tell when you feel so cold and yet your limbs are very definitely burning.
+A single molecule of water has a quantity of one in terms of molecules, but it still retains the quality of “water” because of the ''quantities'' of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms per molecule which, in this stable form, give it the ''quality'' of water.
-The survival handbook also said things about delirium, and the final stage to look out for has a sinister name; it is called ''Terminal Burrowing''. When a dog can feel death coming it takes itself somewhere quiet and solitary to die if it can. The final stage of hypothermia triggers the same response; the afflicted will look for a small and enclosed space to curl up in.
+A drop of water might have a quantity of many billions of molecules, but it would still have the quality of “water.” It would also now assume the quality of a “drop.”
-''I am just going outside and may be some time'' is what Lawrence Oates said, perhaps as a prelude to burrowing. Some German researchers decided that this is an automatic process triggered in the brain which sends us into a primitive mode that thinks up burrowing as a protection behaviour, the same trigger that sends animals into hibernation. So it is possible Lawrence Oates did not have cryogenics in mind. He could have instead been undone to the most basic level of his humanity (benefit of the doubt should be put into practice here, in fairness).
+When you combine enough drops of water, you will eventually have a quality shift where the “drops” of water combine to form another quality — i.e., a “cup” of water. The quantity change leads to a change in quantity; we would no longer think of the water in terms of “drops” after the quantity rises to a certain level.
-It hits me that Damon’s odyssey to this cabin was an elaborate Terminal Burrowing, was a dog’s death. After the onset of the burrowing mode it is already too late. It would not have been possible for him to change his mind.
+In terms of ''temperature'' and physical properties, if the water is heated to a certain point it will boil and the water will become ''steam''. The quantity of water in terms of drops wouldn’t change, but the quantity-value of temperature would eventually lead to a quality value change from “water” to “steam.”
-I figure that as long as I am aware of this final stage and avoid it, I will not end up dead in a hollow. Just have to stay warm, warm. I scramble to put as many layers on as possible. I tell myself, even if you feel hot leave those clothes on. How hard can it be to stay dressed? I consider maybe tying my hands together to stop this, then think better of it. I settle for attaching a little note with a paperclip to the zip on my ski jacket. The note says ‘paradoxical undressing’; I hope that this will suffice to remind me to stay dressed. I put my hands in my pockets because they are making me anxious with how dead-looking they are, skin like tracing paper and all the veins blue crayon.
+'''''Example 3:'''''
-I feel so very tired. But sleep is hibernation, hibernation is burrowing, so sleep could not be a good idea. I try to think of ways to stop from sleeping. I so badly want to lie in the cot but instead I sit upright on the chair, so that if I slump I might fall off and wake.
+AS QUANTITY OF AGE INCREASES, QUALITY CHANGES
-==== MUCOUS MEMBRANE LINING THE GUT CAVITY OF A MARINE WORM LIVING IN THE VENT GASES ON A FAULT BETWEEN CONTINENTAL PLATES ====
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-35.png|''The same human being will undergo various quality changes as age quantity increases over time.'']]
-''How do I find a way back and do I even want to?''
+As humans age and the quantity of years we’ve lived builds up over time, our “quality” also changes, from baby, to child, to teenager, to young adult, to middle age, to old age, and eventually to death. The individual person is still the same human being, but the quality of the person will shift over time as the quantity-value of age increases.
-In the visitors’ centre were relics and photographs, each attractive in some visceral way that made a magpie of me. Sometimes an object appears before you and seems to fit itself into your chronology like a fusing cell.
+'''Metaphysical vs. Dialectical Materialist Conceptions of Change'''
-There were eerie masks with grimaces and rectangular grins, on animal and people faces. The masks were worn for rituals and then destroyed directly after. They were an immediately physical way to don an identity for the expression of something particular and temporary. An uttering of varying identities.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-36.png|''Metaphysics only consider linear properties of'' quantity''change; Materialist Dialectics takes'' quantity changes ''and'' quality shifts ''into consideration when considering change over time.'']]
-When the Eskimos gave a name to a matured spirit, after the danger of childhood had passed and the spirit of the young person was thought to be well and truly lodged inside, the name given was always the name of the last departed person, because the spirits were thought to transmigrate through the generations. Young children were brought up in mind of the gender of the last person to have their ancestral name, and then usually reverted to roles based on their biological sex when they reached puberty. They have a very rudimentary taxonomy – animals have names so that they can talk about them but are not separated into families in such detail, are not unwoven. A person could don a mask and become any gender, any life form. Transmigration allows them to do away with taxonomy; a queering of the animals like their queering of gender that is really a way to acknowledge ''symbiotic association''<nowiki>; like Lynn Margulis said, we cannot live apart from each other.</nowiki>
+Because the metaphysical perspective tries to define the world in terms of static, isolated subjects, only ''quantity'' is considered and ''quality shifts'' are not taken into account. Thus, metaphysical logic sees development as linear, simple, and straightforward. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, sees development as a more complicated, fluid, and dynamic process involving multiple internal and external relationships changing in quantity and quality over time.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+-----
-[[Image:f0234-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-And then along came the white Christian missionaries! They reorganised their society, imposing patrilineal names and social customs. They undermined the Eskimo women’s respected positions. They saw this animism as evidence that the Eskimos worshipped bad and ungodly spirits, that they needed to be saved from the burden of their devil worship and impure customs. In the missionaries’ myth, women were blamed for the mortality of Man, for even daring to eat an apple, which stood metaphorically for their knowledge or heaviness (myths are so easily inverted). Men were ambassadors for the people now; the missionaries’ one male god told them to go forth and fill the world and subdue it. To rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and everything in between. This god said SEW YOUR SIGNATURES INTO THEIR NAMES. Adam named the animals, and in so doing, he thought himself apart.
+In contrast to the metaphysical viewpoint, in materialist dialectics, ''development'' refers to the ''motion'' of things and phenomena with a forward tendency: from less advanced to more advanced, from a less complete to a more complete level.
-The stewarding approach to the natural world took the Eskimos outside of their circle and tried to make their thinking linear. The missionaries made them speak a language which divides everything into opposites, and pitches each against the other and categorises them good or bad, masculine or feminine. In this language the differences between each opposing pair justify the subjugation of one to the other. Better is determined by what is associated with masculine: rational, civilised, intellectual and strong, so anything that connotes these categories holds value. Worse is the opposites: natural, primitive, spiritual and all their associates. Masculine is better just because masculine is better. This is not a reflection of reality but a structuring of it. A breaking apart and stacking of what could otherwise be fluid and fluctuating, but languidly.
+-----
-Once you divide things into constituent parts you can stack them and you can subdue some parts with others, and this way those doing the building can sit on the top. The missionaries had already trialled this technique in Europe. Casting shamans or strong female figures as demon worshippers and witches scared people into thinking that women who deviated from their new subordinate function were evil and bad. In a theft of body, women were burned at the stake for practising birth control and midwifery. We were enclosed at the same time the commons were enclosed. And women feel connection to what came before even if only because they are made to feel more vividly what has been lost or kept from them.
+==== Annotation 118 ====
-Like the animals were atomised by species and set apart from Adam, the physical world was stable and geometric and absolute. But now this myth is being undermined with a new one. Science is our rational way of seeing and knowing. We have been looking very hard, very closely, with new aids to vision. Now a new science is falsifying our apartness. A queer science of approximations and non-objectivity. Things are not absolute Mountain Men either/or. Another book that Larus gave me that I have been reading is ''The Tao of Physics''. It told me that when Niels Bohr the physicist was knighted (Order of the Elephant) in Denmark in 1947 he had to choose a coat of arms and for it he chose the t’ai-chi symbol, the yin-yang, and that his inscription read ‘opposites are complementary’.
+In materialist dialectics, ''motion (also known as change)'' is the result of mutual impacts between or within things, phenomena, and ideas, and all motion and change results from mutual impacts which themselves result from internal and external relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Any given ''motion/change'' leads to quantity changes, and these quantity changes cumulatively lead to quality changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. Grasping this concept — that development is driven by relations — is critically important for understanding materialist dialectics.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-37.png|''The concept of “change” in materialist dialectics centers on internal and external relationships causing mutual impacts which lead to quantity changes which build into quality shifts.'']]
-[[Image:dot.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-Bohr said that dualisms – is it a particle or a wave? – do not describe exactly the true nature of things, but that the interplay between the two poles brings us closer to their reality, because everything is always both things at once depending on how you are looking. He said that ‘only the totality of the phenomena exhausts the possible information about the objects’. Much like objectivity in naming animals or peoples does not describe exactly, leaves something diminished.
+This process, taken in total, is referred to as ''development''. Development represents the entire process in which internal and external change/motion leads to changes in quantity which in turn lead to changes in quality over time. The process of development can be fast or slow, complex or simple, and can even move backwards, and all of these properties are relative. Development has a ''tendency'' to develop from less advanced to more advanced forms. The word ''tendency'' is used to denote phenomena, development, and motion which inclines in a particular direction. There may be exceptional cases which contradict such tendencies, but the general motion will incline towards one specific manner. Thus, it is important to note that “development” is not necessarily “good” nor “bad.” In some cases, “development” might well be considered “bad,” or unwanted. For example, rust developing on a car is typically not desired. So, the tendency of development from lower to higher levels of advancement implies a “forward motion,” though this motion can take an infinite number of forms, depending on the relative perspective. Development can also (temporarily) halt in a state of equilibrium [see Annotation 64, p. 62] or it can shift direction; though it can never “reverse,” just as time itself can never be “reversed.”
-I think about Rochelle and all the words I can never find for her. I think instead of finding many, many ''almost'' true words for her. Then it all ties together in my head so suddenly, coming to shape like the image that emerges with just one missing puzzle piece and abruptly you know exactly how it will be. Now science, quantum physics, is our ally in the war against patriarchy because it says you can’t ever touch the atom of another thing, Alfred Worden, not really; there will always be a force between the electrons of you and it which repel each other on an unfathomably small level. Nothing is solid. Can you feel the hollowness of things as you touch them?
+For example, during a flood, water may “develop” over the land, and as the floodwaters recede this may alternatively be viewed as another “forward” development process of ''recession'' — a development of the overall “flooding and receding” process. The flood is not actually “reversing” — the development is not being “undone.” Flood water may recede but it will leave behind many traces and impacts; thus it is not a true “reversal” of development.
-Rochelle is a little to me like the moon is to Alfred Worden. She does not want to be spoken of. I did not know if the best way round her was to omit her from the documentary completely. I did not know before why I could not just be a man about it. Just say it like I think it and possess it when the whole reason I set out was to make this documentary just to prove I could.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-38.png|''Both flooding and flood recession are development processes with the same forward tendency. Flood recession may appear to be a “reversal,” but it is in fact forward development.'']]
-In the quantum realm this is called the Observer Effect. Your measuring of a thing alters the thing itself. The very act of measuring forces the universe to make a decision at random from a bunch of probabilities. When we measure, the probabilities become a single actuality and this is called a ''collapse of the wave function''.
+The false belief that development can be reversed is the root of conservative and reactionary positions [see Annotation 208].
-''This'' is the reason I did not know what I wanted my documentary to say. I can’t talk about Rochelle without talking about my own subjective observation of her. I do not want to collapse her wave function and so I just should not talk about her at all. And the same of this place, this whole experience.
+Development can be considered positive or negative, depending on perspective. Some ecosystems have natural flood patterns which are vital for sustaining life. For a person living in a flood zone, however, the flood would most likely be considered an unwanted development, whereas flood recession would be a welcomed development.
-Maybe ‘a feminist documentary on wilderness’ is a semantic impossibility. A woman knows the burn of the power and impact of eyes on skin, she knows the observer effect, she feels herself behind the eyes when a man does not because a man does not know the burn, never has his vantage as detached observer brought into question.
+-----
-The instant you speak about the thing or you try to pin it down it slips from your hands like soap. The thing can’t be pincered. Matter is a particle and a wave all at once. Both aspects are valid, it just depends on how you look at the matter. And the problem with symbols like words in place of things is that as time passes, like matter in entropy, a symbol will move away from the source at accelerating speed. The markers for nuclear waste sites are never truth, even before the language dies.
+It is important to note that the definition of development is not identical to the concept of “motion” (change) in general. It is not merely a simple quantitative increase or decrease, nor a repetitive cyclic change in quantity. Instead, in materialist dialectics, development is defined in terms of ''qualitative'' changes with the direction of advancing towards higher and more advanced levels. [See diagram ''Relationship Between Motion,''
-Now she is again vivid and present, so fully formed I could walk over and actually touch her if only I could muster the willpower to move. We are at the bottom of an ocean or maybe the moon, because the space is dark and heavy, the sand or surface is chalky-looking and grey, and in front of me is what I took at first to be an astronaut. It is Rachel Carson, without her shaman disguise this time, like an astronaut in her old diver’s suit. It is loud with bees, she is humming and nodding along to the bees but I can’t see where the bee noise comes from until I get near to her and realise that I have found the bees: they are inside the fish bowl of her diving suit.
+''Quantity/Quality Shifts, and Dialectical Development'', Annotation 119, below]
-Her voice has a new strange quality to it, as though it were song. It was always her voice in many guises, many mouths to help carry it along. Many layers all at once instead of one pulse. How do I explain it? As though the air moves with it, as though when she speaks the trees rustle and a hundred birds sing with her and the air blows leaves across the room, only the windows are shut and everything is still, no pages rustle on the desk, but I feel it in my temples, this vibration. She was a witness for them and they now a witness for her, reanimating her. Like her bees, tiny mouths in unison. And if it comes from inside my head, her thoughts, my thoughts, what does it matter? I am contaminated.
+Development is also the process of creating and solving objective ''contradictions'' within and between things and phenomena. Development is thus the unified process of negating negative factors while retaining and advancing positive factors from old things and phenomena as they transform into new things and phenomena.
-===== Why is my reindeer trying to kill me? =====
+-----
-===== Why would you think that? =====
+==== Annotation 119 ====
-===== Because it led me into the river, and I nearly drowned, and now I don’t know if I am awake or asleep or dead or what. My hands and feet are blue and my head is filled through the ears with ice water. =====
+A ''contradiction'' is a relationship in which two forces oppose one another. Although a contradiction might exist in ''equilibrium'' for some amount of time [see Annotation 64, p. 62], eventually, one force will overcome the other, resulting in a change of ''quality''. This process of overcoming is called ''negation''. In short, ''development'' is a process of change in a subject’s quantity as well as negation of contradictions within and between subjects, leading to quality shifts over time.
-===== It was not trying to kill you. It was trying to show you something. Then why would it go where it knew I could not follow? =====
+==== b. Characteristics of Development ====
-===== Precisely. =====
+Every development has the characteristics of objectiveness,<ref>See: Annotation 108, p. 112.</ref> generality,<ref>See: Annotation 106, p. 109.</ref> and diversity.<ref>See: Annotation 107, p. 110.</ref>''The characteristic of objectiveness of development'' stems from the origin of motion.
-I stare at the ceiling some. She goes shimmery, shimmery in the corner of my vision. My head starts to fizz, like it actually starts to fizz as though it is full of fizzy pop. The ceiling spins a vortex. It goes round in a swirl like a galaxy. Like the shape of a galaxy that is also the shape of a hurricane and a shell, it is a recurring shape, a pattern repeated throughout nature, also found in the ratio of your uterus. What does it mean? The Golden Ratio. It is a cosmic constant. It might make up space-time itself. I think I am fainting.
+-----
-==== ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR ====
+==== Annotation 120 ====
-Waking up I was cold and confused. For a whole five seconds I took in the sound of the hammering rain, smells of damp wood and glowing ash, with dust in my nostrils and grit on my face, and had no idea where I was. I lifted up my head and figured my position on the floor of the cabin, next to the fire, and registered that I must have been unconscious. I rubbed the dirt from the floorboards off my face. The bites on my forearms itched and my skin and my scalp especially tickled with the hundred tiny bits of plant and animal from the river. Where I scratched grime collected under my nails.
+Remember that, in materialist dialectics, objectiveness is the relative characteristic that every subject has of existing and developing externally to all other subjects [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. Since motion originates from mutual impacts which occur between external things, objects, and relationships, the motions themselves also occur externally (relative to all other things, phenomena, and objects). This gives motion itself objective characteristics.
-My head throbbed and was heavy to lift like it had taken in the water. Memories of the river came back to me and I laughed in the sudden appreciation that I was still alive. But then as quickly I felt stupid and vulnerable and vastly under-prepared. Apart from being gluey with cold and maybe some mental scars in the form of future dreams of cold dark rushing water I did not have much to show for my nearly-death. But so easily I could have been another stupid kid Stan’s uncle had to fish out the river with a wooden pole and wire noose. I coaxed the fire up again to heat some coffee.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-39.png|''Dialectical Development consists of Quantity and Quality Shifts, which in turn derive from motion.'']]
-And now I am back everything is okay again. As in I am a normal colour if a little pale and my fingers are their usual dexterous selves. But I can feel her now like anti-matter. I can feel her lack like an invisible density.
+Development is derived from motion as a process of quality shifting which arise from quantity changes which arise from motion [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. Since development is essentially an accumulation of motion, and motion is objective, development itself must also be objective.
-I like the way the plaques talk about the beliefs of the Eskimos like they are truth, because they are. They are narratives as science is a narrative and is both belief and truth also. Animist or mystical, i.e. non-linear, non-absolutist, ‘truths’ and knowledge are reduced to the feminine, seen as inferior, irrational, a cloud system knitted into being, induction over deduction. This is pitted against the masculine Mountain Man’s absolute foundational Truths. But a feminine mystic knows it is lying to say ‘I know that Truth’ when you can’t. That it is more accurate and honest to say that opposites are complementary. It does not matter if she is real or not. I am a mystic because owning a vagina is mystical.
+The ''Principle of Development'' states that development is a process that comes from within the thing-in-itself; the process of solving the contradictions within things and phenomena. Therefore, development is inevitable, objective, and occurs without dependence on human will.
-What next? There is one more thing, a small envelope with Damon’s name on. I hesitated over it for a while because I thought I knew what might be in it and it felt just that little bit more intrusive. But then I reasoned I had gone through with it so far I might as well see the whole thing to its end. So I read the letter that his mother left when she built her shrine for him, all the things she wanted to say to him but could not because he was dead.
+-----
-===== My son, my parasitic twin. =====
+==== Annotation 121 ====
-I stare up at the cobwebbed ceiling and feel hollow at the futility of it all. His mother’s voice reminds me of mine and now I miss her terribly. I feel a whole new size of emptiness, it amazes me I even have the processing space for all these feelings. For the very first time appreciating that I am like a Russian doll she made inside her as every baby girl is to its mother, each a little like the preceding but different, with the potential to birth another if she wishes, and my mum has watched me grow, warily, into her mannerisms and her image and then away from them, until eventually I abandon her and become less her and more myself. And this is a transmigration and I carry many shards of her with me always, as she does me.
+The “thing-in-itself” refers to the actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. Development arises from motion and self-motion [see Annotation 62, p. 59] with objective characteristics. Although human will can impact motion and development through conscious activity in the material world [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88], motion and development can and does occur without being dependent on human will. Human will is neither a requirement nor prerequisite for motion and development to occur.
-And all her hopes and dreams and expectations for me are something that I am leaving behind, but to her they will always be there. And she had a mother that she came out of and that woman I hardly even knew but I am sure had similar sorts of feelings, because that is what can happen when you give something so many parts of yourself. This is a contamination also, and you can’t be mindful of it and still find an intact apartness. Even in death you are still felt in tremors. Even Damon’s purest act was not entirely pure, because he left his negative imprint with his mother.
+Development has the ''characteristic of generality'' because development occurs in every process that exists in every field of nature, society, and human thought; in every thing, every phenomenon, and every idea and at every stage* of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every transformation process contains the possibility that it might lead to the birth of a new thing, phenomenon, or idea [through a change in quality, i.e. development].
-I feel a change has come because even a few months ago I would have found these thoughts unacceptably sentimental. I am not sure if I am crying on my cabin bed and missing my mum because I am a girl and I was never going to be able to hack this odyssey of solitude for that reason, if it was always biologically determined, or if I have figured out truths about my life by my own will.
+-----
-And they are all laughing, all of the Mountain Men of history laughing and chanting DARWIN WAS RIGHT, WE TOLD YOU SO, WE TOLD YOU SO, their voices echoed by the mountains, giving them a god-like veracity, and for them I have no answer. Did I cast out or did I just get lost and does it matter either way?
+==== Annotation 122 ====
-==== THE THIN VENEER ====
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> In materialist dialectics, “stage” (or “stage of development”) refers to the current quantity and quality characteristics which a thing, phenomenon, or object possesses. Every time a quality change occurs, a new stage of development is entered into.
-I can’t get to sleep tonight although I am exhausted. Not from the wakefulness that has kept me up often here; when I get that I can be content just reading or writing or toying with thoughts, because I know it does not matter too much when I do or do not sleep what with the days being all wrong anyway.
+---------
-This time I can’t sleep from a feeling; that the sky is too big and the space between it and me is heavy like deep water; the deeper down you swim the more pressure there is pushing you down and up at the same time, and the more I think about how far there is between me and the sky the more my head feels the same pressure on it. And the space between me and the road, me and Fairbanks, me and every place underneath a big red arrow stretching from here all the way round the world and back again like on some old public service animation where I go black and white and zoom out and out until the tower is just a speck on a cartoon image of the world and the arrow makes a noise as it elongates like ‘vrrrraaaaawm’ going up in pitch with onomatopoeic tautness.
+Development has the ''characteristic of diversity'' because every thing, phenomenon, and idea has its own process of development that is not totally identical to the process of development of any other thing, phenomenon, or idea. Things and phenomena will develop differently in different spaces and times. Simultaneously, within their own processes of development, things, phenomena, and ideas are impacted by other things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as by many other factors and historical conditions. Such impacts can change the direction of development of things, phenomena, and ideas. They can even temporarily set development back, and/or can lead to growth in one aspect but degeneration in another.
-For almost all the times I have slept in my life until these weeks, that is around 6,935 sleeps, I have been comforted by the thought that in the room next to me are my parents sleeping, in the houses next to me are my neighbours sleeping, in the town around us people are sleeping, in fact the whole of England is sleeping and the Australians are keeping the world running by doing the day shift.
+-----
-Sleeping with someone does things to your trust. As in by sleeping in close proximity to other people you are making yourself your most vulnerable for them, and maybe the proximity of trust could extend to all the people asleep in all the houses around you. It is a thing I am very aware of lacking right now.
+==== Annotation 123 ====
-But if I concentrate I can invert the deep pressure feeling, can make it feel safe and still and like the space is filled with Styrofoam. Because sometimes when I lie in the centre of suburbia falling asleep I have other thoughts. That lying down en masse to sleep makes you gravely vulnerable, a whole flock of sitting ducks, and it is then that I start to think in particular about nuclear dawn.
+Because development has the characteristic of generality and the characteristic of diversity, the principle of diversity in unity and unity in diversity also applies to development [see: Annotation 107, p. 110].
-Everyone still and asleep and so much trust being channelled around, seeping out of pores and windows as a gaseous thread and into nostrils and mouths connecting them like string on a tin-can phone. And no one is thinking to look at the sky where an object is getting closer and closer silently. And then it happens and at ground zero most people do not even know any better because they are vaporised before the electrical signals even reach their brain to tell them so, but maybe some come to for just an instant of absurdity, to be confronted with a helix of colour and pain while their soul or their energy or whatever it is departs and then that is it, snuffed out, nothing.
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-To feel like I am in a box of Styrofoam here is to feel like safety-in-singularity. It is to not be afraid of all the crazy shit that I badly wanted away from, that affects me for being part of a macrocosmic world, that I do not conceive the complexity of because here I am in a world of my own, all on my own.
+Materialist dialectics upholds that the principle of development is the scientific theoretical basis that we must use to guide our perception of the world and to improve the world. Therefore, in our perception and reality, we have to have a ''development viewpoint''.
-Really suddenly, like the clunk of a clock’s first chime, this makes me feel deeply sad. A night bird makes a noise outside and a small rodent probably scurries away from it and a shadow passes the gaping windows and the trees are hushing and maybe back home everything could already be blown away. My head throbs and my teeth will not fit together properly. If I try to keep them slightly apart they feel like magnets yearning for each other.
+According to Lenin: “dialectical logic requires that an object should be considered in development, in change, in ‘self-movement.”<ref>''Once Again On The Trade Unions,'' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921. See also: ''Mode and Forms of Matter'', p. 59.</ref>
-I could be the last person on Earth, or I could be the last person in my vicinity with any hope of ever finding the other last people in their vicinities, all of us running around frustratingly like little bugs that are lost and you want to yell at them ‘IT’S RIGHT THERE’ until you think about it and actually they are worlds away from the place you plucked them out of, from their perspective, which means the same thing anyway when you have no way of knowing any better.
+This development viewpoint [which holds that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly developing, and that development is thus unavoidable] requires us to overcome conservatism, stagnation<ref>See Annotation 62, p. 59.</ref>, and prejudice, which are all opposed to development.
-And I realise if it is all gone I want to be gone with it. I want to throw myself onto the sand like a dolphin embracing death on the beach with its family by dehydration and the suffocation of its own chest crushing its lungs under the pressure of gravity. I want to be blown up in the big stupid mess that it is. I do not want to be a Born Survivor.
+-----
-I could take my phone from the bottom of my bag, just try to call Mum, just to check the world is still there. We do not even have to talk. I could just get her on the phone just to hear her say ‘Erin?’, then hang up and turn it off again. Just to hear the sound of her alive and speaking.
+==== Annotation 124 ====
-It must be around midnight at home. She is probably asleep. Although she is my mother so there must be that thread connecting us, although we might not be so consciously aware of it. Like mother bonds and sister bonds and dolphin bonds. Like we are ''spooky action at a distance''. And it is not New Agey if you are thinking analytically Jungian. Girls are just a little more aware of the secret power of bonds because being connected to them is part of being woman. Jung’s anima was a lady, not because the anima has a vagina but because she is an archetype we all agreed on.
+Conservatism and prejudice are mindsets which seek to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas. Therefore, we must avoid and fight against such stagnant mindsets.
-And besides we observe something like it in other animals. A connection to something that is not what you would call ''direct'' experience. Like water buffalo in Thailand that looked out to sea half an hour before the 2004 tsunami hit, and just bellowed like mermaids with conch shells, and ran for higher ground, with villagers scrambling after.
+According to this development viewpoint, in order to perceive or solve any problem in real life, we must consider all things, phenomena, and ideas with their own forward tendency of development taken in mind. On the other hand, the path of development is a dialectical process that is reversible and full of contradictions. Therefore, we must be aware of this complexity in our analysis and planning. This means we need to have a ''historical viewpoint'' [see Annotation 114, p. 116] which accounts for the diversity and complexity of development in perceiving and solving issues in reality.
-There’s a suggestion we could make an early warning system for natural disasters based on this sense, a hotline people can call if their pets freak out. This data gets logged and if enough pets are freaking out in a particular area then the hotline sends out the warning and everyone runs for the hills. And even if it is only because the animals can ‘hear’ seismic activity in a literal sense, isn’t it the same thing really? Isn’t telepathy just listening to another plane of ‘sound’?
+-----
-I fish for the phone from the bottom of the bag. I move into the beam of the dusky light from a slither of the window that is uncovered. In my head I say her name over and over and I imagine her face and I imagine her where she might be, her present, maybe awake on her back in bed and listening to the rhythm of Dad’s breathing. I press the button to turn it on.
+==== Annotation 125 ====
-I imagine her face twitch. She sits up in bed then looks at Dad to see if she woke him. She rubs her eyes then goes still, straining to hear. She slowly swings her legs out of the bed and slides herself off and moves towards the cabinet that has her phone on. It is really dark so she goes slowly, feeling with her feet and hands before bringing her body forward.
+Materialist dialectics requires us to consider the complexity and constant motion of reality. By comparison, the metaphysical viewpoint (which considers all things, phenomena, and ideas as static, isolated entities which have linear and simple processes of development) stands as a barrier to understanding this complexity and incorporating it into our worldview. Thus, it is vital that we develop comprehensive and historical viewpoints which acknowledge the diversity and complexity of reality.
-I clench my toes to try to squeeze some of the warm blood into them. I stare at the phone really hard. Another animal outside makes a sudden whooping noise and I flinch. It powers on but no signal. I wait ten seconds then twenty, staring at the gap where the bars should be, willing them to come. Of course there is no signal in the Alaskan tundra.
+In summary, as a science of common relations and development, Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics serve a very important role in perception and practice. Engels affirmed the role of materialist dialectics in this passage:
-I exhale heavily and deflate. Then I turn the phone off, return it to the rucksack and crawl back into my sleeping bag. The bag is still a bit warm from my body before. I spend a few minutes fidgeting, imagining the friction of skin on fabric making heat like lots of little sticks and fires.
+“An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectics, with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes.”
-On the ceiling there is a spider that always has at least three carcases wrapped in mummy bundles on its silvery web. I have noticed that it rotates them, that its oldest kill is always the one it chooses to eat and then it is usually replaced and the next-oldest is eaten. I admire the spider’s diligent forward planning. The spider is always preparing for the future even though it consistently gets new things to eat. The spider knows that the world can always change in an instant; that the future is not to be counted on. It lives in a very delicate microcosm that can be blown away also, by a gust of wind, but that does not stop it weaving.
+Lenin also said: “Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development, but not a patchwork of bits and pieces.”<ref>''Once Again On The Trade Unions'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.</ref>
-==== THE FALCON CANNOT HEAR THE FALCONER ====
+== III. Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics ==
-Back at the tower and I am preparing for the final voyage. Like Ishmael in his spiritual malaise casting out into the ocean to escape it all or else end it for good. Because that is the only thing for it, to give yourself up to the waves. And of course I am holding out for a coffin raft yet.
+''Category*'' is the most general grouping of aspects, attributes, and relations of things, phenomena, and ideas. Different specific fields of inquiry may categorize things, phenomena, and/or ideas differently from one another.
-On my way to the tower I came across a sign. It could not have been more imbued with meaning if it had been written for a film, or more climactically timed, or perhaps I am weaving everything into a myth of myself. My reindeer is dead.
+-----
-Some of the flesh had been stripped or pecked off but the flies were still in the process of infesting and their maggots had not hatched yet. It could have been brought down by wolves the very day it forsook me in the river. It sat warm in the sun and all around it smelled sickly, the buzz and the smell making the air dense so that I felt it way before I saw it. The antlers sat perfectly on the eyeless head that grinned mockingly, jaw chattering, laughing to itself like it was some macabre joke, leading me on all along when really it had nothing for me.
+==== Annotation 126 ====
-As if to say, ah, how easy it is to die. Just like that, so blunt and final and so very, very dead, a dead end and no clues or directions left behind. Whatever it was I was expecting the reindeer to tell me it very definitely was not going to tell it now. Its silence was corporeal and absolute.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> ''Translation note:'' In Vietnamese, the word “phạm trù” is used here, which translates in this context more closely to the English philosophical term “category of being,” which means “the most general, fundamental, or broadest class of entities.” “Category of being” is sometimes simplified in English-language philosophical discourse to “category,” which we have chosen to do here for ease of reading and to better reflect the way it reads in the original Vietnamese.
-No companion, no comrade and no project to give me purpose and nothing to guide me, just my naked self. And with it power in a way; I am real and vulnerable; there is no one watching over me; I am a self-willed woman.
+Every science has its own systems of categories that reflect the aspects, attributes, and basic relations that fall within its scope of study. For example, mathematics contains the categories “arithmetic,” “geometry,” “point,” “plane,” and “constant.” Physics contains the categories of “mass,” “speed,” “acceleration,” and “force,” and so on. Economics includes “commodity,” “value,” “price,” “monetary,” and “profit” categories.
-I have never seen death so up close before. It was different to the hares, and the difference is not just scale. I would say it is familiarity and the fact that I imbued it with significance. Like in nature documentaries when David Attenborough puts a personified spin on things and you end up rooting for the baby tapir and then it goes and gets killed by a jaguar and it is not just the circle of life because David Attenborough went and made it personal. This is more than that still.
+Every such category reflects only the common relations found within the specific fields that fall within the scope of study of a specific science.
-I did not even see the body of our first dog when he got put to sleep because I was ushered out of the room to sit on my own in the waiting room, surrounded by sympathetic-looking people with their sympathetic pets all whimpering along with ten-year-old me until my parents came out carrying just the worn brown dog collar. That had been death to me; just a dog collar without the dog in it. And this was it in concrete; the abrupt end to mystery and innocence that I had hitherto in life mostly evaded. And then I knew that the only thing that I had left now was to climb that mountain and see what Damon saw from up there.
+''Categories of materialist dialectics'', on the other hand, such as “matter,” “consciousness,” “motion,” “contradiction,” “quality,” “quantity,” “reason,” and “result,” are different. Categories of materialist dialectics reflect the most general aspects and attributes, as well as the most basic and general relations, of not just some specific fields of study, but of the whole of reality, including all of nature, society and human thought.
-I have been looking at the highest point of the range nearest to me. The ones behind look like they might be bigger and somewhere out there is Denali, the biggest of all, but the one I have been watching is tall and has snow on the very top and the clouds obscure it sometimes so that it looks like Olympus with its feet in the clouds and Olympus is plenty momentous enough for me. It just calls to me. If Damon went from here then I am sure that is the place he went to.
+Every thing, phenomenon, and idea has many properties, including: a reason for existing in its current form, a process of motion and change, contradictions, content, form, and so on. These properties are aspects, attributes, and relations that are reflected in the categories of materialist dialectics. Therefore, the relationship between the categories of specific sciences and categories of materialist dialectics is a dialectical relationship between the Private and the Common [see ''Private and Common,'' p. 128].
-From its snow and the clouds I know it must be around two thousand metres. I remember reading in the park centre that the snowline starts at one and a half thousand metres. Two thousand metres is twice the size of Snowdon but it is still not high enough for altitude sickness. That is how tame the British peaks are. I climbed Snowdon and that took us five hours. So I am hoping I can do it in two, maybe three days. That is one day getting as high as I can, to just under the snowline if possible, then sleeping for the night. Then the next day I can head out with perhaps enough time to summit, and failing that spend one night in the snow and cold. Then the descent should take me no time.
+-----
-I have test-walked to the lower slopes to judge how long it should take. North-west for around five miles the forest stays dense until reaching the slopes of the mountains when it starts to thin. I walked up high enough to see way out over the forest, to where it mottled out on to the tundra, and the braided river which glinted back the blue-silver sky, spread across the sediment like veins of mercury. On the mountainside above, the trees stopped and scree wound like lightning scars through the smoky green and purple skirting. Life waned up the mountainside and the peak was white and dead and here the crows had their kingdom.
+==== Annotation 127 ====
-Lower down where the plants clung still, bleached shapes poised spectral, luminous in the glare from the white sun. There were Dall sheep; they looked happy on the mountain and elegantly strange. I walked west across the ridge below the sheep until the afternoon, watching the colours change as the cloud ran its textures under the sun like a shadow puppet.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-40.png|''The categories of specific sciences are limited to the scope of study, while the categories of materialist dialectics encompass all things, phenomena, and ideas.'']]
-So I have rationed everything exactly and I have pared my rucksack down to the barest essentials so that there is not even a spare tampon of extra weight. I have just enough food to summit over the two days or two sleeps before coming back down, depending on hunger, but right now I have no appetite whatsoever so perhaps I will stay longer. I have sticks and a piece of tarp and some cable ties with which to construct some kind of shelter. If the rain comes again it will be miserable but there is nothing to be done about that. ''But please, spirit of the mountain, please don’t let it rain.''
+Unlike the categories contained within specific scientific fields, the philosophical categories of materialist dialectics can be used to analyze and define all things, phenomena, and ideas. The categories of specific scientific fields and the materialist dialectical categories have a Private/Common dialectical relationship [discussed on the next page].
-==== THE ABSTRACT WILD ====
+-----
-We do not use mountains as metaphors for challenges for no good reason. It serves me right for being stupidly under-prepared for this and life and everything. Halfway through the day I left off wading through the snaring purple carpet of alpine tundra vegetation to hit scree and from then on I was stuck in a laborious cycle of climbing tentatively twenty metres or so only to slip back ten. I felt like Sisyphus without a boulder or the lustful in Dante’s inferno, doomed to swirl around in a stormy circle for eternity. Maybe if I kept on I would come across Damon’s soul too, both of us so lustful and hungry for ''something'' that we were doomed to keep after it for ever on this scree-skelter. That he just fell and died on his way to the top; that ironically he did not even get to make his one statement because the universe made it for him. But then that could have been his perfect death; willingly dead but not by his own hand, which means he did not have to feel bad about being selfish and breaking his mother’s heart (although it would still be broken because she would not know any better, I suppose).
+As a science of general relations and development, materialist dialectics summarizes the most general relations of every field of nature, society, and human thought into basic category pairs: ''Private and Common, Reason and Result, Obviousness and Randomness, Content and Form, Essence and Phenomenon, Possibility and Reality.''
-Each slip on scree I would fall on my knees shaking and weak and too terrified to move in case I slid further. Where I had to sit to get everything back under control I would sit facing upwards, not really looking around me because I was looking at the ground to centre myself and so as not to trip up, and not wanting to look at everything below me until I was at the very top. I wanted this to be a grand revealing, velvet curtains drawn until the finale and for the finale to be one of those moments in life that needs a soundtrack with a loud and euphoric chorus followed by a quiet and melancholic bridge in a new key.
+-----
-I kept at this for hours, slipping and crying and crawling and just lying where the scree left me on my side, gasping and sweating, sometimes laughing at how stupid and futile a figure I had made myself in each moment and in general, ready to give up only to get a second wind and an angry burst that would propel me upwards like a turbo boost on Mario Kart.
+==== Annotation 128 ====
-And then I got into a rhythm with it, perfecting the amount of pressure to put into each footstep to stop from upsetting the loose rocks. And once I had this it got easier again. I had gashed my knees up terribly and I had cuts all over my hands that smarted when I moved my fingers or when the salt from my own sweat got into them and they were full of grit but they felt good. Like the pain and difficulty made it more worth it. Like wanting to come out of the wreckage with a visible wound, wanting an impact with some tangible effect. Something to show for it all.
+Every individual materialist dialectical category has a dialectical relationship with another materialist dialectical category. Thus, all categories in materialist dialectics are presented as ''category pairs.'' So, a ''category pair'' is simply a pair of categories within materialist dialectics which have a dialectical relationship with one another.
-I came across some of the mountain sheep and they sprang off away from me barely dislodging a pebble, then turned to look back as if to say you, trunk-legged creature, are not made for here, before loping on. They really are ridiculous animals to look at until you realise that being wrapped in cotton wool makes falling on a mountain like falling over in a spacesuit in zero gravity; inconsequential. That rather than clouds with legs they are ingenious inventions of nature.
+Note that the this formalized system of category pairs reflects many decades of work by Vietnamese philosophical and political scientists based on the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other socialist thinkers. Also note that these are not the only category pairs that can be discussed; there are potentially an infinite number of categories which can be used in materialist dialectical analysis. However, universal category pairs, which can be applied to analyze any and all things, phenomena, and ideas, are much fewer and farther between. That said, the universal category pairs discussed in this book are the ones which have most often been used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other prominent materialist dialecticians.
-The wind would come very suddenly and with such force that it could knock me off balance so I found myself bracing for this, flinching for it like a bad puppy to a raised hand. It would scream like a Tolkien wraith when it came and rattle me so that the best I could do was to get close to the ground and stay down. One time doing this I came face to face with a delicate yellow flower struggling to grow isolated and friendless and I cried a little for it all alone on the crag and no way of knowing how by its loneliness it was diminished.
+=== 1. Private and Common ===
-I kept on going with the snowline as my carrot until I let myself stop around one hundred metres below on a little forgiving plateau. As soon as I got to the mental place of ‘I will stop here’ my legs gave way and my knees were further damaged but I did not even feel it because the relief of a resting point was so great and it felt so good to be horizontal with the promise of a long interlude.
+==== a. Categories of Private and Common ====
-After a little nap I drank deeply from my water, leaving just enough to see me over in the morning, before I got to the snowline and could refill from melting the snow. Then I went about making my tent, forcing the sticks into the ground with difficulty and pegging the tarp on two sides so that it made a humble pentahedron, open at both ends. I tried to angle it so that the wind went over and not through it, but this made the sides whip back and forth.
+The ''Private Category'' encompasses specific things, phenomena, and ideas; the ''Common Category'' defines the common aspects, attributes, factors, and relations that exist in many things and phenomena.
-I must have been walking for over ten hours. The light dimmed after what felt like not much time, just enough time for me to sit about recuperating and to warm up my meagre dinner on the propane. It was bitterly cold once the sun had dipped, even though it did not ever disappear completely. There was still the vague idea of sunshine, the sun hovering somewhere near by, but the wind undermined it ruthlessly.
+Within every Private thing, phenomenon, and idea, there exists the Common, and also the Unique. The Unique encompasses the attributes and characteristics that exist in only one specific thing, phenomenon, or idea, and does not repeat in any other things, phenomena, or ideas.
-I tried to sleep but the wind blew just so and rattled the tarp, which rattled the pebbles in a motion like a Mexican wave all around the perimeter, and this made it sound as though there was someone or something scuttling around outside, making circles around me. I would poke my head out and be reassured, then it would happen again a little later and I would think come on now, Erin, we have been through this numerous times, then, no, there really does sound like there is something, best go check, oh, no, all clear, okay, cool, time to sleep, but what was that? That wailing? Is it Damon, has he come for me? Like this so many times that I gave up and just went outside to sit sentry for myself and put the propane back on even though I needed it for cooking tomorrow because I was just so cold even with the ski jacket and there was not a scrap of wood to be found for a campfire.
+-----
-But there I was alone and enduring and from outside my own head to any observer of course it would seem like I could do this as well as any man. I was ticking all the boxes and besides, Jack London’s men all had dogs and a dog is an invaluable asset in that scenario.
+==== Annotation 129 ====
-A dog like Buck, who gleams with the magnificence that inspired a cult to bask in him. It is the ghost of Buck that remains in Big Mountain gold country – Alaska, the Yukon, the wilds of North America. But anywhere can have its own Big Mountain Country. The philosophy of the cult can be transplanted onto any place and translated into any language. Russians have their own breed of Mountain Men from the days they tried to colonise Alaska. They called them ''promyshlenniki.''
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-41.png]]
-Buck sits by my side exuding pride and vitality and power and kingliness because he knows he is king of the dogs. But he is a dog and a dog is not a person. Jack London never meant to say that men should act like dogs, at least not so literally.
+The ''Private'' category includes specific individual things, phenomena and ideas.
-''He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.''
+The ''Common'' category includes aspects, factors, and relations that exist in many things, phenomena, and ideas. For example, say there are two apples: Apple A and Apple B. Apple A is a specific individual object. Apple B is another distinct, separate object. In that sense, both apples are ''private'' apples, and fall within the ''Private'' category.
-Okay, this primordial thing is in us all. But the call that came from the wild was specifically addressed to you, a dog. Dogs can regress back into the wild because they are just tame wolves. Big dogs are anyway. Specifically wolfy-looking dogs. You were a dog running round catching and killing and living by tenacity. There is no Neolithic man running round howling in the woods. Jack London only spent one bloody winter in the Klondike! And the call that brought him there was a siren song; it was a promise of gold, and a little house in the big woods on the banks of Plum Creek by the shores of a silver lake on the prairie.
+However, both Apple A and Apple B share common attributes. For instance, they are both fruits of the same type: “apple.” They may have other attributes in common: they may be the same color, they may have the same basic shape, they may be of similar size, etc. These are ''common'' attributes which they share. Thus, Apple A and Apple B will also fall within the ''common'' category, based on these common attributes.
-''To be a MAN was to write MAN in large capitals on my heart. I played what I conceived to be a MAN’S game, this future was interminable. I could see myself only raging through life without end like one of Nietzsche’s blond beasts, lustfully roving and conquering by sheer superiority and strength.''
+Apple A and Apple B will also have ''unique'' attributes. Only Apple A has the exact molecules in the exact place and time which compose Apple A. There is no other object in the world which has those same molecules in that same place and time. This means that Apple A also has ''unique'' properties.
-Jack London wrote ''Call of the Wild'' when he was young and healthy and full of his own electricity. It is easy to be an individualist when you are a winner and you are too caught up in glory to think about how the losers fare, or how your conquest undoes the very thing that drew you out there.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-42.png|''All private subjects have attributes in common with other private subjects.'']]
-There is not enough bounty for everyone to claim a piece, so for Big Mountain to keep on working it had to be understood that Man has no obligation to the happiness of anyone but himself. That to have the ''right'' to pursue happiness was to be free, even if free was only to be forever in ''pursuit''.
+The Common and Private categories have a dialectical relationship. The Common contains the Private, and the Private contains the Common. Every private subject has some attributes in common with other private subjects, and common attributes can only exist among private subjects. Thus every thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence contains internally within itself dialectical relationships between the Private and the Common, and has dialectical Private/Common relationships externally within other things, phenomena, and ideas.
-This is what the Mountain Man was born from. A healthy white man’s ideal. What Ted Kaczynski does not acknowledge or maybe realise is that he is his own worst enemy; it is this rampant freedom to pursue which propagates the Machine. It is as though Ayn Rand wrote both their bibles.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-43.png|''All private subjects have attributes in common with other private subjects.'']]
-Jack London was remembered only as a writer of macho survival stories for boys. A ''fascist''. It was just that one story! What about the story he wrote about the woman who gets Thoreau? The voice he gave to class struggles? So maybe you were his young ego but you were not his only one.
+It is also true that every private subject contains within itself ''Unique'' attributes which it does ''not'' share with any other thing, phenomenon, or idea. For example, Mount Everest is unique in that it is 8,850 meters tall. No other mountain on Earth has that exact same height. Therefore, the private subject “Mount Everest” has unique properties which it does not share with any other subject, even though it has other attributes in common with countless other private entities.
-He was in a bad place, you know that. His father had disowned him a second time. He quit Berkeley and ran to the Klondike because he was ''forced'' to be an individualist. But he realised something in the wild. He realised in its contrast how lacking he was. It is different for you, Buck, because you are a dog. They just cling to you, Buck, Stan and all these boys. They want a strict moral code. Something to believe in. Primordial truth. Sad, unhappy, suggestible people reading the works of sad, unhappy writers and taking their words as gospel.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-44.png|''All things, phenomena, and ideas contain the unique, the private, and the common.'']]
-They cannot take his oeuvre for its transgressions, his corrupted values; Wolf House, all those bedrooms. They want a noble truth, purity from their gods, and so they choose to hear you. You outlive him as a negative imprint, a Voyager he later regretted sending.
+Whenever two individual subjects have a relationship with one another, that relationship is a ''unique relationship'' in the sense that it is a relationship that is shared only by those two specific subjects; however, there will also be common attributes and properties which any such relationship will share with other relationships in existence. This recalls the ''principle of Unity in Diversity and Diversity in Unity'' [see Annotation 107, p. 110]. So, every thing, phenomenon, and idea contains the Common ''and'' the Unique and has unique ''and'' common relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas.
-But you are just a dog. An imaginary dog at that. All your ''masculinity'', it is a literary embellishment. Most wolf packs are headed by a male and a female breeding pair, who rule together in equality.
+This category pair is very useful in developing a comprehensive viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. Remember that a comprehensive viewpoint indicates an understanding of the internal and external relations of a given subject. This means that in order to develop a comprehensive viewpoint, you must know the private aspects of each individual relation, component, and aspect of the subject, and you must also study the commonalities of the subject as well. It’s also important to study a variety of ''private'' information sources or data points to look for ''commonalities'' between them. In other words, if you want to have a proper comprehensive viewpoint [see Annotation 113, p. 116] about any subject, you have to find and analyze as many ''private'' data points and pieces of evidence as possible.
-The dog is unnervingly blank. As though he feels indifference towards his creator now that he has his own life outside of him. Then the Call sounds from up out of the belly of the forest and Buck pricks up his ears to it. He rises and lopes to the limit of my night vision, turning with a look of contemptuous pity. He pads into the night to answer the Call and he will keep on answering as long as the Call sounds or until the paradigm shifts, because he is not ''quite'' immortal and it is this that will end his reign.
+For example: If a person only ever saw one apple, a green apple, then that person might believe that “all apples are green.” This conclusion would be premature: the person is attempting to make an assumption about the ''Common'' without examining enough ''Privates''. This is a failure of mistaking mistaking the ''Private'' for the ''Common'' which stems from a lack of a comprehensive viewpoint.
-And after all, only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf. Aldo Leopold said that. But man says I am civilised, and the rest is woman and wilderness. So what is woman? Is she where the symbols aren’t? Woman is wilderness, if she is man’s unwordable other. Woman is closer to the mountain and the wolf than man even if only because he put her there. Therefore, woman can listen better than man, if not as well as the mountain, to the real howl of the wolf.
+Now, let’s take a look at an example of how the “Unique” can become “Common,” and vice-versa: 1947 TODAY
-=== {{anchor|Topofch05html}} MY MOUNTAIN MY MOON ===
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-45.png]]
-==== WHATEVER PARTICLE OF THAT SPIRIT IS IN ME ====
+''“Unique” things, phenomena, and ideas can become “common” through development processes (and vice-versa).''
-So I hardly slept and I was exhausted but this felt right, to struggle the last part as a disciple of asceticism after Thoreau’s own heart, like a monk head-butting the ground to nirvana. Like how they say that if something was easy it would not be a challenge and if something is not a challenge then it is not meaningful; so make every day a struggle and lo! you will feel the richer for it, like all those who struggle in poverty are really the richest and most meaningful people in the world, god smiles down on their suffering and they feel the radiance of his smile on their sunburnt backs.
+In 1941, a Soviet soldier named Mikhail Kalashnikov was in the hospital after being wounded in the Battle of Bryansk. Another soldier in the hospital said to Kalashnikov, “why do our soldiers only have one rifle for two or three of our men, while the Germans have automatics?” To solve this problem, Kalashnikov designed the AK-47 machine gun. When he finished making the first prototype, it was the only AK-47 in the world.
-I kept on thinking I was about to summit when looking up I would see the ground stop and sky behind it, but each time I got there I would be faced with another slope to climb. I learned not to be tricked in this way so that eventually when I reached the genuine last slope I was dubious, like yeah, right, that old hat, so that when I ''did'' clamber over and see the final point, stood alone and jaunty with an actual landscape beneath it, not just another mosaic of rocks, I felt like I had been hit in the stomach with a football.
+At this precise moment, the AK-47 was simultaneously ''Unique'', ''Private'', and ''Common.''
-I said no no don’t look yet not just yet get to the very top first so that you can drink it all in savour every last drop of it. So I took my rucksack off to make things easier and I kept my eyes down until I could not find a higher place to be. I settled down into my crossed legs and let myself look the whole place over and squealed like a proud eagle.
+It was ''Unique'' because it was the first and only AK-47 in the world, and no other object in the world had those properties. It was ''Private'' because it was a specific object with its own individual existence. It was ''Common'' — even though it was the only existing prototype — because it shared Common features with other rifles, and with other prototypes. It was the only AK-47 in existence.
-It was stupidly windy so that my hair unwrapped itself from my hairband and made little Medusa-snakes of itself, licking me in the eyeballs. I scraped it back, making an Alice band of my hands and using them as a sun visor also. The sun was almost unbearable so high up and with no cloud cover, but it made my vision heavenly bright and ecstatic. The clouds were thin and wispy and some stalked underneath me, motionless but transitory; still, ephemeral jellyfish taken by the current.
+Soon, however, the Soviet Union began manufacturing them, and they became very common. Now there are millions of AK-47s in the world. So, today, that prototype machine gun remains simultaneously ''Unique, Private,'' and ''Common,'' with some slight developments:
-I felt giddy from the sheer euphoria of it all and also from vertigo at being so high and the world so tiny. I could see everything, my whole map over for what it really is. I mean, I could not see the cabin per se but I could see its vicinity, the place where the trees wound between me and it. But I could see my tower or I fancied I could just about, a spire amongst the deep green spruce of the taiga, and the tundra to the right of it spilling on, multi-faceted and textured and connoting so many things at once; fat salmons, a clutch of speckled blue eggs, the ripe and gravid feeling of harvest-time and the hazy nostalgia that distance gives to space as time does to memory.
+It remains ''Private'' because it is a specific object with its own individual existence. Even though it is no longer the only AK-47 in existence, it remains ''Unique'' because it is still the very first AK-47 that was ever made, and even though there are now many other AK-47s, there is no other rifle in the universe that shares that same unique property. It remains ''Common'' because it still shares common features with other rifles and other prototypes, but it now also shares ''commonality'' with many other AK-47 rifles. It is no longer ''Unique'' for having the properties of an AK-47 in and of itself.
-There is so much colour, even on the bare mountains so much colour. They are rust and lilac and ochre and pink, all hues of deep contrast, the bright sun bits too bright to look at almost and the shadows so deep they look dimensional like mouths to deep caves. Each piece of contrasting colour is like its own object, can be taken alone like pieces of a paint-by-numbers, but take a step back and they come together and make something breathtakingly complete. If I am right in my bearings then they call these the Polychrome Mountains.
+If someone were to destroy Kalashnikov’s prototype AK-47, the ''Private'' of that ''object'' would no longer exist — it would remain only as an ''idea'', and the Private would transform to whatever becomes of the material components of the rifle. The ''Unique'' would also no longer remain specifically as it was before being destroyed. However, there would still be many other AK-47s which would share common features related to that prototype; for instance, that they were all designed based on the prototype’s design.
-My Olympus, my castle in the sky, and down below my queendom all poured out. I feel good and full, brimming, like a fountain all full up and pouring over, like melting. And if Damon did come up here it is hard to imagine how he could climb back down and go through with it, renounce all this beauty. I feel accomplished. It is the feeling that I did it, all of this; they have not succeeded in keeping it from me.
+''Translator’s Note:'' The words “Private,” “Common,” and “Unique” may seem unusual because they are direct translations from the Vietnamese words used to describe these concepts in the original text. Various other words have been used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other materialist dialecticians when discussing the underlying concepts of these philosophical categories. For instance, in most translations of Lenin, his discussion of such topics is typically translated into English using words such as “universal,” “general,” “special,” “particular,” etc.
-But then, directly after, following it through the door like a fast black cat, the feeling of ''did what exactly?''
+Example (from Lenin’s ''Philosophical Notebooks''): “Language in essence expresses only the universal; what is meant, however, is the special, the particular. Hence what is meant cannot be said in speech.” Here, “universal” refers to that which is ''Common'' in all things, phenomena, and ideas, and “special/particular” refers to the ''Private — s''pecific individual things, phenomena, and ideas — along with their ''Unique'' properties.
-A sudden pang of something when I realise I can see the road, far away but definite, barely visible yet I can feel it like an animal does a scent trail, an invisible ribbon through its terrain. A mixture of things, first like being Simba in ''The Lion King'' when Mufasa tells him ''everything that the light touches'' and beyond is the shadowy place, the road my perimeter of light. But also a vague kind of yearning, a sharp little tug.
+Here are excerpts from Lenin’s ''Philosophical Notebooks'' discussing these concepts:
-The light starts to dim and the mountains’ shadow gets longer. He could not very well have stayed up here for ever, not alive anyway. So perhaps for someone in his state of mind it would be perfectly logical for this place to be the end of the story. After going to the moon some of the moonwalkers could not come to terms with the feeling of its climax, all of life after dulled in its light, made ugly under the scrutiny of this spotlight that would not leave them.
+<blockquote>
+(‘It?’ The most universal word of all.) Who is it? I. Every person is an I.
-As the sun moves from off the peak the wind picks up, stinging and pulling at the skin of my face and arms, sore with sunburn. My lips are chapped and hard and my nose raw to touch. I take the ski jacket from around my waist and curl into it. I am suddenly and crushingly tired, with sunstroke maybe, and it becomes perfectly sensible to just stay put here, just curl up to sleep on myself, a tired eagle on its lonely scarp, its nose tucked under its own wing.
+Das Sinnliche? It is a universal, etc., etc. ‘This??’ Everyone is ‘this.’
-==== A DECLARATION FOR THE RIGHT OF CETACEANS ====
+Why can the particular not be named? One of the objects of a given kind (tables) is distinguished by something from the rest...
-Damon and the Mountain Men, like old scientists, were searching for an absolute and true reality. They went about it by dissection, peeling it back in search of its kernel of truth, a foundation to build up from. The Greeks saw it in the Euclidean geometry they found recurring in nature. From the solid geometry of three dimensions Newton constructed a constant description of the world in his classical mechanics. The fourth dimension was uniform time, which flowed smoothly. Matter was full: indestructible particles moving through space, the void. From these separate unquestioned planes knowledge could be built deductively and a uniform map of matter and life could be built.
+Leaves of a tree are green; John is a man; Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics (as Hegel’s genius recognised): the individual is the universal... And a naïve confusion, a helplessly pitiful confusion in the dialectics of the universal and the particular — of the concept and the sensuously perceptible reality of individual objects, things, phenomena.
-But then along came Einstein and said we must forget the Lapse of Time. He said Newton’s planes do not work on Newton’s planes, you can draw a square but space is really like a balloon not a flat plane, and you can’t draw a perfect square on a balloon.
+Further, the ‘subsumption’ under logical categories of ‘sensibility’ (Sensibilität), ‘irritability’ (irritabilität) — this is said to be the particular in contrast to the universal!! — and ‘reproduction’ is an idle game.
+</blockquote>
-It is considered very old and pagan yet new and post-Enlightenment to think of ourselves as not masters or stewards but members of the universe. We forgot this in the first place because Descartes would cut open dogs and when they would scream he would say ''ignore the screams, they are merely the creakings of a machine'', and we ignored them.
+Marx, too, discussed these concepts using words which are commonly translated into English using different terms. For example, in ''Capital'':
-They blasted the atom at the Large Hadron Collider and instead of the kernel of this atom they found a house of mirrors and in the middle a weird shaman sat cross-legged with a gong, who told them ''everything is everything and nothing all at once'' enigmatically, but what did they expect looking for a kernel inside a kernel when by definition a kernel’s kernel is a tautology?
+<blockquote>
+The general form of relative value, embracing the whole world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent – here the linen – into the universal equivalent.
+</blockquote>
-The Mountain Men went looking in nature, as in outside of human (human Man), but this is a false dichotomy. They did not see that nature was what they threw at it. Somewhere in Texas there is a mountain and at its summit there is built a steel pyramid (I marked time, remember me), glittering back at the sky, and I think this object stands very well for Mountain Men everywhere.
+Here, “general form” refers to the ''commonalities'' of form that exist between all commodities. The “single commodity” refers to a private commodity; a specific commodity that exists separately from all other commodities. And when referring to a “universal equivalent,” Marx is referring to equivalence which such a commodity has in ''common'' with every other commodity.
-You can’t break the world into independent existing units. Particles can’t even be said to exist in definite positions, they only show ''tendencies to exist''. Probability, not certainty, is the fundamental feature of atomic reality, so the Mountain Man was doomed to fail. This is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and it forbids perfect knowledge. The new science says that it is only a web of approximations, it is an idealisation sometimes useful from a practical point of view like demographics of populations, or the construction of an identity.
+The rest of this passage continues as a materialist dialectical analysis of the ''Private, Common,'' and ''Unique'' features and aspects of commodities:
-Once he had figured it out Einstein thought of the implications of this and said ''it was as if the ground had been pulled out from under one, with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built''. Science had seemingly been undermined if the whole point was to find the very solid absolute foundational true description of everything.
+<blockquote>
+The bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the values of all commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undifferentiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power. The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that it is the social resumé of the world of commodities. That form consequently makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific social character.
+</blockquote>
-But Thoreau anticipated Einstein when he said ''if you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should'' ''be. Now put the foundations under them'', as though they were talking through time, saying, hey, so there is no such thing as the absolute after all! And absolute wild, absolute solitude; there is an absolutely pure form of neither!
+We have chosen to use the terms “Private,” “Common,” and “Unique” in the translation of this text because they most closely match the words used in the original Vietnamese. In summary, it is important to realize that you may encounter the underlying ''concepts'' which are related by these words using various phrasings in the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.
-And Thoreau said to Einstein that men making speeches (meaning scientists), they are banded together, ''one leaning on another and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise''. He said, I will tell you what is at the centre of the atom without even looking: just shitloads of tortoises! But, he said, it does not matter because the atoms together make the wood I chop to build a fire.
+==== b. Dialectical Relationship Between Private and Common ====
-Thoreau was as imperfect as the rest of us, always seeking truth although he knew he could never find it. He still spoilt the magic of the mythically bottomless lake at Walden, by measuring it to its bottom standing on its centre while it froze over, and writing out the measurements so everyone would know it was ''he'' who had solved its mystery.
+According to the materialist dialectical viewpoint: the Private, the Common and the Unique exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. The Common only exists within the Private. It expresses its existence through the Private.
-Subatomic science asks us to take what we can observe and fill in the gaps, intuitive like mysticism because it is just an abstraction of reality and we have to use instruments to pick it apart, we have no direct experience of it. In a similar way a mythical or spiritual belief system that is less restricted by deductive logic can get closer to the truth of the thing by admitting there is not one truth: there are many. Maybe my mum saying she does not think about space is really pretty enlightened.
+-----
-Future civilisations might excavate the Large Hadron Collider from out of the ground when we are gone and try to interpret it like we do the Tarot, as a divination method that taps into archetypes we created. And in a way this is all it is.
+==== Annotation 130 ====
-==== BECAUSE IT IS MY HEART ====
+The ''Common'' can’t exist as a specific thing, phenomenon, or idea. However, every specific thing, phenomenon, or idea exists as a ''private'' subject which has various features in ''common'' with other ''private'' things, phenomena, and ideas. We can therefore only understand the ''Common'' through observation and study of various ''private'' things, phenomena, and ideas. For example, a human can’t perceive with our senses alone the ''Common'' of apples. Only by observing many ''private'' apples can begin to derive an understanding of what all ''private'' apples have in ''common''.
-I slept part of the night out on the peak, but it was too cold without the sun and I woke up. I had to crawl back down to my pack and get out everything warm to wrap up in. I did not get to greet the morning on the peak but now I know what it is like to wake up inside a cloud, and how many people can say that? The light got brighter at around 4 a.m. and I woke up to wonder if I had maybe died and gone to heaven. But the cloud passed, I took food from my bag and chewed it, looking at the landscape coming up all pink and new like a fresh layer of paint, and I decided not to move from off the ridge until I had found a conclusive reason to. All of my bones ached.
+The Common does not exist in isolation from the Private. Therefore, commonality is inseparable from things, phenomena, and ideas. The Private only exists in relation to the Common. Likewise, there is no Private that exists in complete isolation from the Common.
-And as the sun came up I ached more to look at it. Nothing had moved but it looked different again and was permeated with feeling. We do not have a very good or specific word for the feeling of it but I suppose we tentatively call it ''love''. A feeling can’t be mapped to a word without changing the feeling. I could exhaust the possibilities of descriptions, but to get the closest without ever actually touching is all science and words can do. Everything is beyond the touch of language. Why even bother to tell stories if language is so vacant?
+-----
-When you are a very young child you do not understand that there are things outside of yourself, but as you begin to grow you start to feel sad or happy or affected by seemingly irrelevant things like the explosion of rockets or the size of the ocean or the contour of hills.
+==== Annotation 131 ====
-Everything looks happy and good in pink golden light but the beauty has sadness and sometimes this is difficult to distinguish from sadness itself and I wish I could have told Damon this. There is acute love for the thing then realising that one day one way or another it will leave you or you will leave it or the light will change, but the magnitude of this hurt is itself something that adds to the beauty. You let it enter: permeation, contamination, not-aloneness, shared knowing of this beauty. You grow with it like inosculation, and the sadness comes in knowing that it is so other to you, that it is like tree branches growing first together and then apart. We need this acute sad feeling to make us care about the preservation of otherness. Perhaps then the feeling is more accurately ''the love of sad beauty''. Or nostalgia that has not happened yet.
+No commonality can possibly exist outside of private things, phenomena, and ideas because commonality describes features which different things, phenomena, and ideas share. No private thing, phenomenon, or idea can possibly exist ''absolutely without'' commonality because there is no thing, phenomenon, or idea that shares ''absolutely no features'' with ''any other'' thing, phenomenon, or idea.
-Then in the distance cutting across the hue between the ground and blue the speed and effortlessness in its wings. I would know it anywhere from the way it writes itself in the sky. Peregrine. I knew that they lived here but in all my looking I had not found one. And there it was, for me and not for me. My knowing of it is not possessive; I know it in reverence. Not looking at it from below as I am used to, but eye-to-eye, I can see the world like it does, and to see with it is a mighty privilege.
+The Private category is more all-encompassing and diverse than the Common category; Common is a part of Private but it is more profound and more “essential” than the Private. This is because Private is the synthesis of the Common and the Unique; the Common expresses generality and the regular predictability of many Privates.
-What I see at that moment holds so much significance for me personally even though it means nothing really and nothing at all to the peregrine, but when I remember it all, this is how it will be capsulated; in this single image, pinky golden and perfect but impermanent and sad, but with all the promise of a new day and a new chapter in my time and I will order it as such in retrospect in my own narrative.
+-----
-I want to tell Damon that this is it, this is exactly it or as close as we could come. It is the feeling of space-time in and out of you and connecting you to all of it and none of it. To be able to look down from a mountain and feel sad is the whole point. Damon renounced all of this because it was the one thing that was his to give up but the thing he gave up was the point in itself and the point does not still stand without him. His little death meant nothing to the mountain and it all goes on despite him. There is no wilderness when we are gone. It needs us and our words outside it like proprioception, to define its contours, the same as we need it. And from the realisation onwards, we can adapt and new synapses can be found.
+==== Annotation 132 ====
-And when I looked at the road this time I felt something different to the taint and diminishment of before. When I looked at the road I felt very small and I remembered Stan saying his bit about girls being social inherently, innately, by nature, like it is in our geometry. The tug I felt when I looked at it was of a thread in the fabric, a tendril through me and it. But that tug is the reminder that you were attached all along. A tug does not mean I failed to leave properly; I could never really leave. None of us, not even Mountain Men, can ever really leave.
+The Private encompasses all aspects of a specific, individual thing, phenomenon, or idea; thus it encompasses all aspects, features, and attributes of a given subject, including both the Common and the Unique. In this way, the Private is the synthesis of the Common and the Unique.
-I stayed put for most of the day, steadily brimming up with purpose. But I was also brimming up with urine from drinking the snow melted with the propane. My appetite was building back up and what little was left of the food was back down on the plateau. I considered briefly weeing up there just to be practical, but it conjured the image of a dog leaving its scent. I thought I would not want all the smelling animals that might come up there to think that of me, even if none ever did, probably just the crows went there and they can’t smell. Besides all of this I did not want to do that to the mountain.
+Common attributes require more consideration, effort, and study to properly determine, because multiple private subjects must be considered and analyzed before common attributes can be confidently discovered and understood. They offer us a more profound understanding of the essence [see ''Essence and Phenomenon,'' p. 156] and nature of things, phenomena, and ideas because they offer insights into the ''relationships'' between and within different things, phenomena, and ideas. As we discover more commonalities, and understand them more deeply, we begin to develop a more comprehensive perspective of reality. We begin to develop an understanding of the laws and principles which govern relations between and within things, phenomena, and ideas, and this gives us the power to more accurately predict how processes will develop and how things, phenomena, and ideas will change and mutually impact one another over time.
-I took a last long look, blinking my eyes like they were shutters and I was capturing still photographs of this scene to file away in the far crevices of my mind, the special self-defining crevices that stay secure and well preserved and accessible for life. Then I climbed down, set off to the place below the snowline and got there before dark, in time to make my tent up again and pee in privacy from whatever behind a rock, and heat up the last of the food.
+Under specific conditions, the Common and the Unique can transform into each other [See Annotation 129, p. 128].
-==== ALL MY LIFE NOW APPEARS TO BE ONE HAPPY MOMENT ====
+The dialectical relationship between Private and Common was summarised by Lenin:
-Trudging down the mountain was much easier than up because the scree that was a hindrance before became an ally and I got to the bottom in half the time. When I reached the timberline I turned to look up at my mountain from its most imposing angle before I was under the tree cover and could not see it any more.
+“Consequently, the opposites (the individual as opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other '''kinds''' of individuals (things, phenomena, ideas) etc.”<ref>''On the Question of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.</ref> [Note: “individual and universal” here refer the same underlying concepts of “Private and Common” (respectively); see translator’s note on p. 132].
-Behind it in the pale blue sky the moon was full and almost exactly above the peak but skewed just a little, as if it was being floated there, as if it was a Malteser the mountain was blowing to hover over its mouth. The moon was a very pale white blue disk, only just not the colour of the sky. I had not seen it while I was up there, but I suppose it must have been behind me all along.
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-The mountain and the moon sat across from each other like telegraph hills, and I imagined I could light up a beacon on the mountain and the lady with the rabbits up on the moon would look down and see a small flare burst out of her image of Earth, an iridescent badge on the black felt of infinity.
+We must acknowledge and recognize the Common in order to study the Private in our cognitive and practical activities. If we fail to acknowledge the Common, then whenever we attempt to understand and comprehend any Private thing, phenomenon or idea, we will make mistakes and become disoriented. To understand the Common we have to study and observe the Private because the Common does not exist abstractly outside of the Private.
-From a mountain vast cities are pinpricks of light and from the moon they are tinier still. Follow it back further still, this image, of Earth in space getting smaller and smaller the further away you get, speeding much faster than the speed of light away after the Voyagers, but the stars behind Earth do not seem to move at all because they are already so far away, their constellations still look exactly the same as they do on Earth. You have to get about thirty-six light years away past Arcturus, which the Inuits call ‘The First Ones’, and only then do they start to merge into each other, and by this time you can’t see Earth at all.
+-----
-Earth looks insignificant in the vastness of space, as everything does from far away. But we don’t live far away and can only imagine what this looks like because we made some very clever machinery that can change our viewpoints. New viewpoints give new perspectives. That is what astronauts mean when they get the Overview Effect. From very near by in the grand scheme of things Earth really looks perfect.
+==== Annotation 133 ====
-Larus told me that when NASA were working on ways to detect life on Mars for the Viking programme they called James Lovelock, maverick scientist and inventor from England, to California to come help them. Lovelock told NASA they need not send a spacecraft to Mars because he could tell from the atmosphere that there would be no life there because Mars’ atmosphere was at chemical equilibrium and lacked the dynamism of Earth’s atmosphere. This got Lovelock thinking about life altering its atmosphere and that is how he got on to the Gaia Hypothesis, which he wrote with Lynn Margulis, the symbiosis lady.
+Our understanding of Common attributes arise from the observation and study of private things, phenomena, and ideas. At the same time, developing our understanding of Commonalities between and within Private subjects deepens our understanding of their essential nature [see: Essence and Phenomenon].
-They were interested that the sun’s radioactive output had increased over aeons of time but that Earth had not heated up in turn. They postulated that Earth as a whole was self-regulating to maintain this stability, that all of life and non-life were part of one single ‘organism’ of sorts. All parts of the biota worked together to regulate the biosphere, the hydrospheres, the atmosphere, etc., and everything on Earth had evolved reciprocally with the end of keeping the planet stable and optimum for all life. This worked through a cybernetic feedback system that meant that things always fluctuate around the optimum, like a thermostat which changes its output dependent on its reading to maintain a relatively stable, but never perfect, temperature. This was homeostasis.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-46.png|''Dialectical analysis of private and common characteristics involves observing private subjects to determine common attributes and considering common attributes to gain insights about private subjects.'']]
-Lovelock decided that without biodiversity we might not just be lonely, we might actually not have a liveable and breathable climate and atmosphere, that as we upset the balance the planet will get more hostile to us.
+It is impossible to know anything at all about the Common without observing Private subjects, and attempting to understand Private subjects without taking into consideration the attributes and features which they have in Common with other Private subjects will lead to incomplete and erroneous analysis.
-In ''Timaeus'' Plato said our planet was alive and the rivers and lava were its circulatory system. From the eighteenth century onwards there were a few geologists and geochemists who posited that the biosphere could affect the geology and chemistry of its surroundings but they were pretty much ignored. The German Romantic Schelling would talk about Earth like it was alive and the American Transcendentalists Emerson and then Thoreau, they read Schelling.
+-----
-This started a tradition that birthed John Muir, father of the American national parks, Jack London, who was in the Bohemian Club with John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, who pioneered environmental ethics. It also inspired the Beats, Jack Kerouac calling himself an ‘urban Thoreau’ and going by ‘Jack’ instead of his given name ‘Jean-Louis’, after London, and then the Beats led on to the counterculture of the sixties and John C. Lilly of dolphin tank fame, who hung out with the Beats. Rudolf Steiner also read Schelling, and it was William Golding who was friends with Lovelock and gave him the name of ''Gaia'' for his idea and put him on to Steiner. So really Lovelock was a product of a long tradition and his and Lynn Margulis’s ideas took off because they were compatible with the post-space race ''zeitgeist''.
+In addition, we must identify the Common features and attributes of every specific Private subject we study. We must avoid being dogmatic, metaphysical, and inflexible in applying our knowledge of commonalities to solve problems and interpret the world.
-''Metempsychosis.'' That is what the Ancient Greeks called the transmigration of souls, similar to what the Inuit believe in. E=mc<sup>2</sup>
+-----
-is the famous equation by Einstein and what it means is that the amount of energy in a particle is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared, and what this means is that the Inuits are right again. It means that energy and mass or matter are interchangeable. It means that matter can be transformed into other forms of energy. When Lovelock channels Plato, this is metempsychosis of sorts. Rachel Carson has gotten into me by metempsychosis, which is also like the homeostatic process that Lovelock called ''feedback''.
+==== Annotation 134 ====
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+==== Dogmatism and Revisionism in Relation to the Private and Common ====
-[[Image:f0265-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-Homeostasis is also how we maintain a stable identity. We as individuals build from and into a shared image of ourselves. There are tendrils that anchor us to an adaptive and receptive way of knowing and being, building a view from a body, my body.
+''Dogmatism'' is the inflexible adherence to ideals as incontrovertibly true while refusing to take any contradictory evidence into consideration. Dogmatism stands in direct opposition to materialist dialectics, which seeks to form opinions and conclusions only after careful consideration of all observable evidence.
-When we die we usually get an epitaph. Inuits in Greenland do not write words on the headstones of their dead, because they know an epitaph traps an identity and undermines its freedom to transmigrate.
+Dogmatism typically arises when the Common is overemphasized without due consideration of the Private. A dogmatic position is one which adheres to ideals about commonalities without taking Private subjects into consideration.
-Ideas and words are metempsychosis, are the weaving of the tapestry, are love for the mountain, are the deep relation between past, present, near and far, are the consciousness between us. Newton’s ball was never alone: it was cocooned by the fabric of space-time. Solitude is an illusion but so is loneliness and it was Emerson himself who said, ‘We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.’
+Dogmatism can be avoided by continuously studying and observing and analyzing
-I think of it, rather than a unanimous whole that underlies everything, more like a collaging of shards all patched up like a quilt, overlapping like a Venn diagram on a Venn diagram on a Venn diagram.
+Private subjects and taking any evidence which contradicts erroneous perceptions of “false commonalities” into consideration. This will simultaneously deepen our understanding of the Private while improving our understanding of the Common. For example: Sally might observe a few red apples and arrive at the conclusion: “all apples are red.” If Sally is then presented with a green apple, yet refuses to acknowledge it by continuing to insist that “all apples are red,” then Sally is engaging in dogmatism.
-Lilly, Kerouac, Sagan, Einstein, Newton, none of them was unblemished by patriarchy but we had to have them all to get us to where we are now. We had to get to the moon with Apollo so that we could look back at ourselves like this. I had to come out here and follow Damon and get lost enough to realise that’s what I was, so that I could find my way again. We had to have Descartes and his dualisms even though they are atomising and not real and identify the self with an isolated ego that exists inside a body like a cage, and this inner fragmentation mirrors the fragmentation of Newton’s world of matter outside as a void within which separate objects and events happen all alone, forever lonely, so that we could have Einstein and the rockets that could take us up there to look at ourselves and see the seams of this, to use the moon like a mirror, like children or parrots recognising their reflection for the very first time.
+According to Vietnam’s ''Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought,'' the opposite of Dogmatism is ''Revisionism''. Revisionism occurs when we overestimate the Private and fail to recognize commonalities. In failing to recognize common attributes and features between and within things, phenomena, and ideas, the Revisionist faces confusion and disorientation whenever they encounter any new things, phenomena, and ideas, because they lack any insight into essential characteristics of the subject and its relations with other subjects.
-These are our new visions, the macro and also the micro, the seeing for the first time and knowing and loving the microscopic creatures in our guts that we could not live without. And it is because we can look so closely and see things inside things and look so far away and see things outside our solar system that we can realise the arbitrariness of our distinctions. Our myopia undone.
+For example: if Sally has spent a lot of time studying a red apple, she may start to become confident that she understands everything there is to know about apples. If she is then presented with a green apple, she might become confused and disoriented and draw the conclusion that she has to start all over again with her analysis, from scratch, thinking: “this can’t possibly be an apple because it’s not red. It must be something else entirely.” Sally can avoid this revisionist confusion by examining the other common features which the red and green apples share before making any conclusions.
-The moon is our mountain. The Hubble telescope is finding higher mountains still. We had to get up there to look down with the eyes of Gaia (another useful myth), so that we could see how to mend our fragmentation, see that Earth self-regulates to keep everything in balance, as if we were allowed to get clever enough to get sad looking at mountains for Gaia to be able to see herself and think, bloody hell, isn’t that good. Be good now.
+==== Metaphysical Perception of the Private and Common ====
-This sudden new knowing of deep connection is a new Copernican Revolution. It’s just that, as with the first Copernican Revolution, we do not quite know it yet, it is still filtering into us, we are in the process of many incremental viewpoint changes, so many and so quickly that we don’t have time to keep up. It will take decades for them to diffuse, but we are in the process of realising our new position and responsibilities as ''members'' rather than ''stewards''.
+The ''metaphysical'' position attempts to categorize things, phenomena, and ideas into static categories which are isolated and distinct from one another [see Annotation 8,
-And this dawning comes right at our make-or-break moment. In 1870 the novelist Wilkie Collins predicted ‘the discovery one of these days of a destructive agent so terrible that war shall mean annihilation and men’s fears will force them to keep the peace’; and in 1951, just as he prophesised, the hydrogen bomb was invented, 2,500 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed and is still in the process of destroying Hiroshima.
+p. 8]. In this way, the metaphysical perception ultimately fails to properly understand the role of both the Private ''and'' the Common. Categories may be arranged in taxonomic configurations based on shared features, but ultimately every category is seen as distinct and isolated from every other category. This perspective severs the dialectical relationship between the Private, the Common, and the Unique, and thus leads to a distorted perception of reality. As Engels wrote in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-The rocket technology that got us to the moon was originally created in mind of annihilation, and you can follow the creation of the atom bomb deductively to its logical and predictable conclusion, unravel unravel until you get to here, the singularity.
+<blockquote>
+The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.”
+</blockquote>
-Millennial anxiety is anxiety about this annihilation aimed back at us in abstract, about things so far out of our control as to be seemingly self-perpetuating, is why we frantically mark time, time-capsulise. It is not an innate impulse but a situational one. What annihilation threatens is this web we have spent so long building and our means of transmigration and our sense of self. And Damon felt this anxiety and he gave up his identity because of it, by self-annihilation.
+In other words, Engels points out that separating and dividing Private subjects into distinct and isolated categories without acknowledging the dialectical nature of the Private and the Common leads to severe limitations on what we can learn about the world. Instead, we have to examine things, phenomena, and ideas ''in relation to one another'', which must include the analysis of Commonalities.
-The concept of nuclear deterrent is ''your castle cannot go on existing after ours is gone''. Nuclear is the power to wipe out a civilisation (including a future one), to blow up its centre, destroy its institutions, its means of preservation, its universities and its libraries, like Kaczynski wanted rid of. The threat is against our ideologies. In this way the colonisation of space and the veneer of ‘survival of the species’ mask the real agenda, ‘survival of the nation’. It is the threat of inexistence and the retaliation of blowing away the web of everything of the other (but now we know that to do so is to destroy small parts of ourselves too).
+Rather than divide subjects into distinct, separate categories, materialist dialectics seek to examine Private subjects as they really exist: as a synthesis of Unique and Common attributes; and simultaneously to examine commonalities as they really exist: as properties which emerge from the relations of Private objects.
-I used to think it very strange that the Nepalis did not try to climb all the way to the top of Everest, even though they obviously had the skill to climb because Tenzing Norgay must have been a skilled mountaineer before Edmund Hillary showed up, and so must lots of other Sherpas. But when they looked up at Everest in awe they did not think ‘I am going to conquer that mountain’, they thought, ‘ah, Chomolungma, goddess mother of the world’, and respected it and felt awe for it but no inclination to go about debasing it. Like presuming that there can’t be intelligent life on other planets or they would have made themselves known to us by now. Maybe they are already observing us, but they do not feel any drive to make themselves known to us.
+In our cognitive and practical activities, we must be able to take advantage of suitable conditions that will enable transformations from the Unique and the Common (and vice versa) for our specific purposes.
-Edmund Hillary the mountaineer climbed Everest because it was there. Astronaut Gene Cernan of Apollos 10 and 17, when asked why he thought we went to the moon, said ''because it’s there''. When Tenzing Norgay the Sherpa got to the top of Everest he got on his knees, buried some biscuits in offering and prayed to the goddess of the mountain for disturbing her. We should have gone to the moon like Tenzing Norgay.
+-----
-Maybe this really is the point in the age where everything changes, a rewriting of myths, a sort of coming-of-age in the human narrative. Remember that everyone mocked Copernicus at first when he said that maybe Earth did not sit at the centre of the universe, hey, guys, maybe it does not all revolve around us. Which is what Lovelock and Margulis were saying too.
+==== Annotation 135 ====
-These ideas do not instantaneously propagate. They resonate only once a situation occurs that prompts their germination. They are little seeds we carry with us through life and which remain inert until the perfect conditions arise.
+In advancing the cause of socialism, revolutionaries must work to transform our Unique positions into common positions. For instance, the process of developing revolutionary public knowledge [see Annotation 94, p. 93] begins with studying and understanding revolutionary knowledge. Initially, this knowledge will be ''unique'' to the socialist movement. By disseminating the knowledge to the public, we hope to transform this knowledge into ''common knowledge''.
-All these thoughts kept me busy for the hours and hours that I walked back. I had to stop to rest up and take off my shoes and let my blisters fill up so I could pop them. I fell asleep under a tree with my shoes off and slumped against it.
+Likewise, we hope to transform other common things, phenomena, and ideas back towards the Unique. For instance, the capitalist mode of production is currently the most common mode of production on Earth. In order to advance humanity towards communism, we must transition the capitalist mode of production from the Common towards the Unique, with the ambition of eventually eliminating this mode of production altogether.
-==== STRANGE MATTERS DARK MATTERS ====
+=== 2. Reason and Result ===
-It is peaceful, with the forest humming from everything busily making the most of the time before the rains come again. The sky is milky with a benevolent cloud, and the eagles are capital-ising on the vantage before they can’t see again. They hang under the cloud like mobiles.
+==== a. Categories of Reason and Result ====
-I have spent an inordinate amount of time just looking. Standing at the open windows of the tower and looking out at all the stuff just gathered beneath me for contemplation. You can’t see a lot from the fire tower and a lot can’t see you, the trees grown tall around through its years of disuse. Before you might have seen it from all over. Only from the mountain could you see everything.
+The ''Reason'' category is used to define the mutual impacts between internal aspects of a thing, phenomenon or idea, or between things, phenomena, or ideas, that bring about changes.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+The ''Result'' category defines the changes that were caused by mutual impacts which occur between aspects and factors ''within'' a thing, phenomenon, or idea, or ''externally'' between different things, phenomena, or ideas.
-[[Image:f0269-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-But what I can see is still a lot. I can see the ocean of trees and I can see on and on to its edge. Boreal forest, the world’s lungs. Sometimes in the morning a mist hangs over like smudged chalk and it strikes you vividly that this is it breathing. Like the vapour you exhale on a cold day but a whole atmosphere respired. I drink it in deeply through my nostrils, all the newest oxygen all for me. I can see the river winding through to meet the tundra, or just about, I see it glinting in slithers. Over the millennia of that river’s course it will have snaked side to side, the trees clambering up or falling with the soil torn from under their feet. And the trees growing, dying, falling, rotting, each to feed another in its place.
+-----
-And inside the forest the light spills green through the leaves as if through coloured film so that the light is green on my arms and on my face. The smell of spruce, and the spruce needles making the floor spongy like a play mat, dry and comfortable so that you can lie down on it to breathe it all in stronger.
+==== Annotation 136 ====
-I just listen. Can you hear the sound of the forest breathing? Underneath the ground is the forest’s brain. Can you hear it thinking, ticking away? Tiny threads of mycelium one cell thick branch out like neurons and link up to form a living network underneath the forest, miles long. The mycelium connects to trees’ roots, giving them a larger surface area and a higher absorption of nutrients and minerals, then breaks down with enzymes it excretes and reabsorbs from the soil, and in return the trees give it metabolised carbohydrates, the fruits of photosynthesis.
+''Translation note:'' the Vietnamese words for “reason and result” can also be translated as “cause and effect.” We have chosen to use the words “reason and result” to distinguish materialist dialectical categories from metaphysical conceptions of development.
-The tendrils of the mycelium are synapses and through them information travels. The mycelium is thinking and what it is thinking about is the health of the life around it. It is conscious and responsive to changes in its environment. It is planning for the long-term health of its environment.
+In metaphysics [see Annotation 8, p. 8], any given ''effect'' is seen to have a single ''cause''. In materialist dialectics, we instead examine the ''mutual impacts'' which occur within and between subjects through motion and development processes.
-Mycelium has inherited Earth several times over. It always surges after mass extinctions because it can metabolise and recycle the debris. It makes life-sustaining soil out of this debris, and so lays the ground for other life to follow, initiating the ecosystems that will diversify its food chain. Is it self-interested or is it just lonely? You can’t really say. Loneliness is a kind of self-interest anyway.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-47.png|''Metaphysical vs. Materialist Dialectical conceptions of development.'']]
-Mycelium is a half-being, an in-between shape-shifter. It looks like a plant but it breathes out carbon dioxide. It comes from the kingdom ''Eukarya'', from which we branched hundreds of millions of years ago. Mycelia are more animal than plant really. But they bridge the kingdoms like diplomatic interpreters. They translate between organisms and their environments.
+In the metaphysical conception of cause and effect, (A) causes effect (B), then effect (B) causes effect (C), and so on. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, uses the model of ''development'' (see Annotation 117, p. 119), wherein objects (A) and (B) mutually impact one another, resulting in development (C). (C) will then have relations with other things, phenomena, and/or ideas, and the mutual impacts from these new relations will become the reasons for future results. Consider the following example:
-And mycelium is a shaman, a seer into the spirit world, or into death. It turns the inorganic into organic, can dismantle chains that otherwise tangle, smoothing the mess that might upset its system by processing pollutants and radiation. There are no clear polarities for mycelium, no life or death, no organic or non-organic, but inextricable interconnectedness. It is the dark matter of the organic world.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-48.png|''Metaphysical vs. Materialist Dialectical conceptions of frying and eating an egg.'']]
-Everything we know and can see is called baryonic matter and this is made up of the atom. Dark matter does not emit or absorb light but we have to assume it exists until the Large Hadron Collider tells us so for sure because there is something that we can’t see exerting gravity on baryonic matter. We can’t ever see it, this strange dark thing, but computer simulations of what it might look like if visible show it as a web that interweaves with baryonic matter like a connective tissue between the infinite everything. Literally everything in this tangled web like sliding spaghetti. I am a strand being pulled through other strands of spaghetti, only the spaghetti is not a strand, it is an infinitely long tangle, a snake swallowing itself. The very fabric of being denies solitude!
+In the metaphysical “cause and effect” model, putting an egg in a hot pan is the cause which results in the effect of producing a fried egg. The egg being fried has the effect of the egg now being suitable for eating, which is the cause of the egg being eaten by a hungry person.
-The web-like pattern of dark matter is an archetype found anywhere information is organised. It is the same shape you see in diagrams of mycelium, neurons, of the internet and the universe. So is mycelium a kind of brain and is the universe conscious? All of the above are governed by the laws of physics, and this pattern recurs simply because it is the optimum way to organise and share information.
+This is a simplification of the metaphysical conception of causes and effects, since metaphysics does recognize that one cause can have branches of multiple effects, but the essential characteristic of the metaphysical conception of causality is to break down all activity and change in the universe into static and distinct episodes of one distinct event causing one or more other distinct events.
-Mushrooms are the fruits of the network under the forest; the mycelium is the root system to colonies of mushrooms. Mushrooms at Fukushima are growing out of the contaminated forest. They are hyper-accumulating the radioactive waste out of the soil. They can be picked, burned, and the ash can be put into glass. And then the radiation is only as difficult to dispose of as all the other nuclear waste we have bottled up. Perhaps the universe wants to help us to help ourselves. Perhaps it leaves us clues. The particular shape of the cloud from a nuclear blast is a dome on a column. A mushroom.
+In contrast, the materialist dialectical model of development holds that every result stems from mutual impacts which occur relationally between things, phenomena, and ideas, and that the resulting synthesis — the newly developed result of mutual impacts — will then have new relations with other things, phenomena, and ideas, and that these ''relations'' will become new reasons for new results through ''mutual impact''.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+In this example, the egg and the hot pan will mutually impact each other. The frying pan will become dirty and need to be washed (the result of putting an egg in the frying pan); meanwhile, the egg will become a fried egg, which is fit for human consumption (the result of being cooked in the frying pan). The fried egg will then have a relationship with a hungry human, and this relationship will be a new reason which will lead to further results (i.e., the human eating and digesting the egg).
-[[Image:f0271-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-And so Sylvia Plath was being especially clever when she chose mushrooms as her vehicle for inheriting the earth. Mushrooms offer the chance of renewal. And the wilderness can always be renewed if we only stop sending Voyagers into it. The wilderness can be given back to itself. New Zealand has given the legal status of personhood to Te Urewera National Park and the Whanganui river and its tributaries, which means they now have all of the rights and autonomy that a person does and cannot be exploited and are not owned.
+So, the key difference between the classical metaphysical conception of causality and the materialist dialectical model of development is that metaphysics focus more on individual events in time whereas materialist dialectics focus on the relations and mutual impacts between things, phenomena, and ideas over time.
-As I lie on the forest floor, an ant or some small fast thing runs across my face and onto my lip and it tickles but I do not want to brush it off in case it gets crushed. I let it carry on making a planet of my face, running all directions, acknowledging its contours and using the information to paint itself a picture of my terrain, like the rover on Mars, like me here in Denali.
+==== b. Dialectical relationship between Reason and Result ====
-=== {{anchor|Topofch06html}} HOW TO SAY GOODBYE ===
+The relationship between Reason and Result is objective, and it contains inevitability: there is no Reason that does not lead to a Result; and likewise, there is no Result without any Reason.
-==== SOLASTALGIA ====
+Reasons cause Results, which is why Reason always comes before Result, and Result always comes after Reason.
-So really why am I out here and what am I looking for? I am looking for something that is lost and kept from me but I do not quite know what it is. When I find it I know it will be broken and that I need to fix it but I don’t know how to do that either. What I want right now is to be able to go back in time and talk to a younger lost me and tell her some things that I ''have'' found out.
+A Reason can cause one or many Results and a Result can be caused by one or many Reasons.
-You are sixteen years old and you are confused and lost and numb. You do not know your body or yourself and you mediate them through a little pill that you think is doing you good, reshaping you to fit in a world that will not otherwise accommodate you. You are told at the same time that it is yours now finally; you are lucky to be a modern woman. But it feels otherwise.
+When many Reasons lead to a single Result, the impacts which lead to the Result are mutual between all things, phenomena, and ideas at hand. These mutual impacts can have many relational positions or roles, including: direct reasons, indirect reasons, internal reasons, external reasons, etc.
-How do you feel about the place you call home? Crumbled industrial spaces, shiny new mega-stores, rivers yellow at the lips like disease with Coke-can flotsam, no space to be alone so that you can even know what it is to be together. You feel about it like you feel about your body, as though forces from outside are keeping you apart from it. You are helpless to possess it and you don’t understand that others have no right to. What is this homesickness?
+-----
-Every time you switch on the news you are overwhelmed by the weight of the bad in the world. You cry because you feel so helpless about it. A whole aboriginal community is put on antidepressants because they are suffering from PTSD. They are suffering from PTSD because there was an oil spill off the coast of British Columbia and the oil washed up and it killed everything that was beautiful in their home. You think this is the saddest thing in the world. How big is home? How atomised? How atomised are you?
+==== Annotation 137 ====
-It makes sense that you are a little psychotic and sad. You have got raging hormones and fake ones too and you are living in a shattered world. If your body is not yours to put in the wilderness, then without choice you can only ever feel lonely; unhomely; displaced. And you have been trained, socialised into mega-empathy like a dolphin is. That is not to say you feel it more because you are closer to it by virtue of some innate characteristic. But you feel it a little when a whole forest on the other side of the world is felled, or when another animal becomes extinct, because you see a shard of your lost self in it.
+As stated in the previous annotation, Reasons which lead to Results stem from mutually impacting relations between things, phenomena, and ideas. There is no way for one subject to affect another subject without also being affected itself in some way.
-To know yourself you need to know what you are not the same as, but there are shards of you everywhere. According to Greenlandic Inuits, you have many souls. As many as seven. The souls are tiny people scattered through your body. The tiny people are shards of bigger people that can be found in pieces, in places outside of you.
+Reasons can take many forms, including (but not limited to):
-You are made up of webs of relation which are always in the process of reconfiguration, but it is when you tear away too quickly and too much that you uproot, like a plant can be transplanted if you are gentle and slow but if you rip it up and put it in a place that is hostile, it withers. Like the taking away of identity cards or the sticking of a little aboriginal girl into foster care or the extinction of animals; it is then that there is homesickness and there are fewer shards of a lost self to be found.
+'''Types of Reasons and Results'''
-Likewise as part of the web you can feel its reverberations, and you can feel how everything you do too warps the fabric in some small way. You have to be aware of these reverberations. You have to be aware of the placement of your body, your specific viewpoint, your Observer Effect. To begin healing is to realise this and to make amends and to remember.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-49.png|''Direct Reasons stem from immediate relations.'']]
-Sam said you should not just go off in search of something better for yourself. He said water protectors are living in a camp at Standing Rock where they want to stop an oil pipe being built through sacred land. And they must feel the most hopeless feeling of the panic of loss, but they will not just take themselves off alone somewhere quieter to be in peace and converse with their ego. They will stay and try to resist what is a corruption to the very core of their being, even if their resistance can only end in failure. ''Sam, I am so sorry I did not see it.''
+'''Direct Reasons''' are Reasons which stem from immediate relations, with no intervening relations standing between the Reason and Result.
-And how it must have seemed to him, my project of staking a claim to solitude and autonomy, trying to emulate the Mountain Men while at the same time there are other women being violently reminded of their lack of even more. It is all a game to you, he must have thought. I saw his resentment as a man-shackle, a reminder of myself as a dragged-around woman, and thought I was casting this off by ignoring him. I have been emulating and my whole journey has been compliance. I can Buck as well as any man, but now I understand it better, why would I want to be like them, the Mountain Men?
+For example, dropping a coffee cup causes an immediate relationship between the cup and the ground, and that relation leads directly to the Result of the coffee cup breaking to pieces.
-So this morning I have to say goodbye to the tower and the ghosts of P Harris and Johnston Wills and the wolves, leaving the spider to its flies, taking the little wooden boat from the side of the ship used for getting to the island back to the main ship again.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-50.png|''Indirect Reasons have an intervening relationship between the Reason and the Result.'']]
-And probably I will never come back here. And probably nobody will for a long time. I am pulling myself back from deep space and into orbit, feeling sad and happy like the moonwalkers.
+'''Indirect Reasons''' are Reasons which have intervening relations between a Reason and a Result.
-I have slept all those nights alone and far away, and I have proved to myself that I can be the kind of person who does those things and there is nothing in my biology stopping me. The documentary as proof never mattered. Maybe that is all but it feels enough, to know that if I wanted to I could be the kind of person who can handle it, that my character is strong enough to endure itself alone as a Mountain Man.
+For example, the dropped coffee cup above may have smashed into pieces directly because it hit the ground, but it may also have indirect Reasons. The person holding the cup may have been frightened because she heard a loud noise, and the loud noise was caused by a car backfiring, and the car backfiring was caused by the driver not maintaining his car engine.
-Even if at first it was terrifying and I thought maybe I could not do it and my nerves were so wound up that I had to act to myself, act to the part of me that was shit scared and lonely and in a continual feeling of fight or flight.
+In materialist dialectical terms, the driver’s relationship with his car would be an indirect Reason for the car backfiring; the relationship between the car (which backfired) and the person holding the coffee cup would be the direct Reason for dropping the cup; and the cup’s relationship with the ground would be the direct reason for the cup smashing. At the same time, the driver’s relationship with his car would be an indirect Reason for the Result of the coffee cup smashing to pieces.
-But the fight half-fought and in the end it overcame and it won. And this is the hugeness of my small voyage. Something has been stretched in me that makes the general elastic of my life more malleable and I will be able to always feel and notice this new plasticity.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-51.png|''Internal Reasons stem from internal relationships.'']]
-Thoreau decided that as important as it was to be alone in his cabin he still did not want or need to do it for ever. No matter how Walden reads he still went back to Concord. Chris McCandless decided this too if his diary is anything to go by; he just died accidentally before he could do anything about it.
+'''Internal Reasons''' are Reasons which stem from internal relations that occur between aspects and factors ''within'' a subject.
-==== THE KNOWING SELF IS PARTIAL ====
+For example, if a building collapses because the steel structure ''within'' the building rusts and fails, then that could be viewed as an ''internal Reason'' for the collapse.
-When I got back to the cabin I crawled into the cot and slept for a whole day. I was so tired I felt like I might never be able to move again, but eventually hunger got me up, I made some rice with salt and ate it and then slept for some hours more. When I woke up I decided what was to be done with my time capsule.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-52.png|''External Reasons stem from external relations.'']]
-I gathered together Damon’s things neatly and reparcelled them in the tarp, then I put them back beneath the floorboards and left them exactly as I found them. And I hope hard that no one else ever finds them and that, if they do, they believe they are the only person to have found them, and that they are a woman (or Eskimo) too, because everyone knows girls are well versed at keeping secrets.
+'''External Reasons''' are reasons which stem from external relations that occur between different things, phenomena, and ideas.
-I laid everything out on the floor and sat cross-legged looking over it: the camera, my diary, the laptop, my notes. The collection felt like a snowshoe hare without a soul inside, an empty vessel. Now that I can’t use it for what it was for, what I wanted it to be, a feminist Golden Record, because there can be no such thing.
+For example, if a building collapses because it is smashed by a wrecking ball, then that could be viewed as an ''external Reason'' for the collapse.
-And then one of those last days I walked out onto the tundra in the evening when the sun was unusually orange like an extremely orange egg yolk, the kind of orange yolk that you know is full of goodness, and it spilt across the tundra making everything yolky and big. And on the tundra right behind the cabin, as if I had felt them and the inclination to go outside came to me because of this, there was an entire herd of reindeer just stood about together, munching on tundra grass and being reindeer.
+All of these roles and positions can be viewed ''relatively''. From one viewpoint, a Reason may be seen as internal, but from another viewpoint, it might be viewed as external. For example, if a couple has a disagreement which leads to an argument, the disagreement may be seen as an external Reason from the perspective of each individual within the couple. But to a relationship counselor viewing the situation from the outside, the disagreement may be seen as an internal Reason which leads to ''the couple'' (a subject defined by the internal relationship between the husband and wife) arguing.
-And in that moment it occurred to me that my reindeer did not die because it was not my reindeer at all. It had always been this herd; it had been one after another crossing my path, the scouts to the herd, the forerunners preceding the main migration.
+From one perspective, a government official ordering a building to be torn down may be seen as the direct Reason for the Result of the building being torn down. But from a different perspective, one can see many intervening relations: complaints from local residents may have led to the government official making the order, the order would be delivered to a demolition crew, the demolition crew would assign a crew member to operate a wrecking ball, the crew member would operate the wrecking ball, the wrecking ball would smash the building. All of these can be seen as intervening relations which constitute indirect reasons leading up to the direct Reason of the wrecking ball smashing the building. Choosing the right viewpoint during analysis is critical to make sure that Reason and Result relations are viewed properly and productively, and care must also be taken to ensure that the correct Reasons are attributed to Results (see ''Reason and Result'', p. 138).
-And I thought to myself, ''that'' is the point of reindeer, ''that'' is what she meant by my reindeer telling me my future. My reindeer tells me that I cannot follow it; it is the proprioception I need to know myself. Thoreau again: ‘We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.’
+Likewise, a Reason can cause many Results, including primary and secondary Results.
-The reindeer tells me that my future is the linear continuity of whatever I build it from because I build and then preserve my own history. It is never complete or completely true but I have to hold on to things that relate to an idea of myself and what I am doing; my cloud castle. It is important to have a story. And this, my history, can be encapsulated in my time capsule. There is pushing a time capsule into the stratosphere and there is the utter negation of symbols, annihilating completely. Somewhere in between I know there is something meaningful. It is what I do with the time capsule, its intent, and not the time capsule itself, that matters.
+-----
-===== Do you know the difference between a caribou and a reindeer? =====
+==== Annotation 138 ====
-===== No, I do not. =====
+'''Primary''' Results are Results which are more direct and predictable.
-===== A caribou is larger and more slender and part of a wild herd. A reindeer is semi-wild but it has been domesticated. They are the same species. Reindeer were domesticated in Eurasia over 2000 years ago, then brought to Alaska by colonisers as food, in 1892, as part of the Reindeer Project, created to replace whale meat in the diet of indigenous peoples. The colonisers thought that the geography of the land would prevent the domesticated reindeer leaving to join the caribou herds. In 1997, all of the reindeer joined the Western Artic Caribou Herd and disappeared. =====
+'''Secondary''' Results are Results which are indirect and less predictable.
-===== How tenacious. =====
+For example, an earthquake may have ''primary'' Results such as the ground shaking, buildings being destroyed, etc. ''Secondary'' Results from the earthquake might include flights being rerouted from local airports, shortages at grocery stores, etc.
-===== Some may have already spread via Inuit tribes who share a cultural history with tribes of Eurasia, over in Siberia. =====
+In the motion of the material world, there is no known “first Reason” or “final Result.”
-===== Oh. =====
+-----
-===== But does all that make them any less potent? =====
+==== Annotation 139 ====
-===== I guess we all came from somewhere. =====
+With our current understanding of the universe, it is uncertain what might have caused the creation of all existence. Was it the Big Bang? If so, did the Big Bang have some underlying reason? There is also no way to know if there will ever be a “final Result.” Will the heat death of the universe occur, and if so, will that end all transpiring of relations which would end the cycle of development — of Reasons and Results?
-I felt the pulse of the whole great herd of caribou, calf mothers and babies and, yes, some males as well, stood out on the tundra making Dali-shadows in the molten bask of the sun. And I knew that it did not have to be a particular reindeer guarding me like an angel and it did not have to talk to me and tell me my future because there is enough magic in seeing a whole herd of anything just being, just being apart and for themselves.
+As of now, we do not have solid answers to these questions. If and when answers arise, it is possible that the materialist dialectical framework will need to be updated to reflect new scientific knowledge, just as Marx, Engels, and Lenin have updated materialist dialectics in the past [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. What’s important to understand in the meantime is that within our realm of human experience and understanding, for all practical purposes, every Result which we live through and observe has some underlying Reason, and will itself lead to one or more Results.
-This is it, the point of complexity and otherness and the thing that I needed to take away and the thing worth saving and the reason to not bugger off to Mars and the reason Damon should have stayed alive. I think I am ready to talk to Damon now. I think I have decided what I need to say.
+Engels said: “we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis [see Annotation 200, p. 192], positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed, and that despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate [are mixed together]. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.”<ref>''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', Friedrich Engels, 1880.</ref>
-Damon, I have been unravelling, unravelling, to try to get to where you were at, and I came undone, I was scared I might go all the way too and end as a tangled mess of unravelling. I followed your philosophy all the way to its genesis, like the deduction that led to the atom bomb. Of this unravelling and of the atom bomb you would say let it happen, let it all unravel and go up in nuclear flames, it’s sad but it’s for the best, the world is better off without us. But I have come so far. I thought there must be a reason to save something of it if I can. To let it all go is to lose too much. And I found a reason. Because it can all be written differently, we can change the direction of the story.
+-----
-===== Nothing is lost with no one there to miss it, you said that. =====
+==== Annotation 140 ====
-Stay with me. The complexity of our symbols distinguishes us from all the other creatures (as it stands right now) and you think that from the symbols emanates the bad thing, the thing that propels us towards catastrophe. And perhaps it does right now, but I do not think it is inherent in the symbols. Yes, our language is dichotomising, but for now it is the only one we have to work with. The Enlightenment taxonomers wanted to posses and to control the natural world and they sewed their signatures into the names. Yes, as with the Earthrise photo we can lose the directness of the thing to symbolism, but shared meaning is potent too. We need our symbols so that we can feel the love of sad beauty. If the mountain had no symbolic meaning it would just be a chunk of rock. If I did not know the difference between a kestrel and a buzzard it would be easier to forget them both. Naming can be reverence and not possession.
+In the above passage, Engels is simply explaining that since all things, phenomena, and ideas are relationally linked and inter-related [see ''Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics'', p. 106], the mutual impacts and processes of change which lead to development (the reasons and results which transpire between all things, phenomena, and ideas) are also all linked and inter-related. What might be viewed as a Reason is also a Result of one or more prior Reasons, just as every Result is also a Reason for future Results.
-Narratives are important. Narratives can be dangerous. The trick is to be critical, to always be trying to choose the right and good one. To be critical of your view from what body, to what limit. There would be no love of sad beauty without us. There would not be anything worth dying for without beauty.
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-Well, there might be some love of sad beauty without us but not felt by anything potent and influential enough to do anything about it apart from feel sad and in love. For example, the pack rat collects objects that interest it and it stores them all in its midden. Middens are considered by palaeo-ecologists to be reliable time capsules of natural life of millennia ago. And the bowerbird, when it builds a nest, gives its nest a garden and garden ornaments made from beetles’ wings and orchids and things. It might be to attract a mate but the bowerbird’s beautiful objects have to exist otherwise the world would be too easy to let go of. What do bowerbirds and pack rats mean by their collecting? Are these creatures saying ‘I too am in the appreciation of beauty club’ and at the base of it they are just as scared of being alone as the rest of us?
+Because the relationship between Reason and Result is objective and inevitable, we can’t ignore the relationship between Reason and Result in our perception and practice. In reality, there is no thing, phenomenon or idea that can exist without any underlying Reason or Reasons; and vice versa, there is no Reason that does not lead to any Result.
-We need to realise that our categories are illusions, but we also need to be able to name the tiny things, the microscopic creatures that live inside us, we have to name them because how could we know them if we did not name them and how could we love them if we did not know them? We need to be able to find a place in the continuum to point at and say ‘me’.
+-----
-Wilderness as a static boundary keeps humans out of nature, as though we are still two sides of a dichotomy when we are not. But it is also useful to stop from saturation, the unbalance of the system from too many Mountain Men. Thoreau wanted full libertarian ‘freedom’, like Buck the dog, but men are more destructive than dogs, which would leave wildness to fend for itself against many Mountain Men with guns and pickaxes, which it can’t. The ‘self-willed man’ stakes his claim to freedom while taking no care over anybody else’s.
+==== Annotation 141 ====
-This regulation does not take away the wildness. The plants and animals do not even think of it. You can call the mountain Mount McKinley but the Athabaskans will still call it Deenaalee. And wildness allows for renewal. Like the flux of Inuit identity, the wild is not static. The tamed can be feral can be wild again.
+In political activity, it is important to remember that ''every'' interaction within every relationship will lead to mutual impacts which will cause change and development; in other words, everything we choose to do will be the Reason for one or more Results. We must be aware of unintended or unpredicted Results from our activities.
-The categorisation of indigenous peoples was a colonial endeavour in the first place, an awarding of status and non-status. They mostly had no written language before white people arrived. But there is empowerment where communities can self-identify. Eskimo language is being written down, in order to preserve it, in order that young Eskimos can relearn the language that underpins their culture. They need a taxonomy of self to know themselves. The plaque in the visitors’ centre has a hopeful message of regeneration. It says that modern ethnically Eskimo and Athabaskan people are reclaiming and reviving their languages and cultures.
+Reason-Result relationships are very complicated and diverse. Therefore, we must accurately identify the types of Reasons [direct, indirect, internal, external, etc.] so that we can come up with proper solutions which are suitable for the specific situation in both perception and practice. A Reason can lead to many results and, likewise, a Result can be caused by many Reasons, which is why we must have a comprehensive viewpoint and a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] in our perception of reality so we can properly analyse, solve and apply Reason-Result relationships.
-Once you realise the thing that would be missing when all is lost, you have a responsibility to it, to the future. Because trans-migration is a really beautiful concept and if you understand how potent it is you have a responsibility to help it carry on. Like the difference between a dead Damon and a Damon never born. You feel it too. You must have left your diary somewhere your mother could find it.
+-----
-The yearning of lack and the panic of saturation are part of what sent me, but to try to shrug them off is to shake off the shackles of responsibility that are at the same time ribbons of meaning. It is important to have a story for yourself, in order to be in love with the world. And it is the love we feel when we look at the mountain which could save it. Maybe women are made more prone to loneliness, but is this a bad thing? We will be lonely without the plants and the animals and we feel their loss more acutely. There is no purity so there is always the possibility for renewal. Like mother goddess renewal, not like a male god of beginnings and ends.
+==== Annotation 142 ====
-===== Stop being so New Agey. =====
+It is critical to understand that there may be many events or relationships which might be falsely ascribed as Reasons for a given Result (and vice-versa).
-===== Why don’t you try not being so literal? =====
+For example: in 1965, the United States of America officially declared war on North Vietnam after the so-called “Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” in which Vietnamese forces supposedly fired on a United States Navy ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is often described as the “cause” or the “Reason” that the Vietnam War began.
-==== A LETTER FOR THE UNABOMBER ====
+However, the real “Reason” why the USA declared war on North Vietnam had to do with the underlying contradiction between capitalist imperialism and communism in Vietnam. This contradiction had to be resolved one way or another. The United States of America willfully decided to try to negate this contradiction by instigating war, and this was the true reason the war began. In fact, the so-called “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” never even occurred as described — the attack on the USA’s ship never really occurred. A document released by the Pentagon in 2005 revealed that the incident was completely fabricated. So, saying that the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” was the Reason for the war is nonsensical, since it’s an event which never even occurred in reality.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Ms Erin Miller</div>
+Understanding the true nature of Reason and Result is very important for making decisions and choosing a path forward in political action. Attributing the wrong Reason to a Result, or misunderstanding the Results which stem from a Reason, can lead to serious setbacks and failures. Therefore, it is vital for revolutionaries to properly identify and understand the ''actual'' Reasons and Results which drive development.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Cabin in the Wilderness</div>
+=== 3. Obviousness and Randomness ===
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Denali Wilderness</div>
+==== a. Categories of Obviousness and Randomness ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Alaska</div>
+-----
-Ted Kaczynski 04475–046
+==== Annotation 143 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">USP FLORENCE ADMAX</div>
+In Vietnamese, the words for these categories are “tất nhiên” and “ngẫu nhiên,” which respectively translate to “obvious” and “random.” In socialist literature, various words have been used by different authors to convey the underlying meaning of these categories (Engels, for instance, used the terms “necessary” and “accidental” to mean “obvious” and “random,” respectively). We have chosen to use words which closely match the Vietnamese used in the original text, but the reader should be aware that these same concepts may be described using many different words in various English translations of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, etc.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">U.S. PENITENTIARY</div>
+The ''Obviousness'' category refers to events that occur because of the essential [see ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156] internal aspects of the material structure of a subject. These essential internal characteristics become reasons for certain results under certain conditions: the Obvious ''has'' to happen in a certain way, it ''can’t'' happen any other way.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">PO BOX 8500</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">FLORENCE, CO 81226</div>
+==== Annotation 144 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Dear Mr Kaczynski,</div>
+''Obviousness'' can only apply to material subjects in the material world and results which are certain to happen based on the material laws of nature. Obviousness arises from the internal aspects, features, and relations of physical objects. Paper ''will'' burn under certain specific conditions, due its internal material structure. If those conditions (i.e., temperature, the presence of oxygen, etc.) exist, then paper ''will'' catch fire predictably. In other words, paper will ''obviously'' burn under certain circumstances due to its internal composition,.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I am a girl writing to you from a cabin in the wilderness. I have read your manifesto while here from beginning to end because instead of taking for granted that everybody who said you were just a crazy person was right, I wanted to understand why you set off the bombs for myself. I am a big fan of your work; your understanding of the technological system and your predictions for the future of humanity echo worries that I have myself. You are right that this reckless and unsustainable system is causing climate change. But I have come to the conclusion that you take these things so far as to void them, and have actually given more ammunition to the system you despise. I think you need to know this because yours is a dangerous logic and while you spout it others are living and dying by it.</div>
+The ''Randomness'' category refers to things that happen because of external reasons: things that happen, essentially, by chance, due to impacts from many external relations. A Random outcome ''may'' occur or it ''may not'' occur; a Random outcome could happen ''this'' way or it could happen ''that'' way.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I know what happened to you at Berkeley and I am sorry that you can’t help that it made you the way you are. You are not wholly to blame for your legacy but I can’t resurrect Thoreau to chide him, or Charles Darwin or Adam Smith, and evidently each has an influence on and on in infinite regress. But you are alive and with living disciples and you have a responsibility for your words while they are still mutable. You could be the last link in a chain that unravels from itself.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I am sure you get lots of letters, both fan mail and hate mail alike, but I wanted to ensure that you received the thoughtful perspective of a woman because I feel your philosophy would benefit from this greatly. I know you do not like girls and especially not feminists, or the English, so I am addressing you as a fellow member of the human race, specifically one who is uneasy about the future of humanity under the current technological regime. It worries me also to think that the time may come where there is complete discord between humans and nature. It terrifies me that our civilisation seems to think that we could exist happily as the sole inhabitants of a barren planet. This is not the way I want things to go either. However, I do not think that this outcome is an inevitable progression from where we are now, only a possible one. And I do not think your revolution of individualists who will destroy the system then return to life in the wilderness as loners or in small clans is a fair or just or helpful cause.</div>
+==== Annotation 145 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I did some maths. I am not very good at maths like you are but roughly I think I worked something out. So Earth has about 57,500,000 square miles of dry land and not all of it is habitable, but if you take away the 23 per cent of mountains and 33 per cent of desert which totals 32,200,000 square miles you are left with 25,300,000 square miles. Now divide this between the 7,107,663,700 (give or take a few) people on Earth circa 2013, and remember this is also rough, but just for the sake of argument then 25,300,000 ÷ 7,107,663,700 = 0.00355953813 square miles, or 9,219.2 square metres. 9,219.2 square metres per person, which is just a little larger than a football pitch. Enough room for your cabin but not for the woods or much land to grow things and generally be self-sufficient, even with each individual farming their own plot and trading with neighbours, even with some grouping together in order to farm animals. There is still not enough room to avoid the rest of humanity or to be immersed in nature because all the cabins would disrupt the grazing and migration land of animals and also many trees would have to be cut down for all the logs. Also by estimates, the amount of land that would be needed to support a hunter-gatherer lifestyle far outweighs the amount of land available per head currently (only enough land to support around 100 million hunter-gatherers).</div>
+As we discussed above, paper ''will'' burn if it reaches a certain temperature — that much is ''obvious''. If your friend holds paper over the flame of the lighter, the paper ''will'' burn — that’s ''obvious''. But you can’t be certain whether your friend will actually hold the paper to the flame or not. This demonstrates ''Randomness''. Whether your friend will ultimately hold the paper to the flame or not depends on an external relation which is not defined by the internal structure of the paper, and which can’t be predicted with the same predictability as obvious events which are rooted in internal material aspects.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I am sure you would argue that population would not be an issue because after the revolution and subsequent fall of technology many drones would starve to death without the system to feed or medicate them. But here I think you underestimate people’s resourcefulness. Surely those with sense would not just curl up and die but loot the cities of their resources, and when these are spent they will drive their SUVs into your wilderness and shoot your wildlife with their machine-made rifles to feed their children, who cannot be fed by the system because of the revolution. Another danger is that the elite would monopolise the remaining resources due to their power and the availability they already have the upper hand on, and would therefore be the ones not to perish, leaving them with a foundation from which to build back up and become monolithic (they already have exclusive billionaire underground bunkers set up for the apocalypse in Germany somewhere). This for me is immoral, and very easy for you to say from your privileged position. Not everyone can have access to the freedom you condemn them for snubbing.</div>
+==== b. Dialectical relationship between Obviousness and Randomness ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Maybe I am biased because my tiny female brain is 40 per cent social, but the way I see it, the biggest threat to the freedom of each individual is the patriarchal hierarchical structure of society and the waning of its resources, which puts strain on those at the bottom and is mostly caused by those at the top. I weigh this threat as the one which affects the most people, rather than that which weighs most heavily on certain individuals (i.e. you). A predominant concern for us both is population density, because the denser it gets, the more restricted becomes the individual’s freedom. Therefore your dismissal of the feminist and gay movements is a fatal flaw as their success is key to a social reform that could curb or decrease indiscriminate population growth.</div>
+Obviousness and Randomness both exist objectively and play an important role in the motion and development of things and phenomena. Obviousness plays the decisive role.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Generally liberating poor people, liberating women, getting oppressed women into the workplace, or educating them on the options available to them and providing them with the means, could reduce reproduction. Around the world nearly 40 per cent of pregnancies are unintended. Around 350 million women in developing countries did not want their last child or do not want another, but they do not have access to information or services to help them. This means deconstructing patriarchy so that women can take control of their bodies. The deconstruction would also mean that the sole pressure is not on the woman when it comes to child-rearing. Equally shared roles between parents and even communal care would relieve this. The current paradigm does not want communal care because it means the child is not moulded in the image of its parents and is therefore not time-capsulised.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I think one of the sentiments that underpins this problem, perhaps the most significant sentiment, is actually the individualism that you advocate. A more collectivist sentiment would encourage alternative ways of fulfilling the desire to nurture, without feeling the need to immortalise the self in genes, and lead to an increase in adoption of children.</div>
+==== Annotation 146 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The concept of metempsychosis is a beautiful thing, and I think that once it is embraced the need for biological children will seem outmoded, we will think like the Inuits and name our children in plural. Every person around you gives and takes from the fabric of you. This is spiritual and intellectual more than it is biological. It is how men have been doing it throughout time. You can’t just spay people; you have to remind them that our shards don’t migrate with specificity of genes in mind.</div>
+Obviousness plays the decisive role simply because Obviousness is far more predictable and the laws which govern material phenomena are essentially fixed. We can’t change the laws of physics, the nature of chemical reactions, etc.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">But anyway, population is not everything; it is the individualist consumer mentality of the developed world that causes more emissions than the ‘overpopulated’ developing world. This can be reformed into a free and equal society based on cooperation and voluntary contribution from all for the good of everyone, which is the fairest way to liberate, spreading freedom as opposed to consolidating it. The technological system can be used to help reform, spreading the message and reminding the people that we are WORLD CITIZENS. Our skill for invention is not the issue, but the way that we are directing our skills. Scientific research and technology are vital in bringing basic rights and freedoms to such a large population. It is scientific research and technology that have given us an understanding of deep time and therefore of our future generations ahead. It is scientific invention that got us far enough to stop and consider ourselves.</div>
+Obviousness and Randomness exist in dialectical unity; there is no pure Obviousness, nor pure Randomness. It is obvious that Randomness shall occur in our universe, however Obviousness clears a path through this Randomness.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">This individualism is tied up in your invocation of FREEDOM. Your kind of freedom still requires a dualistic philosophy for it to be maintained. Searching for absolutes in nature builds just another dualistic metanarrative, one of good vs. evil and pure vs. impure. This kind of freedom is the philosophical driving force behind the Machine. You are worried about the subjugation of human nature, but see, essential human nature does not exist.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The thing that has been bugging me all this time is the influence of the idea of natural law in the arguments of the Mountain Men. Although I could just argue now that science or natural law is just a bunch of stories, I wanted to meet you on your own territory, so I have come up with some scientific proofs against the argument of the Mountain Men that civilisation is unnatural and women just biologically suck:</div>
+==== Annotation 147 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">There is the evolutionary case of sexual dimorphism. Although I could just invoke Lynn Margulis and her whole argument for origins and cooperation over competition, I want to be specific. In our close relatives of the ape family, males have much more pronounced canines than do females (apart from bonobos, a matriarchal species). In the bones of our long-dead predecessors it has been noted that males had much more pronounced canines, which shrank and shrank until they are as they are now, in no way divergent between the sexes.</div>
+Our universe is incredibly complex and there are many different potential external relations which could impact any given situation, such that some degree of Randomness is always present in any situation; in other words, the presence of Randomness can be seen as Obvious.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">One theory is that this is because females, when selecting a mate, selected social and sharing males, reducing the evolutionary need for big old canines. The theory is that this is because there was not much or maybe any division of labour between the sexes, we all hunt-gathered, and likely took our meat from scavenging. Sexual specialisation probably came very late in human evolution, as late as the dawn of agriculture, the so-called Neolithic Revolution 12,500 years ago.</div>
+In 1922, Ho Chi Minh identified objective internal characteristics of the working class of France and its colonies. He wrote: “The mutual ignorance of the two proletariats gives rise to prejudices. The French workers look upon the native as an inferior and negligible human being, incapable of understanding and still less of taking action. The natives regard all the French as wicked exploiters. Imperialism and capitalism do not fail to take advantage of this mutual suspicion and this artificial racial hierarchy to frustrate propaganda and divide forces which ought to unite.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The Palaeolithic came before the Neolithic and had a very vast time span of around 2.5 million years. It has only been 12,500 years since the dawn of agriculture, and the birth of the ‘modern human’. The Palaeolithic world and way of being stayed static for all that time. They obviously had the formula for being human just right then, before things started to change.</div>
+In this example, Ho Chi Minh identifies prejudice as an obvious outcome of mutual ignorance. The prejudice arises as a matter of course from internal objective aspects of the two proletarian groups. As long as French and native workers remain ignorant of one another, prejudice will arise. The specific forms which this prejudice will take, however, and their resulting impacts and developments, will be more or less Random because there are many external factors (including the external impacts of the capitalist class, which seeks to take advantage of these prejudices) which can’t be predicted. Therefore, it is necessary for political revolutionaries to account for both random and obvious factors in confronting such prejudice. Ho Chi Minh’s suggestion for overcoming these difficulties was concise and to-the-point: “Intensify propaganda to overcome them.” Only by negating the internal aspects of mutual ignorance through education and propaganda could communists hope to negate the resulting prejudice.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The birdman with the boner painting in the caves at Lascaux is dated to the Upper Palaeolithic, the last division before the Neolithic and the birthing of behavioural modernity. Behavioural modernity is characterised by abstract thinking, planning depth and symbolic behaviour like art and ornamentation. So the birdman was painted at a time of upheaval and the caves are a time capsule of this period.</div>
+As Engels said: “One knows that what is maintained to be necessary [''obvious''] is composed of sheer accidents, and that the so-called accidental [''random''] is the form behind which necessity hides itself — and so on.”<ref>''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', Friedrich Engels, 1886.</ref>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The message fails time, no one can agree on what the birdman means, but that does not matter. We are allowed to interpret it for our purpose like the palaeo-ecologist interprets the pack rat’s midden (narrative licence). So here goes:</div>
+Obviousness and Randomness are not static properties: Randomness and Obviousness continuously change and develop over time. Under specific conditions, Obviousness and Randomness can transform into each other: Obviousness can become Random and Randomness can become obvious.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I could, for example, say that the birdman is aroused by the dominance that at this point in history he had begun to exert on the natural world. The yak thing represents the natural world. Perhaps that is an enlarged vulva hanging below her abdomen, representing femininity. Lots of art from this time features the female body, so called Venus figures. As though at the time the people revered the female body as a life-giving deity. Perhaps what the painting represents is the rise of patriarchy, at the cusp of two opposing paradigms. But the bull is knocking the birdman down. Perhaps what it says is matriarchy WILL PERSEVERE!!!</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">My point is that I believe there is no proof that competition and dominance are essential and innate features of the human being. The subjugation of women is not necessarily an essential fact of life.</div>
+==== Annotation 148 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">More facts (or speculations). Dopamine is the neurotransmitter associated with risk-taking and therefore adventure. It gives us a reward hit when we accomplish a task. The more risk involved in the task, the bigger the hit. A reason not everyone wants to be a Mountain Man could be that some people make less dopamine than others. Dopamine is associated with the left side of the brain while serotonin is associated with the right. As a general trend men are associated more with the left side of the brain and women with the right.</div>
+Randomness can be introduced to an obvious situation: it may be obvious that a mineshaft will collapse, until human beings come along and intervene by repairing the structural integrity of the mineshaft. It may seem Random whether a city’s economy will grow or shrink, until a volcano erupts and buries the city in lava and ash, making it obvious that the economy will not grow because the city no longer exists.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+Most situations are in a flux, as Obviousness and Randomness dialectically develop and change over time, with outcomes becoming more or less obvious or Random over time. It is vital that we, as political revolutionaries, are able to distinguish between Obviousness and Randomness and to leverage this understanding to our advantage.
-[[Image:f0289-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Dopamine is associated more with antisocial personality disorders and serotonin with borderline personality disorders. A person with antisocial personality disorder lacks empathy for other people while a borderline personality disorder feels like empathy you can’t control, boundary issues making it difficult to share another’s pain without feeling it too much as your own (the process of osmosis until the saturation point is reached).</div>
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">These are very general trends. There are more Mountain Men than Mountain Women. But a siphon movement can only start when an outside pressure has been added. A dead hand is an undesirable and persisting influence. And if you pour liquid into a mould to set it will set in the shape of the mould. Learned behaviour has been proved to actually change genetic make-up, so even biological sex is in a process of transformation always.</div>
+Basically, in our perception and reality, we have to base our plans, strategies, and actions as much as possible on the Obvious, not the Random. However, we must not ignore Randomness, nor try to separate the Obvious from the Random. When faced with situations which seem very Random, we must find ways to develop Obviousness. When faced with what seems obvious, we must keep an eye out for Randomness. Obviousness and Randomness can mutually transform, so we need to create suitable conditions to hinder or promote such transformation to suit our purposes.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The evolutionary biologists say that maybe the dopamine in the brain was the thing that sent us out of Africa. Maybe it is the chemical of species proliferation. Maybe it made me leave home. Maybe it sent the Apollo astronauts to the moon.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">But could be it is not quite an innate and natural impulse like that and the real reason is that NASA were very selective about who could join Apollo. Some psychologist did a personality assessment of all the Apollo astronauts and concluded that they were all ‘Type A’. A Type A personality is very competitive, rational, ambitious, you could say glory-hungry and selfish. And this could have to do, the psychologist said, with the fact that they were all the eldest sibling or the only son, and had patriarchal military-type fathers (remember the original desert solitude-seeking nature solace Mountain Man with the most famous absent father, our Lord Jesus Christ).</div>
+==== Annotation 149 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">And women can be Type A too, but maybe it would be better if people stopped being Type A altogether, or if we at least stopped letting Type As do all the important and influential stuff. And if Type A is still the type that provides the most astronauts, then the space colonies are not going to be much fun, are they?</div>
+We must always remember that no situation is purely obvious, nor purely Random, and to take this into account in all of our planning and activity.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The ‘primitive’ necessarily gets meaning from the contrast of civilisation. And besides, you did not ever manage to shrug off civilisation. You worshipped mathematics as absolute.</div>
+A skyscraper made from heavy steel beams may seem quite sturdy and stable; it may appear obvious that the structure will remain stable and sound for decades. However, it is still important for engineers to periodically ''confirm'' that the steel is still sound through testing and observation. Engineers must also be prepared for Random events like lightning, earthquakes, storms, etc., which may affect the seemingly obvious structural integrity of the building.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">But mathematics puts another false map on the world, which pretends to be a territory but is really just another map, same as the others. It is a thing we invented based on spatial allegories coming from our bodies and their interaction with the outside. There are different mathematics and they are inconsistent with each other, but are perfect systems. They are not real or true in your absolutist sense, so they went against your project of wilderness. It is the belief in this reduction that drives your Machine and you do not even see it.</div>
+Likewise, when faced with extremely complex situations which seem completely Random, we must seek out (or bring about) the obvious. Wildfires are extremely chaotic and difficult to predict. However, firefighters can rely on certain obvious patterns and natural laws which govern the spread of fire. By digging trenches, lighting counter-fires, spraying water, and other such actions, firefighters can bring wildfires under control. This illustrates how humans are able to make situations less Random by bringing about an increasing amount of Obviousness over time through practical activity.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">My main point is we are at a place in time now where we can be reflective. It may have been almost inevitable that our symbols would do this to us, but now we have the reflectiveness to be critical of them. But we need our symbols in order to be able to talk and think about ourselves. And to change the paradigm.</div>
+=== 4. Content and Form ===
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Aldo Leopold said, ‘a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.’ And I think this is a philosophy to live by. Our challenge is to remember that we are a part of this biotic community, and once we have remembered, to act accordingly.</div>
+==== a. Categories of Content and Form ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">In a way you are right for wanting to emulate ‘primitive’ cultures. Indigenous cultures generally are more partnership-oriented and feminine. But let us not also forget that they were not perfect; Palaeolithic man may have wiped out the woolly mammoth and some Native Americans used to run whole herds of buffalo off cliff-sides just to watch them disappear. And neither is the natural world a perfect system to emulate; Inuit get annoyed at orcas for killing so many seals just for the fun of it. But you are wrong to say there is a right-just-objective way and it is the old way, the law of the wild. There is no ahistorical way of being. If you burned all the libraries how would you have ‘known’ nature without the naturalists?</div>
+The ''Content'' category refers to the sum of all aspects, attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">We can learn from the past but also need to adapt to the future. Women are, in our society, simultaneously social and maternal, crazy and wild. The relationship we need with the natural is one that is feminine. Admitting this and ending the unfair and ungrounded exclusion of women from your philosophy of wilderness is an important step in deconstruction. I am leaving my cabin now, but it is because I have got everything I need. I have got what you were trying to keep from me.</div>
+The ''Form'' category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. ''Form'' thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The Machine is perpetuated by us and we are inextricable from it. We need to change the collective conscious to change the direction of the Machine. You are not an isolated ego. Even you, the hermit, exist in relation to your polar antithesis, society. We find ourselves in relationship to the other. When we do not, complexity is lost and we are diminished selves.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I know of a pipe that you made for a friend on which you hand-carved the words ‘Mountain Men are always free’. Mountain Men shun society, yet their solitude relies on the continuation of the system to contain the rest of humanity and leave room for their wilderness. You cannot escape the fact that you are a human being and wherever you go others will want to follow. Scythes cutting through thickets.</div>
+==== Annotation 150 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">On a final note, I know of some people who you might like to get in touch with. They are called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. With your fame I am sure you could rally to their cause by hunger-striking to death in prison. I have a friend who followed your logic and did exactly this. He was much braver and sincere to himself than you have been with your letter bombs. You could honour his life better by admitting your faults of logic.</div>
+Content and Form can be difficult to comprehend at first because the ways in which Content and Form manifest and interact can vary wildly depending on the subject being discussed and the viewpoint from which the subject is being considered.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Reform over revolution.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Content represents the component things, materials, attributes, features, etc., which, together, make up a thing, phenomenon, or idea. You can think of it as the “ingredients” from which a subject is made.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Down with patriarchy,</div>
+Form refers to a stable system of internal relationships which compose a thing, phenomenon, or idea, as well as the mode of existence and development [see Annotation 60, p. 59] of those relations.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Erin Miller (QUEEN OF THE WILD)</div>
+Remember that from a dialectical materialist perspective, everything in our universe is defined by internal and external relations. If a thing, phenomenon, or idea has internal relations which are ''relatively'' stable, then it has a Form.
-==== THE CLITORIS IS A DIRECT LINE TO THE MATRIX ====
+We would not call all of the assorted ingredients which are used to make a cake “a cake” unless they have been assembled together and baked into the stable form which we interpret as “a cake.” Once a portion is removed from the cake, the portion itself assumes a new stable form which we call “a slice of cake.” The slice of cake will maintain its relatively stable form until being eaten, discarded, or otherwise transitioning into some other form. It is only considered a “slice of cake” for as long as it maintains its own specific stable form.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Rachel Carson says it is finally time to lay her to rest. She has taught me what there was to learn. I lay her down in a long wooden canoe. This is so I can set her out, flowing back to the sea to commune with the whales. I set the canoe on fire. I have to set it on fire to fumigate her spirit. This is to try to get rid of some of the imprints the dead leave once the spirit has dissipated. She explains that, more and more, it is impossible to fumigate entirely. Left behind the body is always a fine powder, unnervingly green. It is a lifetime’s accumulation of polychlorinated biphenyl and endocrine disruptors and bisphenol-A from the liver (the chains that cannot be dismantled). These cannot transmigrate into the spiritual realm, but they can’t be reabsorbed back into the natural world either like the ashes can. They remain in the physical realm as a negative imprint.</div>
+Stability itself is also ''relative'': a “spray” of water may only last for a few seconds but we can still conceive of it as having Form. On the other hand, a mountain has a set of stable internal relations (a Form) which might last for millions of years.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">(But there is also the positive charge and that stays too because ideas can’t be set on fire. I feel shards of it slide into me, like chakra disks that do not hurt.)</div>
+We can think of Form as having two aspects: inner Form and outer Form.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">As the canoe glides across the ocean it burns up and gets less and less until nothing is left. Then the soul is completely free to transmigrate. Part of the soul slips into the ocean because that is where it wants to be. This soul attaches to a ''Siphonophore'', an odd creature that looks like a jellyfish so that sometimes it is mistakenly identified as one.</div>
+''Inner form'' refers to the internal stable relations which we have already discussed.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+''Outer form'' is how an object “appears” to human senses.
-[[Image:f0293-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">But these creatures are really a unity of tiny cellular creatures, simultaneously individual and collective and multicellular. Each member of the colony has a different function towards benefiting the organism as a whole. No member could survive independent of the others that do the things that it can’t. They are genetically the same and they live and die as one. And all are connected to a stem and to a circulatory system, and they develop from the same embryo, like sprouting a Siamese twin from your side again and again and again.</div>
+In this book, we are primarily concerned with the ''inner Form'' of subjects, however, in other contexts (such as art and design), the ''outer Form'' plays a more prominent role.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">(But then, what with global warming and the acidification of the oceans, lots of the sea creatures will die and she will have to transmigrate again. Where will all the souls accumulate when there are not the billions of small creatures and no room for more big and potent ones? What havoc will they play, waiting for a body?)</div>
+Now, let’s identify some of the common viewpoints from which Content and Form might be considered.
-==== WHAT BOOK IS THIS THAT REFUSES TO END? ====
+'''Material vs. Ideal'''
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">When the Helios 2 probe launched in 1976 it was the fastest spacecraft ever built, its top speed reaching 157,000 miles per hour. Proxima Centauri is our nearest star and it is 24 trillion miles away. If Helios 2 were to head directly for Proxima Centauri at its top speed it would take 17,000 years to reach it; 17,000 years is a span equivalent to the one that separates modern-day humans from Cro-Magnon cave painters. If Voyager 1 were to travel the same distance it would take it 74,000 years; 74,000 years ago early Palaeolithic people were almost killed off by a supervolcano that erupted in Indonesia and spread ash around the whole planet.</div>
+When discussing the ''material'' — i.e., ''objective'' systems and objects<ref>See Annotation 10, p. 10 and Annotation 108, p. 112.</ref> — discussion of Content and Form is more straightforward.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">On and on the little spaceship goes. So far in time it is thirty-seven years away. The year Voyager 1 launched was 1977. That year there were eleven major plane crashes, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay elected official in the US, American man Roy Sullivan got struck by lightning for the seventh time, Spain had its first democratic election since Franco, Queen Elizabeth II opened the parliaments of Australia and New Zealand, the Bucharest earthquake killed 1,500 people, Jimmy Carter became the thirty-ninth president of America, Gary Gilmore from Utah was the first person to be executed after the death penalty was reintroduced in America, Hamida Djandoubi was the last person to be executed by guillotine in France, smallpox was eradicated, Elvis Presley died, optical fibre was first used to carry telephone signals and the Big Ear radio telescope, which would eventually be taken down to make way for a golf course, picked up its famous Wow! signal from deep space. This was on August the fifteenth, twenty-one days before Voyager 1 was launched.</div>
+'''Material'''
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The year I was born was 1993, the year of the Velvet Divorce, and when guys from the IRA perpetrated the biggest robbery in US history and set off a lot of bombs, the year the Chemical Weapons Convention was signed, Bill Clinton became president, Russians mounted the first art exhibition in space and no one went to see it, Kim Campbell became the first female prime minister of Canada and resigned the same year, a van bomb killed six at the World Trade Center, there was the Great Blizzard of 1993 on the east coast of the US, South Africa abandoned its nuclear weapons programme, the US Air Force let women fly war planes, a Unabomber bomb injured a computer scientist at Yale, a floating chapel sank and killed 266 people, the nineteenth G7 summit was held, the public were allowed into Buckingham Palace for the very first time, China undertook a nuclear test and it ended a worldwide moratorium, the European Union was established, ''A Brief History of Time'' became the longest-lasting bestseller and Freya Stark, Deke Slayton of the Mercury programme and William Golding all died.</div>
+With material things and phenomena, the ''Content'' is what the thing is made out of: the physical parts, aspects, attributes, and processes that compose the subject. For example, the Content of a wooden chair might be the wood, nails, paint, and other materials which are used to create the chair.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Written into the Big Bang theory are Cosmological Horizons. These horizons mark the limit of our Observable Universe. The Observable Universe has a spherical distribution with an observer at its centre. Events outside this radius have not had time for their light to reach the observer yet and never will. The Cosmological Horizon is the shady border to the furthest point the observer can retrieve information from. Likewise, light emitted by the observer might not ever catch up to distant and exponentially receding objects in an expanding universe. This is the Future Horizon, and events which are past here the observer can have no influence on. Every single point in the universe can be the centre of a different observable universe and parts of all can overlap.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-53.png|''A material object can be described in terms of content, inner form, and outer form.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I will start my journey home a voyager called back like a well-trained falcon. Only there is no calling back the actual Voyagers; they will keep on going if we like it or not. Voyager 1 could go on travelling for ever and ever into the wild yonder on its own velocity. And Voyager 1 is its own central observer, it can leave our observable universe and enter a new one of its own.</div>
+The ''inner Form'' of a material object refers to ''stable internal relations'' which compose the object. The stable relationship between the wood and the nails — the nails bind the wood together, the wood is cut in certain patterns, the paint adheres to the wood through physical and chemical bonds, etc. ''Stability'' is, again, relative — over time, the paint will chip and flake, the wood will rot, the nails will rust, etc. Dialectical processes of change will eventually reduce the chair into something other than a chair (i.e., through rotting, burning, disassembly, etc.), but as long as the internal relations maintain the Form of a chair we conceive of it as a chair.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Voyager 1 is our time capsule into another universe. It might be that no one who ever finds it will understand what it means. But they would likely understand that it has ''intent'', and even though the intention fails it is the drive behind the ''intent'' that will live on, sinisterly, like the twitch of the almost-dead baddie at the end of the horror film.</div>
+The ''outer Form'' of a material object refers to the way it appears to human consciousness. Its shape, aesthetics, etc.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The Voyagers are relics of a time when people thought missions to space held integrity and wonder. But the next big missions to space will be commercial ones because the public are bored now. The moon is awe-sapped enough that we do not mind mining it. And when the miners have opened the emigrant trails we might colonise our brand-new ''tabula rasa''. Space X wants to launch missions to mine minerals from space and create the world’s first trillionaires. Virgin Galactic will take a bunch of rich and famous people to the moon. On board the inaugural flight will be James Lovelock. Either he had a change of heart in old age or he is going along as a suicide bomber.</div>
+==== Ideal ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">And then if the Curiosity rover were to find a pictogram, or a bipedal vertebrate fossilised on Mars, or the archaeological remains of a complex civilisation, then it would mean that life had appeared elsewhere in another Cambrian Explosion, and that life is probably quite good at forming complex life elsewhere too. But it would also mean that it is not so great at making life whose destiny is to propagate apart from the other life that binds it. It could be a premonition. A great biblical fossil lizard to the Victorians. Or a cautionary symbol.</div>
+With the ideal — i.e., ''abstract'' ideas and concepts — discussion of Content and Form becomes more complicated. As Vietnam’s ''Marxism-Leninism Textbook for Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism'' explains:
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">There is maybe one small redeeming thing, because the thing about horizons is you are never any closer to them. That is just the nature of horizons. Even Voyager 1 can never catch up with the future, and after billions of years I suppose it must disintegrate or something and that will be it, us out in a little plume, a little puff, but whether it does or not there will ''always'' be another horizon and there will ''always'' be epistemological wilderness just beyond it.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Many times, human consciousness has difficulty in trying to clearly define the Content of a subject — especially when the subject is an abstract idea. We often mistake Content with inner Form. Usually, in this situation, there is a strong combination and intertwining between both Content and Form. In such a situation, the Form can be referred to as the “inner Form,” or the “Content-Form.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Once I had everything packed away in the cabin, the board replaced under the desk and the items exactly as they were when I came, all was ready for a layer of dust to settle again. The dust is made of particles of me now. It is also made of the particles of other things: pollen, spores, space rocks, spiders, wood from the cabin itself. Dust seems a nice legacy to leave behind. I did not even fumigate my litter in the fire. Instead I put it all in a plastic bag and carried it with me out of the wilderness, because to leave the plastic particles in the air from the burning to me seemed too much a desecration.</div>
+With physical things and phenomena, this type of Form usually belongs to a very specific Private, it doesn’t exist in any other Private, it is the Unique [see Annotation 129, p. 128].
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Could be I was always on it but I began my long journey home. When I left the cabin, my cabin, I pulled the door to quietly as though to not disturb the dust as I left, like I could have come and gone on that very first day and just left silently while the cabin slept and it never even noticed me. I turned around to look at it when I had got a little away, alone and small and heavy and dawny in the 4 a.m. morning light, and took a picture which I shall keep always but show no one.</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I really hate goodbyes. I think goodbye when it is a forever goodbye is the saddest and most beautiful word. It is a contraction of god-be-with-you, which is touching because even without a god what you are saying all at once is ‘I hope that the shining light that guides you whatever it is is always with you and you don’t ever lose your way or yourself and we won’t ever meet again now but I want for you to always be safe and happy’.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">It is saying you will be apart from me now but a shard of you will always remain. Another part of me will go with you, because we are always taking and giving shards from each other and you always lose a part of yourself when you say a forever goodbye. You lose the person they make you. Fear of this loss sometimes drives people to isolation, but this in itself is a tenfold loss. I will always carry Damon with me as a shard, like shrapnel.</div>
+The reason the inner Form of physical objects usually exists in ''Private'' as the ''Unique'' is because the stable internal relations of any given physical object are equivalent to the specific material components which distinguish one physical object from all other physical objects. In other words, if you have two chairs which are exact copies of each other, made from the same kind of wood, cut into the same shape, using the same type and configuration of fasteners, etc., they are still not the exact same object. The internal relations of one chair are what make it ''that'' chair and distinguish it from all other objects in the universe. The ''outer Form'' of these chairs may have many commonalities (they look similar, they have the same color, etc.), but the ''inner Form'' is what distinguishes one chair from the other.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">We are perpetual motion and change, but there is something that endures and it changes, but gradually enough that some of it endures. You would not be able to know yourself, at least only a little and only sometimes, without this enduring thing. It is maybe ‘I do really hope the light is always with you even if the light can’t be said to be unchanging but whatever your new light is I hope there is one and I will always hope it will be with you still’.</div>
+<blockquote>
+However, within the realm of abstract ideas, there are also Forms which many abstract Privates share. In the context of abstract ideas, we call this kind of Form the “outer Form,” the “form-Form,” or the “common Form.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Because it is the light that will guide you onwards to the next thing. If there is not this enduring thing, this kind of gravitational force, then we can lose our way completely and forget that carrying on and not losing the way as much as possible is the whole game. The light is a baton and life is the race and goodbye is the passing of the baton but you have to keep on running and keep on passing that baton but each time you pass it you actually swap it, someone gives you a new one.</div>
+When we try to define the Content of a subject which is an abstract idea, our consciousness usually tries to answer the question: “what is the subject?”
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">That we can feel sad at this motion and this parting and feel a genuine want that although this thing or this person will go on in its own way without you, that it does so with this light even though you can never know it really, this is a beautiful thing. I bawled my eyes out as I walked away as I am in the habit of doing when I feel the pass of the baton occur.</div>
+This is usually a simple matter. Take, for example, the abstract idea of “freedom.” When we try to think of the Content of ''freedom'' we can answer it pretty easily. What is the subject of ''freedom''? It is the condition which allows humans to follow their own will, it is the absence of external coercion, etc., etc.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The only astronaut to admit to crying on the moon was Alan Shepard of Mercury and Apollo 14, and this is just proof that they sent the wrong people to the moon because it is good to cry. Crying is the most honest way of saying (and better than with corrupting words), hey, outside world and other beings, I feel you being there.</div>
+<blockquote>
+But, when we try to define the Form of an abstract idea, our consciousness tries to answer the question: “how is the subject?” — this is when we have to define the mode of existence (the Form) of that subject.
+</blockquote>
-==== A LETTER TO MY FUTURE SELF ====
+This is where things get more complicated. The mode of existence of an abstract idea can usually be considered to be language, since our ideas are usually expressed through language, but it can take on other modes of existence as well, such as visual media (paintings, photographs), physical motions of the human body (body language, dance), etc. This is how the field of art studies is concerned with the philosophical categories of Content and Form.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Dear Erin of the future,</div>
+==== Content and Form in Art ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">This all seems glaringly obvious to you now, but perhaps you will have forgotten some things. I want you to remember how you got there. That is why I decided it was okay to keep some of the project in Eskimo secret because that way the only person I can colonise is you and that is actually a desirable thing (I like to be consistent). It is to shout I EXIST, which is not a conceited thing to do if you only shout it in your own face.</div>
+Many readers may already be familiar with the subject of Content and Form from studying art, design, communications, and related fields. At first glance, the definitions of Content and Form may seem different from what we’ve been discussing so far.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Almost anything or any method of information transfer when intended for the future can be termed at one time or another a time capsule. So this written thing is a time capsule. Maybe all written words are time capsules. Virginia Woolf said of writing, ''arrange whatever pieces come your way'', which sounds like time-capsule curation to me. Not collection as possession but a collection like that of the reverent bowerbird. So here it is, an affirmation of me, for you.</div>
+This is because art concerns itself with ''abstract ideas'' expressed through various Forms of ''physical representations.''
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The Eskimo and the Inuit, known as Twospirit people, they know that genders are arbitrary because anyone can embody them, but they still use them to describe themselves. Identity and words are important for narrative. Scientific theories are only approximations to the true nature of things but sometimes the error is tiny enough for them to be pretty useful.</div>
+These physical representations may include physical objects (photographs, paintings, sculptures), performed and/or recorded physical activities (dance, music, theater, film), human language recorded in stable physical Forms of written language (novels, poems, stories) or spontaneously performed oral language (storytelling, impromptu spoken-word poetry).
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Like Newton’s world of solid bodies moving through empty space as an analogy for the realm of everyday life called the zone of middle dimensions. In the zone of middle dimensions you feel the effect of the apple that hits you on the head. It is not much use to tell Newton that the apple does not hit one’s head, not really.</div>
+Because the study of art is primarily concerned with interpreting and understanding ideas expressed through these physical manifestations, art is concerned with the ''stable inner relations'' of the ''ideas'' which artists imbue within their works of art — much more than the stable inner relations of the physical components of the object.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I am not a singular organism but an amalgamation of organisms. I am the elected voice of this amalgamation, for the life inside my life and the mites in my eyelashes.</div>
+According to the Vietnamese art textbook ''Curriculum of General Aesthetics'':
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">In taxonomy we separate things to make it easier to talk about difference. Taxonomy is a masculine language that dichotomises, like gender is a masculine language, structuring hierarchies. A colonising language; taxonomy is the colonisation of the natural world, but it is pretty useful because it helps you to tell the difference between ''goosetongue'' and ''arrowgrass'' and not die.</div>
+<blockquote>
+What is the Form of a work of art? Form is the way to express the Content of an artwork. Form and Content within a work of art have a strong unity with each other and they regulate each other. Form is the organization, the inner structure of the Content of an artwork. Therefore, Form is the way that the Content expresses itself, and that way is described by two features. We must ask:
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">And if I am a woman I am a historically situated and contextual woman, but I am a woman all the same. And it only matters that in popular opinion I have been more social and permeable and collectivist and can identify more with trees and animals than a man can. But physics now says that everything is permeable. My feminisation was training in the interrelation of earth systems.</div>
+First: what expresses the Content of a work of art?
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Lovelock gave Earth a feminine (historically defined) name because he valued the feminine (historically defined) characteristics of renewal, life-giving/-destroying and cooperation. History dictated that women understand more about empathy, starting with training in the home and ‘mother’ bonds. If women are better trained in empathy, then maybe women are a little more in love with the world.</div>
+Second: how is it expressed?
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">The universe is perpetual motion and change but you can take a step back to where it comes into sharp focus as you look at it. Consciousness is integral to theories of matter because it is consciousness that creates the whole observation that changes the course of the universe, even if only in a very tiny way. It took a long time for things to get this complex and tangled and each of us is woven into this tangle inextricably.</div>
+Art exists when two conditions are met: first, there must be a subject with an outer Form. Second, an artist must convey aesthetic meaning, or humanization, of that subject. This aesthetic meaning is the Content.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Because it is densely tangled the web does not change very quickly or drastically, and in this way it gives the illusion of stability. When the speed of change is accelerated to an extent that it is a pace too fast for adaption, it gets very suddenly to a place where nothing is recognisable. Examples of this are mass extinctions, nuclear annihilation, or the loss of an indigenous culture. I call this danger ''velocity''.</div>
+So, in studying works of art, we are less concerned with the ''physical content'' of the artwork (the canvas, paint, etc.) than we are with the ''abstract content'' of the artwork (the ideas which the artist imbues within the artwork).
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">When they talk about space they still talk in terms of ‘nature’ or ‘wilderness’ like the Inuit don’t have a word for, because the only way to talk about a thing is to pin it down and quantify it. It has to be outside you in language. Otherwise science can’t work. But Bohr said this is just a trick and that the properties of an atomic object can only be understood in relation to the object’s interaction with the observer and that you can’t talk about nature without talking about yourself. And it works the other way too, in inverse.</div>
+As for Form, the ''inner Form'' of art represents the stable internal relations which compose the art (both ideal, i.e., the stable internal relations of the abstract ideas imbued within the art by the artist, as well as physical, i.e., the stable internal relations of the physical media of the art).
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">This whole time I have been looking so hard through binoculars that I have not even noticed that I am looking through binoculars, which are a pretty nifty thing to have, or that they have been hurting my eye where I have pressed them against it. And I have been looking so hard through binoculars at what looks so far away that I have not seen what was right in front of me. It is all very well and good to build a castle, but you have to make sure not to build it ''on top of people'', and I could have crushed a few people.</div>
+The ''outer Form'' of art represents how our human senses perceive the art, such as composition techniques, the use of color, etc.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Another thing Thoreau said about foundations is ''we have not to lay the foundation of our houses in the ashes of a former civilization''<nowiki>; here he meant literal houses and this is why he liked America, Land of the Free, more than Europe, where there were many civilisations under houses. The ambassador of American wilderness conveniently forgets his own impurity; he has still built his on top of a whole lot of native people.</nowiki></div>
+The chart below breaks down the differences in a general, non-artistic viewpoint of physical objects and processes in materialist dialectical terms (i.e., the viewpoint an engineer might have), as compared with the artistic viewpoint of physical objects and processes (which an art critic might have). Some fields, such as designing products for human use, might draw from both viewpoints.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Around me the cabin is still, quiet and dusty. Everything sits in its place as it has since the beginning, familiar and inexplicable. I feel how a swallow must feel getting the sudden inclination of the east, one day looking around itself and suddenly, nope, dislocated. It is all void of purpose now. The weather is turning, the berries are dropping, the gnats are dying off. The east, that is the place to be. The swallow can’t pinpoint when its purpose changed but it did and now everything has something different about it and it has to leave for home.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-54.png]]
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">And its place and its nest and the time it spent there do not feel wasted or failed or empty because that is not the way it works for birds. And none of it matters for me either, all that time and all that work, it is not wasted but changed, stretched. It has fulfilled its purpose and the pieces of it do not fit together any more.</div>
+==== Content and Form in Specific Artistic Media ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Like a reptile trying to shrug on the jacket of its old self to realise that it no longer fits. Only reptiles are not sentimental and do not keep their old skins in the dresser drawer with the other miscellaneous special things, but we do our baby teeth and that is part of what makes us human. Maybe you still have the baby teeth in the little silver box with the fairy on or maybe you lost them.</div>
+Every medium of art will interpret Content and Form in its own way. For example:
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Somewhere in a parallel universe out east where summer is winter and winter is summer, it is winter and the swallows have already flown, and right now a swallow is pecking on a reptile’s discarded skin.</div>
+'''Literature''' is a specific art discipline which deals with recorded human language in the Form of writing. In written literature, the Content would be the ideas expressed in a piece of writing; what the words say. The inner Form would be the way the ideas relate to each other — i.e., story structure, pacing, character development, etc. The outer form would be the physical format of the writing — i.e., manuscript, magazine article, paperback book, ebook, etc.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Enclosed in all of this are the maps, some pictures and drawings, the raw bits of film, my (our) diary. Because although I know my map is not this place, the map remembers an important place even though it only exists in the realm of my mind. Just because it can’t tell anyone else anything useful does not deny its significance to me (and you). That is the whole point of keeping postcards, right?</div>
+'''Painting''' is a specific art discipline in which pigments are applied to objects to create images which convey ideas and emotions. In painting, the Content would be the meaning which an artist embodies in a work of art. The inner Form would include the stable internal relations within the artwork (i.e., the bonds and mixtures between the pigments, the canvas, etc.), while the outer Form would be how the artwork appears to human senses (composition, aesthetics, etc.). Generally speaking, the creator of the art will have to make decisions about the inner Form (i.e., selection of oil vs. acrylic vs. watercolor, selection of shade, tint, and hue, physical brush strokes, etc.) so as to produce the desired outer Form (the way the finished artwork will appear to viewers).
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">I would like to leave an epitaph because I think you will find it funny still, as I do now. It is a poem by a man called Stephen Crane. It goes:</div>
+'''Theater''' is a specific art discipline in which human beings perform physical actions and use their voices to convey ideas to an audience. In theater, the Content includes the ideas which are being presented, such as the script, the musical score, the story, the performance choices of actors, costumes, props, etc. The inner Form would include the stable relations between the members of the cast, the director, the physical stage, the lighting, etc., and the outer Form would be the way the play appears to the audience.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">''I saw a man pursuing the horizon;''</div>
+These are just some examples. Each medium of expression will have its own variations in how Content and Form are considered.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">''Round and round they sped.''</div>
+Engels described the manifestation of Content and Form in ''Dialectics of Nature:''
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">''I was disturbed at this;''</div>
+<blockquote>
+The whole of organic nature is one continuous proof of the identity or inseparability of form and content. Morphological and physiological phenomena, form and function, mutually determine one another. The differentiation of form (the cell) determines differentiation of substance into muscle, skin, bone, epithelium, etc., and the differentiation of substance in turn determines difference of form.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">''I accosted the man.''</div>
+Content and Form are discussed frequently in analysis of human social systems and objective relations which occur within society. For example, Marx made many criticial insights into economics by analyzing and explaining the form of value [see Annotation 14, p. 16] under capitalism.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">''‘It is futile,’ I said'',</div>
+Indeed, the entire capitalist system can be viewed in terms of content and form. The current form of human civilization is capitalism. That is to say, capitalism is the stable set of relations and characteristis of the current political economy which dominates the planet. The content of capitalism includes all the components of the base and superstructure, including the various classes (capitalists, working class, etc.), the means of production, government institutions, corporate institutions, etc. All of these elements are configured together into the relatively stable form which we call “capitalism.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">''‘You can never—’''</div>
+==== Other Viewpoints of Content and Form ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">''‘You lie,’ he cried'',</div>
+Of course, there are many other viewpoints for discussing Content and Form of abstract ideas. Every philosophical field will have its own unique ways of utilizing Content and Form analysis. One example is the concept of Content and Form in legal philosophy. Vietnamese legal expert Dinh Thuy Dung writes:
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">''And ran on.''</div>
+<blockquote>
+The law has internal and external forms:
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">From Erin in the cabin in our wilderness,</div>
+The inner Form is the internal structure of the law, the relationships and the connections between the elements constituting the law. The inner Form of the law is called the legal structure, which includes the constituent parts of the legal system such as the branch of law, legal institutions, and legal norms.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Denali,</div>
+The outer Form is the manifestation, or mode of existence, of the law. In other words, the outer Form of the law is how we view and understand the law [i.e., who enforces the law and what repercussions will occur if we violate the law]. Based on the outer Form of the law, one can know how it exists in reality, and where and to whom it applies. The external Form of the law is also approached in relation to its Content.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Alaska,</div>
+According to this understanding, the Content of the law includes all the elements that make up the law, while the Form of the law is understood as the elements which contain or express the Content.
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0.635cm;">Earth</div>
+If you understand that the Content of the law is the will of the state, then the legal Form is the way of expressing the will of the state.
+</blockquote>
-==== {{anchor|Topofackhtml}} ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ====
+There are countless other ways in which Content and Form can be used to analyze and understand things, phenomena, and ideas. We hope that these examples have given you a better idea of the various ways in which Content and Form can be used to understand the world. In general, socialist texts deal with the ''inner Form'' of things, phenomena, and ideas. That is to say, the inner relations which compose the subject being considered. The outer form — how things appear to our senses — tends to be less relevant in analysis of human social systems, though it is often important in consideration of specialized fields of revolutionary activity such as aesthetics, propaganda, etc.
-I can’t give enough thanks to Jack Underwood for telling me to carry on in the early days, to Harriet Moore for ceaseless support and tender critique, to Nick Sheerin for caring editorial guidance, to all my friends, but especially Claire Liddiard, Hatty Nestor and Zina Sarris, to the Sarris family for allowing me space in their house to write, and to Mum, Dad, Nan and J. J. x
+==== b. Dialectical relationship between Content and Form ====
-I would also like to express gratitude to the following writers who allowed me to draw on their words and work in this novel.
+Content and Form have a strong dialectical relationship with one other. There is no Form that does not contain any Content. Simultaneously, there is no Content that does not exist in a specific Form. The same Content can manifest in many Forms and a Form can contain many Contents.
-The lines of dialogue attributed to Rachel Carson on pages [[#page44|44]], [[#page53|53]], [[#page209|209]] and [[#page210|210]] and the chapter title ‘THE CHEMICAL WAR ON THE GYPSY MOTH’ are taken from ''Silent Spring'' by Rachel Carson (copyright © 1962 by Rachel L. Carson, renewed 1990 by Roger Christie) and are reprinted by permission of Frances Collin, Trustee.
+The relationship between Content and Form is a dialectical relationship in which Content decides Form and Form can impact Content.
-The quotation from Sylvia Plath’s journals on page [[#page83|83]] is taken from ''The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950–62'' (copyright © The Estate of Sylvia Plath, 2000) and reproduced by permission of Faber & Faber.
+-----
-The quotation from Ted Kaczynski on page [[#page76|76]] is taken from ''Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski'' (Feral House, 2010).
+==== Annotation 151 ====
-The chapter title ‘THE EARTH IS AN INDIAN THING’ and the quotation of the same line on page [[#page110|110]] are excerpts from ''On the Road'' by Jack Kerouac, copyright © 1955, 1957, by John Sampas, Literary Representative, the Estate of Stella Sampas Kerouac; John Lash, Executor of the Estate of Jan Kerouac; Nancy Bump; and Anthony M. Sampas. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
+For example, if you want to make a table, and all you have available are wood and nails, then that Content (the wood and the nails) will determine the Form the table ends up taking. You are going to end up with a wooden table, and it will therefore have to have certain characteristics of Form.
-The chapter title ‘THE BEARD AND THE GUNS AND THE LITTLE SHORT SENTENCES’ is copyright © 2004 by Ursula K. Le Guin and first appeared in ''The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination'', published by Shambhala in 2004, reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
+When Content changes, the Form must change accordingly. If, instead of wood, you have iron, then the table you end up building will have a much different Form. Form can also ''influence'' the Content, but not nearly as much as Content ''determines'' Form. For instance, if you have wood and nails, but you develop a technique for building a table that doesn’t need any nails, then the result (a wooden table without any nails) would be an example of a development in Form reflecting as a change in Content.
-The chapter title ‘I AM THAT I AM AND THE REST IS WOMEN & WILDERNESS’ is an excerpt from ''Dancing at the Edge of the World'', copyright © 1989 Ursula K. Le Guin. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.
+The main tendency of Content is change. On the other hand, Form is relatively stable in every thing and phenomenon. As Content changes, Form must change accordingly. However, Content and Form are not always perfectly aligned.
-The chapter title ‘THE WILD AS A PROJECT OF THE SELF’ is a quotation from Jack Turner’s ''The Abstract Wild'' (University of Arizona Press, 1996).
+-----
-The quotation attributed to John Lilly on page [[#page230|230]] is taken from ''Tanks for the Memories: Floatation Tank Talks'' by Dr John C. Lilly and E. J. Gold (Gateways Books & Tapes, © 1995).
+==== Annotation 152 ====
-The quotations from Aldo Leopold on pages [[#page252|252]] and [[#page291|291]] are taken from ''A Sand County Almanac'' and are reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press, USA.
+Since all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly changing, it stands to reason that the internal components (things, phenomena, and ideas, and their relations) which compose the Content of a subject will constantly be undergoing processes of change and development. Thus, we say that the tendency of Content is change. Since the Form is based on the ''internal relations'' of the components of Content, it stands to reason that a change in Content will lead to change in Form. These kinds of changes in Content and Form also occur through the dialectical process: changes in quantity lead to changes in quality [see Annotation 117, p. 119].
-The words of Einstein on page [[#page258|258]]–[[#page259|9]] are © The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-55.png|''Quantity changes in Content lead to quality shifts in Form.'']]
-The chapter titles ‘THE KNOWING SELF IS PARTIAL’ and ‘MUCOUS MEMBRANE LINING THE GUT CAVITY OF A MARINE WORM LIVING IN THE VENT GASES ON A FAULT BETWEEN CONTINENTAL PLATES’ are quotations from the work of Donna Haraway and are taken respectively from ''Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective'' (Donna Haraway, Feminist Studies, Vol 14, No 3, Autumn 1988, pp.575–99) and ''Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature'' (Donna Haraway, Routledge, 1991).
+As soon as a wooden chair is finished being built, the paint is already beginning to degrade. The wood is already beginning to rot. The iron nails are already beginning to rust. These changes may be imperceptibly slow — they may even take centuries to occur, if the chair is kept in a hospitable environment — but the changes are occurring, quantitatively, over time, none-the-less.
-The chapter title ‘THE CLITORIS IS A DIRECT LINE TO THE MATRIX’ is taken from a billboard created by artist collective VNS Matrix.
+Eventually, changes in quantity will lead to changes in quality. At some point, the chair might weaken and begin to wobble whenever it’s sat in. Human beings might recognize this quality and begin to think of it as a “wobbly chair.” The chair might degrade to the point where it can’t be safely used at all, in which case it will have quality shifted into a “broken chair.” If the chair is repaired, that would represent another quality shift. If it is used for firewood, that would be another quality shift.
-The chapter title ‘WHAT BOOK IS THIS THAT REFUSES TO END?’ is taken from Anna Tsing’s ''The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins'' (Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Princeton University Press, 2015).
+Keep in mind that changes in Form do not directly cause changes in Content. If you disassemble a wooden chair into the constituent wood and nails, the wood and nails remain more or less unchanged. But if you burn a wooden chair, it’s the ''change in Content'' which leads to the change in Form from “chair” to “pile of ash.”
-<div style="text-align:center;">[[Image:f0308-01.jpg.png|top]]</div>
+Form simply represents the stable relationships between the component parts of the subject’s Content. The only way to change Form is to change those inner relations, or to change the components which are relating. There is no way to change Form without changing the Content, and changing the Content changes the Form by definition.
-<div style="text-align:center;">[[Image:f0309-01.jpg.png|top]]</div>
+Content determines Form, but Form is not ''fully'' decided by Content, and Form can impact back on Content. If a Form is suitable with its Content, it can improve the development of its Content. If a Form is not suitable with its Content, it can constrain the development of its Content.
-<div style="text-align:center;">[[Image:f0310-01.jpg.png|top]]</div>
+-----
-<div style="text-align:center;">[[Image:f0311-01.jpg.png|top]]</div>
+==== Annotation 153 ====
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{anchor|Topofbm01html}} '''ALSO FROM SERPENT’S TAIL'''</div>
+The dialectical relationship between Content and Form is somewhat similar to the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideal (see ''Matter and Consciousness'',
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+p. 88). Just as the material world ''determines'' consciousness while consciousness ''impacts'' the material world, the Content of a subject ''determines'' the Form while the Form ''impacts'' the Content.
-[[Image:pub.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+''Suitability'' describes the applicability of a subject for a specific application or role. Whether or not something is “suitable” or not can be highly subjective (i.e., which music would be “suitable” to play at a party), or it can be more objective (i.e., what kind of batteries to use with an electronic device).
-[[Image:f0312-01.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-<div style="text-align:center;">The Evening Chorus</div>
+We might say that hardwood is “suitable” Content for the Form of a chair because it is durable, strong, relatively inexpensive, and long-lasting. It might be “unsuitable” to have a chair made of hardwood if it is to be used as an office chair, because the hard surfaces might cause strain and discomfort. However, we can utilize conscious activity to adjust and develop suitability between Content and Form. Changing the Content by adding cushioning or padding might make the Content and Form more suitable with each other. Similarly, changing the Form by designing contours and adding adjustability to the chair might make the Content and Form more suitable with each other for their intended application as an office chair.
-<div style="text-align:center;">Helen Humphreys</div>
+If a Form is not suitable with the Content, it restrains the development of the Content. Just think of a shovel (Form) made of wood (Content), which will degrade very rapidly over time, vs. a shovel (Form) made of steel (Content) which will last much longer. This works in both directions. Consider the Content of drinking cups: a porcelain cup might last for a long time and even develop positively over time (by acquiring a desirable patina), while a cup made out of mild steel would not be desirable, as it would be highly prone to rust from extended use containing liquids.
-<div style="text-align:center;">A story of four lives torn apart by war, falling in and out of love, and the unlikely moments that come to define a life.</div>
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-<div style="text-align:center;">ISBN 978 1 78125 303 8eISBN 978 1 78283 087 0</div>
+Content and Form always have a dialectical relationship with each other. Therefore, in our perception and practice, we must not try to separate Content and Form, nor should we solely focus on one and ignore the other.
-<div style="text-align:center;">[[Image:f0313-01.jpg.png|top]]</div>
+Because Content determines Form, whenever we are considering a thing, phenomenon, or idea, we must base our consideration first on its Content. If we want to change a thing or phenomenon, we have to change its Content first.
-<div style="text-align:center;">Eat My Heart Out</div>
+In reality, we must promote the positive impact of Form on Content by making the Form fit the Content. Likewise, we must also change the Form that is no longer suitable with its Content and therefore constrains the development of its Content.
-<div style="text-align:center;">Zoe Pilger</div>
+-----
-<div style="text-align:center;">Fiercely clever and unapologetically wild, ''Eat My Heart Out'' is the satire for our narcissistic, hedonistic, post-post-feminist era.</div>
+==== Annotation 154 ====
-<div style="text-align:center;">ISBN 978 1 84668 963 5eISBN 978 1 84765 971 2</div>
+In any analysis, it is very important that we carefully consider whether or not Content and Form are suitable with each other in our own projects and activities. We can learn a lot about suitability from observation and practice (see ''Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism'', p. 204) and improve suitability through conscious activity.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+Marx believed that it is vital to consider Content and Form when analyzing human society and political economy. One of his core critiques of political economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo was a failure to consider Content and Form when it comes to value, commodities, and money. He discusses this extensively in ''Capital Volume 1'', as in this excerpt:
-[[Image:f0313-02.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-<div style="text-align:center;">Women & Power: A Manifesto</div>
+<blockquote>
+The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="text-align:center;">Mary Beard</div>
+Marx, here, is saying that studying the economy is more difficult than studying the human body because it can’t be physically observed and dissected. Rather, we have to rely on abstraction, which leaves us prone to making many more mistakes in analyzing Content and Form.
-<div style="text-align:center;">The gender agenda revisited by Britain’s best-known classicist, Mary Beard.</div>
+<blockquote>
+But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour – or value-form of the commodity – is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="text-align:center;">ISBN 978 1 78816 060 5eISBN 978 1 78283 453 3</div>
+Marx’s analysis of capitalism relies to great extent upon recognizing the commodity-form of the product (Content) of labor. Labor existed long before capitalism. Labor has existed for as long as humans have worked to change our own material conditions. But under capitalism, labor specifically takes on the Form of a ''commodity'' which is bought by capitalists. This becomes the basis for Marx’s entire critique of capitalism.
+Obviously, there is much more to Marx’s use of Content and Form in analyzing capitalism and human society, but this should hopefully give you some idea of the importance of Content and Form in analysis of human society and revolutionary activity.
+-----
+=== 5. Essence and Phenomenon ===
+==== a. Categories of Essence and Phenomenon ====
+The ''Essence'' category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion and development of things, phenomena, and ideas.
+The ''Phenomenon'' category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions.
+-----
+==== Annotation 155 ====
+Understanding Essence and Phenomena can be challenging at first, but it is very important for materialist dialectical analysis.
+Essence should not be confused with ''Form''. Form represents the stable internal relations of the component content of a subject, whereas Essence represents the ''synthesis'' of all internal aspects as well as all obvious and stable attributes which ''define the existence, motion, and development'' of a subject.
+Phenomena are simply external manifestations of a subject which occur ''in specific conditions''.
+The Essence of a subject is not dependent on conditions, whereas in different conditions, the same subject will exhibit different Phenomena. For example, COVID-19 is, ''essentially'', a specific virus strain. That is to say, all of the internal aspects and stable relations that define the existence, motion, and development of COVID-19 are synthesized as a virus which we call COVID-19.
+The ''Phenomena'' of COVID-19 which we can observe in patients would include symptoms such as fever, coughing, trouble breathing, etc.
+The Essence of a cloud is water vapor in the atmosphere: that is the synthesis, the coming-together, of all the internal stable relations and aspects which will determine how a cloud exists, moves, and develops over time.
+The Phenomena of clouds are all the things we can sense: the appearance of big fluffy white things in the air, shadows on the ground, and, sometimes, rain.
+Essence defines Phenomenon: the internal attributes and stable relations will produce the Phenomena which we can observe. A cloud is not ''essentially defined'' as a fluffy white thing in the air; that is just the appearance a cloud has to our human senses in certain specific conditions.
+==== b. Dialectical relationship between Essence and Phenomenon ====
+Essence and Phenomenon both exist objectively as two unified but opposing sides.
+''The unity between Essence and Phenomenon:'' Essence always manifests through Phenomena, and every Phenomenon is always the manifestation of a specific Essence. There is no pure Essence that exists separately from Phenomena and there is no Phenomenon that does not manifest from any kind of Essence.
+When Essence changes, Phenomena also change accordingly. When Essence appears, Phenomena also appear, and when Essence disappears, Phenomena also disappear. Therefore, Lenin said: “The Essence appears. The appearance is essential.”<ref>''Philosophical Notebooks'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.</ref>
+''The Opposition of Essence and Phenomenon'': Essence is that which defines a thing, Phenomenon, or idea, while Phenomena are diversified and conditional. Essence is internal, while Phenomena are external. Essence is relatively stable, while Phenomena continuously change.
+-----
+==== Annotation 156 ====
+Essence and Phenomenon are simultaneously unified and opposite because neither can exist without the other, yet they have completely opposite features from one another.
+Discussing the Essence and Phenomena of physical objects is relatively straight-forward. The Essence will typically encompass the physical object or system itself. For example, a car engine is ''essentially'' a machine; that is to say, the synthesis of all the internal aspects (the engine parts) as well as the obvious and stable relations (the relations between the parts of the engine; how they are assembled and work together in the engine system) that define the existence, motion and development of the engine (the way it works) are what ''essentially make it'' a car engine. All of these essential characteristics are internal, relatively stable, and remain the same regardless of the condition of the engine (i.e., they continue to exist whether the engine is turned on, turned off, inoperable, etc.).
+The Phenomena of the car engine are all the things that we can sense from it, but this can vary a great deal depending on conditions. When the car engine is turned off, it will be silent. It may be cool to the touch. It will be at rest. If the engine is turned on, the parts will move, it will become hot, it will make noise. In some situations it might smoke or even catch on fire. All of these Phenomena are conditional, unstable, and external to the engine itself.
+With ''ideas'' and abstract thought, Essence and Phenomenon becomes more difficult to determine and analyze. Lenin discussed this in his ''Philosophical Notebooks'', beginning with a quote from Hegel:
+<blockquote>
+Dialectics in general is “the pure movement of thought in Notions“ (i.e., putting it without the mysticism of idealism: human concepts are not fixed but are eternally in movement, they pass into one another, they flow into one another, otherwise they do not reflect living life.
+</blockquote>
+Knowing that Hegel was an idealist, Lenin wanted to strip all idealism from his conception of dialectics, and thus made it clear that “the pure movement of thought” simply refers to the fact that human thoughts are constantly changing, always in motion, within the living human mind, writing:
+<blockquote>
+The analysis of concepts, the study of them, the “art of operating with them” (Engels) always demands study of the movement of concepts, of their interconnection, of their mutual transitions).
+</blockquote>
+This is a description of materialist dialectical analysis of human thought. We must understand that human thoughts are always in motion, always developing, and always mutually impacting other thoughts.
+<blockquote>
+In particular, dialectics is the study of the opposition of the Thing-in-itself, of the essence, substratum, substance — from the appearance, from “Being-for-Others.” (Here, too, we see a transition, a flow from the one to the other: the essence appears. The appearance is essential.) Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on without end.
+</blockquote>
+This is where Lenin introduces the concept of Essence and Phenomenon (or “appearance,” as Lenin puts it) as simultaneously oppositional and in unity. Essence refers to the qualities and nature of the “thing-in-itself” (its internal components, relations, etc.) while Phenomena represents “being-for-others” (that which external observers can sense or witness of a subject). However, as Lenin notes, Essence and Phenomena have a dialectical relationship with each other — a “flow from the one to the other.” The Essence “appears” by exuding Phenomena which we can sense.
+Conscious thoughts also have Essence and Phenomena of their own. With thought, the development from Essence to Phenomena is constant and inevitable. The Essence of each thought leads to thought-Phenomena which develop in turn into the Essence of new thoughts in a constant flow.
+In this sense, Essence and Phenomenon of abstract thought is somewhat different from Essence and Phenomenon of physical objects, but physical objects can have this same dialectical pattern of development. For example, the emissions from the engine of a car can be considered Phenomena of the engine, but as these Phenomena build up in the air (along with the emissions from many other cars), they can develop into a physical subject with a new Essence of its own, which we call “air pollution.”
+We can also think of the light which comes from the sun. The light itself can be thought of as Phenomena of the sun, but the light energy can be captured by a solar panel and converted into energy, creating a new subject with its own Essence which we would describe as “solar energy.” In this sense, it is possible for Phenomena to have Phenomena. If you witness light waves in the desert which cause an optical illusion, then the illusion is a Phenomenon of the light waves (the light waves being the Essence which exuded the Phenomenon of illusion), and the light waves are the Phenomena of the sun (the essential subject which exudes the Phenomena of the light waves).
+Essence and Phenomena can also be contextual. In some contexts, physical objects which have their own Essence (and Phenomena) may be the Phenomena of some other entity. For example, archaeologists can’t observe prehistoric civilizations directly. They can only study the things which are left behind. In this sense, we can think of an archaeological artifact, like a stone tool, as a Phenomenon of a prehistoric civilization. The tool has its own Essence and Phenomena, but it is also itself a Phenomenon. A single stone tool can’t tell archaeologists much about an ancient civilization, however, archaeologists can gather many Phenomena (tools, structural ruins, nearby animal bones and seeds, human remains, etc.) to look for patterns which reveal more insights about the Essence of the prehistoric civilization which exuded those Phenomena.
+<blockquote>
+Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects: not only are appearances transitory, mobile, fluid, demarcated only by conventional boundaries, but the essence of things is so as well.
+</blockquote>
+Lenin, here, points out that proper analysis hinges on understanding the ''Essence'' of a subject, since the Phenomena are fleeting and subject to change. Most notably, we should look for ''contradictions'' within the subject (see ''Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction'', p. 175), because contradictions are what drive dialectical development of a subject over time.
+-----
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
+If we want to be accurately aware of things, phenomena, and ideas, we must not just stop at studying their Phenomena, we have to study their Essence. Only through examining many Phenomena of a subject can we fully and correctly understand the Essence of said subject.
+-----
+==== Annotation 157 ====
+With physical objects, we must study the Phenomena to know anything about a subject, since Phenomena is, by definition, that which we can observe. Only through systematic, repeated observations can we come to understand the Essence of the object which exudes the Phenomena. Because Phenomena can change based on conditions, we must observe Phenomena under various conditions in a systematic way. This is the basis of all scientific inquiry.
+This is also true for analyzing aspects of human society. To understand a social system, we must observe its Phenomena systematically over time and look for patterns which form under various conditions. We must also keep in mind that social systems develop and change over time, and so the Essence might develop with or without changes in certain Phenomena. For example, the phenomena of the United States of America have changed significantly over the years. The national flag, military uniforms, seals, and other iconography have changed throughout the history of the USA. Similarly, there have been many presidents, and the government and constitution have also been through many changes. That said, the essential nature of the USA’s political economy has not changed significantly since its foundation; the USA has been a capitalist bourgeois democracy since the beginning and remains so to this day. Regardless of which bourgeois-dominated political party holds power in the white house and congress — Whig, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise — the essential nature of the USA as a capitalist bourgeois democracy has remained the same.
+According to Lenin: “Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on, ''without end.''”<ref>''Philosophical Notebooks'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.</ref> On the other hand, Essence is what defines a thing, phenomenon, or idea. Therefore, in our perception and practice, we must recognize a thing, phenomenon, or idea based on its Essence, not its Phenomena, to evaluate it correctly, and after that, we can make fundamental improvements.
+-----
+==== Annotation 158 ====
+For example: Thousands of years ago, people observed that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west everyday. Based on these Phenomena, many human civilizations developed the belief that the Essence of our solar system was that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun rotated around it. Today, thanks to scientific observation and practice, we have proven that the sun is the center of the solar system and that the earth is rotating around it, which is totally opposite to what many believed hundreds of years ago. In this case, the initially observed Phenomena were misleading, and it was only by getting a better grasp of the essential nature of the solar system that we could better comprehend its functioning.
+It is usually easy to observe Phenomena (since they are defined by being observable) but it’s also easy to misunderstand relationships between Essence and Phenomena. Sometimes people get a false perception of Essence from real Phenomena, such as believing the Sun revolves around the Earth. Sometimes people attribute the wrong Phenomena to Essences as well, such as believing that all poor people are lazy.
+Phenomena can easily be mistaken for essence. For example, bourgeois liberal political parties often portray themselves as being pro-worker and therefore exhibit phenomena such as rhetoric, slogans, propaganda, and even platform positions which appeal to workers. These phenomena may confuse many into believing that they are workers’ parties when, in reality, they are essentially dominated by the capitalist class. The reverse can also occur. For example, workers may be fooled into believing that a ruthless capitalist politician or celebrity is “working class at heart,” falsely believing that the capitalist’s class position is merely a phenomenon when in fact it is essential.
+Understanding true Essence based on real Phenomena is one of the most important aspects of analysis. It is the primary realm of science. In politics, misunderstanding or mischaracterizing Essence and Phenomena can reinforce false beliefs about the way society works which can lead to promulgation of dangerous and reactionary ideologies like neoliberalism and fascism amidst the working class. For this reason, we must avoid examining Phenomena alone. We have to dive deep to discover and understand the essential nature of things, phenomena, and ideas in our analysis.
+=== 6. Possibility and Reality ===
+==== a. Categories of Possibility and Reality ====
+The ''Possibility'' category refers to things that have not happened nor existed in reality yet, but that would happen, or would exist given necessary conditions.
+The ''Reality'' category refers to things that exist or have existed in reality and in human thought.
+==== b. Dialectical Relationship Between Possibility and Reality ====
+Possibility and Reality have a unified and inseparable relationship: Possibility can transform into Reality and Reality contains new Possibility; any given Possibility, under specific conditions, can transform into Reality.
+Given specific conditions, there could be one or many possibilities for the development of any given thing, phenomenon, or idea: practical Possibility, random Possibility, obvious Possibility, abstract Possibility, near Possibility, far Possibility, etc.
+-----
+==== Annotation 159 ====
+'''Excerpt From Marxism-Leninism Textbook of Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism'''
+''Editor’s notes in [brackets]''
+Reality has many aspects. It also has many tendencies of development. These aspects and tendencies of Reality have different roles and positions in the development process of Reality. For example, manifesting any given Possibility into Reality requires us to change a specific subject from one status to a different status. Some subjects are easier to transform and others are more difficult to transform. Some require us to change quality, others only require quantity changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119].
+Because Reality has many aspects and tendencies of development, it is useful to classify Possibility. There are at least four types of Possibility, in two separate categories.
+[The categorization below draws a distinction between the ''obvious'' and the ''practical.''
+The ''obvious'' is that which will ''certainly'' occur. If you drop an object, it will ''obviously'' fall. The ''practical'' is that which we ''certainly could make occur'' through human will. If you are holding an object, you could ''practically'' drop it.]
+'''Obvious Possibility and Random Possibility''' [see: Obviousness and Randomness, p. 144].
+''Obvious Possibility'' refers to Possibility that ''will'' happen, because conditions to make it happen are set in place so that the Possibility developing into Reality is unavoidable.
+[If the conditions arise for a hurricane to form, it eventually becomes ''obvious'' that a hurricane will form.]
+''Random Possibility'' is Possibility which may or may not happen depending on how external factors develop, our actions, the actions of others, etc. [Whether or not a hurricane may develop on any given day is, from our human perspective, random, since we do not have any technology to cause or prevent the development of hurricanes. Other events may be more or less random. We can, for instance, ''prepare'' for an incoming hurricane to minimize the risk of harm to human communities.]
+Second, based on the practical relationships between subjects, we have:
+'''Practical Possibility vs. Abstract Possibility:'''
+''Practical Possibility'' means that conditions in Reality which ''could'' make something happen are already in place. [If you have all the ingredients, knowledge, and equipment needed to make a pie, you ''could'' make a pie. The material conditions are in place.]
+''Abstract Possibility'' is Possibility which may become Reality in the future but the conditions which would make this Possibility become Reality have not yet developed.
+[It is an abstract Possibility that you ''could'' make a pie, even if you don’t have the tools, ingredients, or knowledge. It is possible, in the abstract, that you could buy the ingredients and equipment and learn the necessary skills to make a pie. ''Near Possibility'' simply refers to Possibility which may become Reality in the shorter term, ''far Possibility'' refers to things which may happen in a more distant future, relative to the subject being discussed.]
+-----
+In social life, in order to transform a Possibility into Reality, there must be objective conditions and subjective factors. Subjective factors include the ability of humans to change Possibility into Reality. Objective conditions refer to the situations needed to make such a change occur. [In other words, humans are able to ''subjectively'' change possibility into reality, but only when the ''objective'' circumstances exist in the external world.]
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
+We must base our perception and practice on Reality.
+Lenin said: “Marxism takes its stand on the facts, and not on possibilities. A Marxist must, as the foundation of his policy, put [forth] ''only'' precisely and unquestionably demonstrated ''facts''.”<ref>''To N. D. Kiknadze'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, written after November 5, 1916.</ref>
+However, in our perception and practice, we also need to comprehensively recognize possibilities which could arise from Reality. This will allow us to develop methods of practical operation which are suitable to changes and developments which might occur. We must actively make use of subjective factors in perception and practice to turn Possibility into Reality whenever it would serve our purposes.
+-----
+==== Annotation 160 ====
+This idea is perhaps best exemplified in the traditional Vietnamese proverb: “you can’t just open your mouth and wait for fruit to drop into your mouth.” We have to actively apply our will, through practice and labor, to develop the best possibilities into manifested Reality. See more about subjective factors in Annotation 207, p. 202.
+== IV. Basic Laws of Materialist Dialectics ==
+''Laws'' are the regular, common, obvious, natural, and objective relations between internal aspects, factors, and attributes of a thing or phenomenon or between things and phenomena.
+There are many types of laws in this world and they all have different prevalence, reach, characteristics, and roles in regard to the motion and development processes of things and phenomena in nature, society, and human thought. So, it is necessary to classify different laws for humans to understand and apply them effectively into practical activities. Classifying laws based on prevalence, we have: private laws, common laws, and universal laws [see: ''Private and Common'', p. 128].
+''Private laws'' are laws that only apply to a specific range of things and phenomena. For example: laws of mechanical motion, laws of chemical motion, laws of biological motion, etc.
+''Common laws'' are laws that apply to a broader range of subjects than ''private laws,'' and they impact many different subjects. For instance: the law of preservation of mass, the law of preservation of energy, etc.
+''Universal laws'' are laws that impact every aspect of nature, society, and human thought. Materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws.
+If we classify laws based on the ''reach of impact'', we will have three main groups: laws of nature, laws of society, and laws of human thought.
+''Laws of nature'' are laws that arise in the natural world, including within the human body. They are not products of human conscious activities.
+''Laws of society'' are the laws of human activity in social relations; these laws only apply to the conscious activities of humans, yet they are still objective.
+-----
+==== Annotation 161 ====
+We have already discussed how relations between human beings are objective [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. By extension, the human relations which compose human societies are objective, and thus, any laws which govern objective human relations must also be objective.
+Marx’s assertion that human social relations are objective is critical to understanding his work. Marx pointed out that social relations may not be “physical,” in the sense that they can’t be observed directly with human senses, but that they still have an ''objective character'' — they exist externally to a given subject, and they have objective impacts on reality. For instance, the class relations between the capitalist class and the working class result in objective manifestations in reality, such as wealth accumulation, modes of circulation, etc.
+''Laws of human thought'' are laws of the intrinsic relationships between concepts, categories, judgments, inference, and the development process of human rational awareness.
+As the science of common relations and development, materialist dialectics studies the ''universal laws'' that influence the entire natural world, human society, and human thought, all together as a whole.
+These universal laws are:
+* The law of transformation between quantity and quality.
+* The law of unification and contradiction between opposites.
+* The law of negation of negation.
+-----
+==== Annotation 162 ====
+Each of these laws is considered ''universal'' because they apply to all things, phenomena, and ideas, and all the internal and external relations thereof, in human perception and practice. All things, phenomena, and ideas change and develop as a result of mutual impacts and relationships in accordance with these universal laws. On a fundamental level, materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws and their utility.
+=== 1. Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality ===
+The law of transformation between quantity and quality is a universal law which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought.
+-----
+==== Annotation 163 ====
+Remember that mode refers to ''how'' something exists, functions, and develops [see Annotation 60, p. 59]. The universal mode of motion and development processes thus refers to ''how'' all things, ideas, and phenomena move, change, and develop.
+Friedrich Engels defined the law of transformation between quantity and quality in ''Dialectics of Nature'':
+<blockquote>
+The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).
+</blockquote>
+In other words, ''quantitative'' changes of things, phenomena, and ideas lead to ''quality'' shifts.
+-----
+The universal mode of motion and development processes follows the law of transformation between quantity and quality, which states:
+Qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of the quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and, ideas; and, vice versa: quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas.
+-----
+==== Annotation 164 ====
+Put simply: quantity changes develop into quality changes, and quality changes lead to quantity changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. We say that these changes to quantity and quality occur on the “inevitable basis” of one another because quality changes always, invariably, arise from quantity changes, and, likewise, quantity changes always, invariably, arise from quality changes.
+Just as quantity shifts lead to quality shifts, it is also true that quality shifts lead to quantity shifts. For example, if you have 11 donuts, then add 1 donut, you now have ''1 dozen'' donuts. If you add 12 more donuts, you would then have ''2 dozen''.
+Another example of quality shift leading to quantity shift would be a pond filling with rain water. Once enough drops of water collect and the pond is considered full — that is to say, once it is considered to be “a pond” of water — we will no longer think of the pond in terms of “drops.” We would think of the pond as “filled,” “overfilled,” “underfilled,” etc.
+Note that both of these examples are related to our human perceptions and understanding of the material world. The material world does not change based on our perceptions, nor how we classify the quantity or quality of a given subject. There are also objective aspects related to quality shifts leading to quantity shifts. For example, if we adjust the quantity of the temperature of a sheet of paper to the point of burning, and the paper burns, then the quantity of paper would be reduced from one sheet to zero sheets. In other words, the quality shift arising from temperature quantity increase (i.e., the paper burning into ash) results in a quantity shift in how many pieces of paper exist (from one sheet to zero sheets). However, even this is ultimately a subjective assessment rooted in human consciousness, since we subjectively think in terms of “sheets of paper,” and the concept of a “sheet of paper” is essentially a classification rooted in human consciousness. It is merely an abstract way of perceiving and considering the quantity and quality of the material subject which we think of as “paper.”
+The law of transformation between quantity and quality is an inevitable, objective, and universal relationship that repeats in every motion and development process of all things, phenomena, and ideas in nature, human society, and human thought.
+==== a. Definitions of Quality and Quantity ====
+''- Definition of Quality''
+''Quality'' refers to the organic unity which exists amongst the component parts of a thing, phenomenon, or idea that distinguishes it from other things, phenomena, and ideas.
+-----
+==== Annotation 165 ====
+Note: we have already given basic definitions of quantity and quality in Annotation 117, p. 119. What follows are more comprehensive philosophical definitions of quality and quantity. Our world exists as one continuity of matter. All things and phenomena in our universe exist essentially as one unified system — namely, the entity which we call “the universe.” This unified nature of existence is extremely difficult for human beings to comprehend. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel pointed out that, in this sense, the unity of “pure being” is indistinguishable from “nothingness.” In ''Science of Logic'', Hegel noted that if we try to comprehend pure material existence, as a whole, without distinguishing any component thing or phenomenon from any other, then all is incomprehensible. Human consciousness needs to delineate and distinguish the component parts of this unified system from each other in order to make sense of it all.
+<blockquote>
+Pure light and pure darkness are two voids which are the same thing. Something can be distinguished only in determinate light or darkness... [F]or this reason, it is only darkened light and illuminated darkness which have within themselves the moment of difference and are, therefore, determinate being.
+</blockquote>
+The human mind has evolved to perceive various things, phenomena, and ideas as ''differentiated''. Quality is the basis on which we perceive subjects as distinct from one another. Every thing, phenomenon, and idea is composed of internal components and relations. The unity of these internal components and relations is what we refer to as ''quality''. For example, a human being’s ''quality'' refers to the unity of all the internal components and relationships of which the human being is composed (i.e., the cells, organs, blood, etc., as well as the thoughts, memories, etc., which make the human) ''in unity''. Quality is also a subjective phenomenon: a ''reflection'' of the material world in human consciousness [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Therefore we may conceive of various qualities for the same subject. We can think of 12 donuts as “a box of donuts,” “a dozen donuts,” or as 12 individual donuts. We could consider a building as “one apartment building” or “forty apartments,” depending on the viewpoint of analysis.
+-----
+So, objective and inherent attributes form the quality of things, phenomena, and ideas, but we must not confuse quality and attribute with one another. Every thing, phenomenon, and idea has both fundamental and non-fundamental attributes. Only fundamental attributes constitute the quality of things, phenomena and ideas. When the fundamental attributes change, the quality also changes. The distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes of things, phenomena, and ideas must depend on the purpose of the analysis; the same attribute may be fundamental when analyzing with one purpose but non-fundamental when analyzing with another purpose.
+-----
+==== Annotation 166 ====
+Whether or not an attribute is considered “fundamental” depends entirely on conscious perspective. For example, one baker may consider chocolate chips to be “fundamental” for baking cookies while another baker may not. This subjective characteristic of what might be considered “fundamental” or not is reflected in how we consider quality. If you are trying to determine how much water you need to fill a swimming pool, you may think of a pool in terms of size (i.e., “this is an Olympic sized pool”), but if you just want to go for a swim, you are likely to just think in terms of the water level (i.e., “the pool is empty, we can’t swim”).
+If you are planning the construction of a school and want to know how many classrooms it will need, you might think in terms of “classrooms of students.” But if you are considering funding for a school year, you might consider the ''total number of students''.
+The quality of a thing, phenomenon, or idea is determined by the qualities of its component parts.
+-----
+==== Annotation 167 ====
+Qualities are composed of qualities, combined, in unity. “A swimming pool” may consist of a certain amount of concrete in a specific configuration combined with 5,000 gallons of water. A car may be composed of a body, an engine, four tires, etc. Each individual component exists as a quality — a unity of component attributes — in and of itself.
+Quality is also determined by the structures and connections between component parts which manifest in specific relations. Therefore, distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes is also relative.
+-----
+==== Annotation 168 ====
+It’s not just the component parts of a subject which define its quality, but also the relations of those component parts. For instance, a quantity of wood and nails configured in one set of structural relations may have the quality of a chair, whereas the same component parts arranged with different structures and relations may have the quality of a table. In this sense, quality can be thought of as a synthesis of the Content and Form [see ''Content and Form'', p. 147] of a thing, phenomenon, or idea from a certain perspective.
+For example, if we see two shoes, we may think of each shoe as an individual qualitative object (two shoes). On the other hand, we may think of the shoes, together, as a single qualitative “object” in terms of its utility and in terms of synthesis of content and form (“a pair of shoes”), so much so that if one shoe is lost then the remaining shoe is considered useless and discarded as trash.
+Because there are countless ways in which quality — the configuration and relations and composition of constituent parts of any given subject — can manifest, we must recognize that quality itself, based on the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes, is a relative and subjective phenomenon of human consciousness.
+Any given subject will have multiple qualities, depending on the relations which exist between and within that subject and other subjects.
+-----
+==== Annotation 169 ====
+Any thing, phenomenon, or idea may be perceived from various different perspectives which would cause us to consider it as having different qualities. A single shoe may be considered as: a shoe, 3 pounds of leather, half of a pair, etc., depending on its internal and external relations and the perspective of the person considering the shoe.
+We can’t consider things, phenomena, and ideas apart from quality. Quality exhibits a subject’s relative stability.
+-----
+==== Annotation 170 ====
+Remember that ''quality'' is the way in which the human mind conceives of the world as a collection of distinct things, phenomena, and ideas. These perceptions of quality are purely relative, but they are important, because they are what allow us to develop an understanding of the complicated system of things, phenomena, and ideas which make up our universe. In our perception, quality represents the relative stability of a thing, phenomenon, or idea which makes it a subject that we can consider and analyze in and of itself. Understanding how we distinguish between different subjects is crucial in developing a scientific understanding of the world which is rooted in observation and practice.
+''- Definition of Quantity''
+''Quantity'' refers to the amount or extent of specific attributes of a thing, phenomenon, or idea, including but not limited to:
+* The amount of component parts.
+* Scale or size.
+* Speed or rhythm of motion.
+A thing, phenomenon, or idea can have many quantities, with each quantity determined by different criteria. [i.e., a car may be measured by many criteria of quantity, such as: length in meters, weight in kilograms, speed in kilometers per hour, etc.]
+Quality and quantity embody two different aspects of the same subject. Both quality and quantity exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. However, the distinction between “quality” and “quantity” in the process of perceiving things, phenomena, and ideas has only relative significance: an attribute may be considered “quantity” from one perspective but “quality” from another perspective.
+-----
+==== Annotation 171 ====
+If you are filling a box with a dozen donuts, then once you add the 12<sup>th</sup> donut, one “dozen” may represent the ''quality'' which you seek. From the perspective of a customer buying donuts for a party, “dozen” may represent the “quantity.” In other words, you need to make an ''order'' (quality) of ''three dozen donuts'' (quantity). And the manager of the store, at the end of the day, may tally ''twenty'' ''orders'' (quantity) as the day’s ''sales goal'' (quality). Quantity and quality, therefore, are both considered ''relatively'', based on perspective and the purpose of analysis at hand.
+==== b. Dialectical Relationship Between Quantity and Quality ====
+Every thing, phenomenon, and idea exists as a unity of two aspects: quality and quantity. Quantity and quality do not exist separate from one another. Quantity and quality dialectically and mutually impact one other. Changes in quantity lead to changes in quality. However, not every change in quantity will cause a change in quality.
+-----
+==== Annotation 172 ====
+In order for quantity change to lead to quality change, a certain amount must be met.
+This amount is called the ''threshold'', which is explained further below in this section. A threshold may be exact and known (i.e., it takes exactly 12 donuts to make a dozen donuts) or it may be relative and unknown (i.e., a certain quantity of air inflated into a balloon may cause it to burst, but the exact, specific quantity of air may be relative to other factors such as air temperature and may be unknown to the observer until the balloon actually bursts).
+With any given subject, there will be a range of quantity changes which can accumulate without leading to change in quality. This range is called the ''quantity range''.
+''Quantity range'' is defined as a relationship between quantity and quality: the range of intervals in which the change in quantity does not substantially change the quality of a given subject. Within the limits of a quantity range, the subject retains the same quality.
+-----
+==== Annotation 173 ====
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-56.png|''The quantity range is a range of quantities between quality shifts.'']]
+Quantity range can be thought of as the range of quantities which exists between thresholds. For instance, between the qualities of “''one donut''” and “''one dozen donuts'',” there is a quantity range of 10 donuts (2 donuts through 11 donuts) which can be added before the quality shifts to “''one dozen donuts''.” You can keep adding additional donuts, up to the quantity of 11 donuts, without reaching the threshold of quality shift to “one dozen donuts.” This is the ''quantity range'' between the qualities of ''donut'' and ''one dozen donuts''. Again, the quantity range is relative to the perspective and the nature of analysis. One person may only be concerned with “dozens of donuts,” while another may consider the quality of “half dozens,” which would consider a quality shift to “one half-dozen donuts” to occur once the sixth donut (quantity) is added.
+Motion and change usually begins with a change in quantity. When changes in quantity reach a certain amount, quality will also change. The amount, or degree, of quantity change at which quality change occurs is called the ''threshold.''
+-----
+==== Annotation 174 ====
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-57.png]]
+Note that the threshold is an approximate range. At a certain quantity, a glass may be considered “half full” and at another certain quantity, after passing the threshold, the glass will be considered “full,” though there may be a wide range of quantities at which the glass would be considered to have the quality of being “full,” depending on perspective and purpose of analysis.
+When quantity change meets a threshold, within necessary and specific conditions, quality will change. This change in quality, which takes place in the motion and development process of things, phenomena, and ideas, is called a ''quality shift''.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-58.png|''A quality shift occurs when a quantity changes beyond a threshold, leading to a change in quality.'']]
+''Quality shifts'' inevitably occur as transformations in the development processes of things, phenomena, and ideas. Qualitative changes can be expressed or manifested through many forms of quality shifts which are determined by the contradictions, characteristics and conditions of a given subject, including such characteristics as: fast or slow, big or small, partial or entire, spontaneous or intentional.
+-----
+==== Annotation 175 ====
+Quality shifts are ''inevitable'' because there is no thing, phenomenon, nor idea which can exist statically, forever, without ever undergoing change. Eventually, any given subject will undergo quality shifts, even if such transformation may take millions of years to occur.
+Quality shifts can take various forms, depending on the nature of internal and external relationships, contradictions, and mutual impacts. For instance, a river may dry up or it may flood depending on internal and external relations and characteristics, but it will not simply flow at the same level forever without ever undergoing any quality shifts.
+The rate and degree of quality shifts can vary considerably based on such internal and external factors, and may be “spontaneous,” that is to say, without human intervention, or may be the result of the intentional, conscious action of human beings.
+''Quality shifts'' mark the end of one motion period and the start of a new motion period.
+-----
+==== Annotation 176 ====
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-59.png|''The Quantity Range (A) refers to the range of quantities between two qualities in the process of development. The Quality Shift (B) refers to the point at which quantity accumulates to the point of changing the Quality of the developing subject. The Period of Motion (C) includes both the quantity range and the quality shifts themselves.'']]
+''Period of motion'' refers to the development which occurs between two quality shifts, including the quality shifts themselves.
+''Period of motion'' differs from ''quantity range'' because quantity range only includes the range of quantity change which can occur ''between'' quality shifts, without including the quality shifts themselves.
+For example, a ''period of motion'' for a cup filling with water from a half cup would include all of the change which occurs from the cup being half full to the cup becoming entirely full. The ''quantity range'' of this same process would only include the quantities of water that stand between half-full and full, where the cup is neither considered to be “half full” or “full” but somewhere in between, i.e., between quality shifts.
+Quality shift represents ''discontinuity'' within the continuous development process of things and phenomena. In the material world, all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing continuous sequences of quantitative changes leading to quality shifts, creating an endless line of nodes, showing how all things, phenomena, and ideas move and develop to increasingly advanced degrees [see illustration on p. 121 for a visualization of this “endless line of nodes”].
+As Friedrich Engels summarised: “merely quantitative changes beyond a certain point pass into qualitative differences.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
+==== Annotation 177 ====
+Processes of change and development in our universe are continuously ongoing. Whenever a quality shift occurs, it represents a brief ''discontinuity'' in the sense that we perceive a definite and ''distinct'' transformation from one thing, phenomenon, or idea into another; in other words, we can ''distinguish'' between the mode of existence of the thing, phenomenon, or idea before and after the quality shift.
+Take, for example, the “lifespan” of a house. A human being could easily distinguish between the empty land which exists before the house is built, the construction site which exists as it’s being built, and the house itself once construction is completed. In reality, this process of change is continuous, but to our human perception, each quality shift represents a definite and distinct period of change and discontinuity in terms of our perception of the “thing” which is the house.
+This is related to the ''historic perspective'' of things, phenomena, and ideas, in which we recognize the continuity of existence between different stages of development of things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 201, p. 195].
+When a quality shift occurs, there is an impact on the quantity. Quality impacts quantity in a number of ways, including [but not limited to]:
+* Changing the structure, scale, or level of the subject.
+* Changing the rhythm or speed of the motion and development of the subject.
+''In summary,'' dialectical unity between quantity and quality exists in every thing, phenomenon, and idea. A gradual quantitative change [through the ''quantity range''] will eventually meet the ''threshold'', which will inevitably lead to a qualitative change through ''quality shift''. Simultaneously, the new quality will mutually impact the quantity, causing new quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas. This process takes place continuously, forming the fundamental and universal mode of movement and development processes of all things, phenomena, and ideas.
+==== Annotation 178 ====
+Transformation between quantity and quality is the mode of movement and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas, because it reflects the way in which human consciousness perceives movement and development.
+So, it is important to understand that there is no ''material manifestation'' of quantity and quality. They are simply mental constructs which reflect the ways in which we observe and understand change, motion, and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Transformation processes in the material world are fully fluid and continuous, but our consciousness perceives change in ''stages of development''. Quality simply reflects how we distinguish one subject from another subject, as well as how we recognize the transformation process (and stages of development) of a single subject over time.
+There is no specific point, metaphysically distinct point at which a “puppy” becomes an “adult dog,” but human beings will distinguish between a puppy and an adult dog, or recognize at a certain point that a puppy has “become” an adult dog, based on observation of quality.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-60.png|''Quality refers to the differences which are distinguished in human consciousness between one subject and another, or changes in a subject’s form over time.'']]
+There is no metaphysically distinct point at which a “puppy” becomes an “adult dog,” but human beings will distinguish between a puppy and an adult dog, or recognize at a certain point that a puppy has “become” an adult dog, based on observation of quality. We create categories which reflect quality to organize and systematically understand the world around us, and to distinguish between different subjects, and to distinguish between different stages of development of a given subject.
+We can also distinguish differences of quality between different subjects: we can distinguish a cat from a dog, and we can distinguish one dog from another dog. These distinguishing attributes constitute differences in quality. Note that this conception of differentiation of things, phenomena, and ideas into qualities which constantly change and develop over time is fundamentally distinct from ''metaphysical'' categorization, which seeks to divide all things, phenomena, and ideas into static, perpetually unchanging categories (see Annotation 8, p. 8).
+Distinction within the human mind is reflected in the concept of quantity and quality. If we do not observe quality differences between subjects, then we would not be able to distinguish between different subjects at all. If we could not recognize the quality shifts of any given subject, then we would not be aware of change or motion at all.
+-----
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
+Every thing, phenomenon and idea has characteristics of quality and quantity which mutually impact and transform one another. Therefore, in perception and practice, we need to understand and take into account the law of transformation between quantity and quality in order to have a comprehensive viewpoint of things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 114, p. 116].
+Quantitative changes of things, phenomena and ideas inevitably lead to qualitative changes in all things, phenomena, and ideas. Therefore, in our perception and practice, as we plan and enact change in our world and in human society, it is necessary to gradually accumulate changes in quantity in order to make changes in quality. At the same time, we must recognize and make use of the fact that quality shifts also lead to changes in quantity.
+-----
+==== Annotation 179 ====
+We have to understand and utilize the law of transformation between quantity and quality in our activities. For instance, if a group of activists hopes to address hunger in their community, they have to realize that they can’t immediately enact a quality shift which solves the entire problem of hunger across the city instantaneously. Instead, the activists must recognize that quantity shifts lead to quality shifts through stages of development. In planning and acting, they may need to set certain development targets, predict thresholds at which quality shifts will occur, etc.
+For instance, the first goal for these activists may be to provide free lunches to houseless people in a particular park every weekend. If they can accomplish this, then they will not have completely eliminated hunger in the city, but they will have reached a threshold — a quality shift — in that nobody in that specific park will be hungry at lunch time on weekends. From there, they can continue to build quality shifts through accumulation of changes in quantity, one stage of development at a time.
+Quality shifts leading to quantity shifts must also be recognized and utilized in our planning and activities. For example, once an effective strategy is developed for eliminating hunger in one park through quantity changes leading to quality shifts, this strategy can then be implemented in other parks. Thus the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in one park” can lead to a quantity shift: “eliminating hunger in two parks, three parks, etc.,” until the quantity shift of “eliminating hunger in parks” leads to the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in all the parks in the city.” This entire process of enacting quantity changes to lead to quality shifts, and accumulating quality shifts to change quantity, are all focused toward the ultimate goal of achieving the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in the entire city.”
+In short, it’s vital for us to understand the ways in which quantity and quality mutually impact each other so that we can formulate plans and activities which will lead to motion and development which accomplish our goals, step by step, through one stage of development at a time.
+Changes in quantity can only lead to changes in quality provided the quantity accumulates to a certain threshold. Therefore, in practice, we need to overcome impatient, left-sided thought. Left-sided thinking refers to thinking which is overly subjective, idealistic, ignorant of the laws which govern material reality. Left-sided thinking neglects to acknowledge the necessity of quantity accumulation which precedes shifts in quality, focusing instead on attempting to perform continuous shifts in quality.
+On the other hand, we must also recognize that once change in quantity has reached a threshold, it is ''inevitable'' that a quality shift will take place. Therefore, we need to overcome conservative and right-sided thought in practical work. Right-sided thinking is the expression of conservative, stagnant thought that resists or refuses to recognize quality shifts even as changes in quantity come to meet the threshold of quality shift.
+-----
+==== Annotation 180 ====
+“Right-sided thinking” and “left-sided thinking” are Vietnamese political concepts which are rooted in the ideas of Lenin’s book: ''Leftwing Communism: an Infantile Disorder''. In Vietnamese political philosophy, “left-sided thinking” is a form of dogmatic idealism which upholds unrealistic conceptions of change and development. Left-sided thinkers don’t have the patience for quantity accumulation which are prerequisite to quality shifts, or expect to skip entire stages of development which are necessary to precipitate change in the real world. An example of left-sided thinking would be believing that a capitalist society can ''instantly'' transition into a stateless, classless, communist society, skipping over the transitions in quantity and quality which are required to bring such a massive transformation in human society to fruition.
+“Right-sided thinking,” on the other hand, is conservate resistance to change. Right-sided thinkers resist quality changes to human society; they either want to preserve society as it exists right now, or reverse development to some previous (real or imagined) stage of development. Right-sided thinkers also refuse to acknowledge quality shifts once they’ve occurred, idealistically pretending that changes in material conditions have not occurred. For example, right-sided thinkers may refuse to recognize advances which have been made in the liberation of women, or even attempt to reverse those advances in hopes of returning to previous stages of development when women had fewer freedoms. Here is a practical example of these concepts in use, from the ''Vietnam Encyclopedia'', published by the Ministry of Culture and Information of Vietnam:
+<blockquote>
+Opportunism is a system of political views that do not follow a clear direction nor a clear line, do not have a definite stance, and are inclined toward the immediate personal gain of the opportunist. In the proletarian revolutionary movement, opportunism is a politics of compromise, reform, and unprincipled collaboration with the enemy which run contrary to the basic interests of the working class and the working people. In practice, opportunism has two main trends, stemming from right-sided thinking and from left-sided thinking, respectively:
+Right-wing opportunism is reformist, favors undue compromise, and aims to peacefully “convert” capitalism into socialism while abandoning the struggle for meaningful victory of the working class. Right-wing opportunism, typified by Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, has its origins in the Workers’ Parties of the Second International era and exists to this day.
+Left-wing opportunism is a mixture of extremism and adventurism, dogmatism, arrogance, subjectivity, cults of violence, and disregard for the objective situation.
+Both “right” and “left” opportunism push the workers’ movement to futile sacrifice and failure.
+</blockquote>
+-----
+Quality shifts are diverse and plentiful, so we need to promote and apply quality shifts creatively and flexibly to suit the specific material conditions we face in a given situation. This is especially true in changing human society, as social development processes depend not only on objective conditions but also on subjective human factors. Therefore, we need to be active and take the initiative to promote the process of converting between quantity and quality in the most effective way.
+-----
+==== Annotation 181 ====
+Put simply, we have to use our human will and labor to actively promote quantity changes which lead to quality changes, and quality changes which lead to quantity changes, which move us towards our goal of ending all forms of oppression in human society. This will involve not just objective factors<ref>See Annotation 108, p. 112.</ref> (i.e., material conditions which are necessary to accomplish something), but subjective factors<ref>See Annotation 207, p. 202.</ref> as well (factors which we, as a subject, are capable of impacting directly).
+=== 2. Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites ===
+The law of unification and contradiction between opposites is the ''Essence'' of dialectics [see: ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156]. According to Lenin: “In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the Essence of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development.”<ref>''Summary of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref> According to the law of unification and contradiction between opposites, the fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradiction which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas.
+-----
+==== Annotation 182 ====
+In other words, ''contradiction'' (defined further in the next section) is the force which serves as the fundamental, originating, and universal force which drives all motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas.
+Contradiction is a ''fundamental driving force'' because it is the most basic driving force which all other forms of motion and development are based upon.
+Contradiction is the ''originating driving force'' because all motion and development arises from contradiction.
+Contradiction is the ''universal driving force'' because ''all'' things, phenomena, and ideas — without exception — are driven to motion and development by contradiction.
+==== a. Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction ====
+''- Definition of Contradiction''
+In dialectics, the concept of contradiction is used to refer to the relationship, opposition, and transformation between opposites which takes place ''within'' all things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as ''between'' all things, phenomena, and ideas. This dialectical concept of contradiction is fundamentally different from the metaphysical concept of contradiction. The metaphysical concept of contradiction is an illogical conception of opposition without unity and without dialectical transformation between opposites.
+-----
+==== Annotation 183 ====
+A contradiction is, fundamentally, just a type of relationship. In a contradictory relationship, two things, phenomena, and/or ideas mutually impact one another, resulting in the eventual ''negation'' of one subject and the ''synthesis'' of the negator and the negated into some new form.
+The metaphysical concept of contradiction is considered illogical because it establishes no connection between that which is negated and the resulting synthesis.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-61.png|''In the metaphysical conception of contradiction, the negated “disappears” and is not represented in the resulting synthesis.'']]
+Metaphysical contradiction presents contradicting subjects as isolated from one another and completely distinct, when in reality the relationship between the negated and the negator essentially defines the contradiction. The negated subject is seen as completely negated; that is to say, it is conceived of as essentially “disappearing” into the synthesized result of the contradiction. In this sense, this metaphysical conception of negation is inaccurate in that it is represented as a complete, terminating process.
+In the above example, once the fox eats the rabbit, the rabbit is considered “gone” after a terminal negation process (see Annotation 196, p. 188) ends the contradiction.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-62.png|''The materialist dialectical conception of contradiction recognizes that contradicting subjects are defined by their relationship and that the synthesis of the contradiction carries forward attributes and characteristics from both the negator and the negated.'']]
+Materialist dialectical contradiction recognizes that every contradiction is defined by the relationship between the negated and the negator. Materialist dialectics also recognizes that attributes and characteristics of the negated subject are carried forward into the synthesized subject [see Annotation 203, p. 198]. Materialist dialectics also recognizes that contradiction continues indefinitely, as the negated becomes negated again, and so on, continuously, forever [see ''Negation of Negation'', p. 185].
+In the example on the previous page, the fox consuming the rabbit constitutes a negation process in which the fox takes on characteristics from the rabbit (i.e., nutritional and energy content, any diseases which may be carried forward to the fox, etc.).
+Contradiction arises from opposition which exists within or between things, phenomena, and ideas. The concept of opposing “sides” refers to such aspects, properties, and tendencies of motion which oppose one another, yet are, simultaneously, conditions and premises of the existence of one another. Examples include:
+* Negative charge and positive charge within atoms.
+* Anabolism and catabolism within living organisms [anabolism refers to the growth and building up of molecules within an organism, while catabolism refers to the digestion and breaking down of molecules within an organism].
+* Production and consumption as socioeconomic activities.
+* Trial and error which leads to cognitive development.
+==== Annotation 184 ====
+All of the above forms of contradiction ''drive motion and development''. These processes exist in ''unity and opposition''. For example, in political economics, production is driven by consumption and consumption is facilitated by production. Even though these are fundamentally opposite forces (production adds to the total quantity of products, while consumption reduces the total quantity of products), they can’t exist without one another, and they drive each other forward. This is the dialectical nature of contradiction as the driving force of all motion and development as defined in materialist dialectics.
+''- The General Properties of Contradictions''
+Contradiction is objective and universal. According to Friedrich Engels: “If simple mechanical change of position contains a contradiction, this is even more true of the higher forms of motion of matter, and especially of organic life and its development. We saw above that life consists precisely and primarily in this — that a being is at each moment itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly originates and resolves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in. We likewise saw that also, in the sphere of thought, we could not escape contradictions, and that, for example, the contradiction between man’s inherently unlimited capacity for knowledge and its actual presence only in men who are externally limited and possess limited cognition finds its solution in what is — at least practically, for us — an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', Friedrich Engels, 1877.</ref>
+==== Annotation 185 ====
+Here, Engels is explaining how contradiction is the driving force in both material and conscious processes of motion and development. The process of life is a process of contradiction — all organic life forms must consume organic matter so that they can produce growth and offspring, must produce certain molecules and metabolic processes so that they can consume nutrients, and so on. Once these contradictory processes stop, as Engels says, “death steps in” (though even death is a transition forward).
+Conscious motion and development are also rooted in contradictory forces. Engels points out the contradiction between humanity’s seemingly infinite capacity for learning with the seemingly infinite amount of knowledge which can be obtained in the world. This great contradiction drives a seemingly endless process of expanding human knowledge, collectively, over countless generations.
+Contradictions are not only objective and universal, but also diverse and plentiful. The diverse nature of contradictions is evident in the fact that every subject can include many different contradictions and that contradictions manifest differently depending upon specific conditions. Contradictions can hold different positions and roles in the existence, motion, and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. These positions and roles include [but are not limited to]:
+* Internal and external contradictions
+* Fundamental and non-fundamental contradictions
+* Primary and secondary contradictions
+==== Annotation 186 ====
+''Internal'' contradictions are contradictions which exist in the ''internal relations'' of a subject, while ''external'' contradictions exist ''between'' two or more subjects as external relations.
+For example: a sports team might have ''internal contradictions'' between players, between the players and the coach, between the coach and management, etc. External contradictions might exist between the team and other teams, between the team and league officials, between the team and the landlords who own the team’s practice space, etc.
+A ''fundamental'' contradiction is a contradiction which defines the Essence of a relationship [see ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156]. Fundamental contradictions exist throughout the entire development process of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. A ''non-fundamental'' contradiction exists in only one aspect or attribute of a thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction can ''impact'' a subject, but it will not control or decide the essential development of the subject. Whether or not a contradiction is fundamental is relative to the point of view.
+For example: the ''fundamental contradiction'' of one nation engaged in war against one another might be the war itself. There will exist many other contradictions; one nation at war might have a trade dispute with a third nation which is not participating in the war. From the “war perspective,” this contradiction is ''non-fundamental'', as it does not define the essential characteristic of the nation at war (though from the perspective of a diplomat charged with ending the trade dispute, the war may be seen as a non-fundamental contradiction while the dispute would be seen as fundamental).
+In the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, there are many development stages. In each stage of development, there will be one contradiction which drives the development process. This is what we call the ''primary'' contradiction. ''Secondary'' contradictions include all the other contradictions which exist during that stage of development. Determining whether a contradiction is primary or secondary is relative: it depends heavily upon the material conditions and the situation.
+For example: when restoring an old car that doesn’t run any more, a mechanic may consider the ''primary contradiction'' to be the non-functioning engine. There may be many ''secondary contradictions'' which contribute to the problems with the car’s engine problems. The battery may be dead, the spark plugs may need to be bad, the tires may need replacement, the timing belt may be loose, etc. Those are all ''secondary contradictions'' which do not define the stage of development which is “repairing the engine.” Some of these secondary contradictions may need to be resolved (such as replacing the spark plugs) before the primary contradiction can be fully addressed; others, such as a cracked windshield, may not need to be addressed before the primary contradiction can be dealt with.
+On the other hand, a secondary contradiction may become the primary contradiction: if a mechanic resolves every problem with the engine ''except'' for one bad spark plug, then the bad spark plug will shift from being a secondary contradiction to being the primary contradiction: the bad spark plug is now the primary reason the car won’t start and this stage of development can’t be completed.
+Within all the various fields of inquiry, there exist contradictions which have a diverse range of different properties and characteristics.
+==== Annotation 187 ====
+Different fields of study will focus on different forms of contradictions, and any given thing, phenomenon, or idea may contain countless contradictions which can be analyzed and considered for different purposes. For example, consider a large city, which might contain far too many contradictions to count. Civil engineers may focus primarily on contradictions in traffic patterns, the structural integrity of bridges and roads, ensuring that buildings are safe and healthy for inhabitants, etc. Utilities departments will focus on contradictions related to sewage, electrical, and sanitation systems. The education system will focus on contradictions which prevent students from achieving success in schools.
+All of these various methods of analysis may focus on specific forms of contradictions, though there will also be overlap. For instance, designing a school bus system will require the education system and civil engineers to discover and grapple with contradictions which might be hindrances for transporting students safely to school.
+==== b. Motion Process of Contradictions ====
+In every contradiction, the opposing sides are united with each other and opposed to each other at the same time. The concept of “unity between opposites” refers to the fact that a contradiction is a binding, inseparable, and mutually impacting relationship which exists between opposites.
+-----
+==== Annotation 188 ====
+Contradictions are ''binding'' and ''inseparable'' because they hold a relationship together. If two opposing things, phenomena, or ideas simply ''separate'', then contradiction, by definition, no longer exists. For example, an economy is bound together by the contradiction of production and consumption; if production exists without consumption (or vice-versa), it can’t be considered to be an economy.
+Contradictions are said to be ''mutually impacting'' because any time a contradiction exists between two opposing sides, both sides are mutually impacted for as long as the contradiction exists and develops. Of course, it is possible for two opposing sides to separate from one another; for example, a factory which produced buggy whips may have failed to find consumers after the invention of the car. Thus, there would exist a situation in which production exists without consumption. In this situation, the termination of the contradiction between production and consumption leads to a new contradiction: the factory will now be in the midst of a crisis which will require it to either provide a different product or go out of business.
+Thus we see that production and consumption can’t be separated from one another without leading to a change in the essential nature of the relationship and the opposing subjects, and we see that the opposing sides mutually impact one another (a change in consumption will affect production, and vice-versa).
+In any given contradictory relationship, each oppositional side is the premise for the other’s existence. Unity among opposites also defines the identity of each opposing side. Lenin wrote: “The identity of opposites (it would be more correct, perhaps, to say their ‘unity,’—although the difference between the terms identity and unity is not particularly important here. In a certain sense, both are correct) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society).”<ref>''On the Questions of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.</ref>
+-----
+==== Annotation 189 ====
+Here, Lenin is explaining that ''identity'' and ''unity'' are (more or less) the same concept when it comes to understanding the nature of contradiction between opposites. In material processes of nature, social processes, and processes of consciousness, we perceive and define oppositional forces by recognizing mutually exclusive and contradictory tendencies within and between things, phenomena, and ideas. In other words, whenever we think of an oppositional relationship, we ''define it'' in terms of the opposition.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-63.png|''War, disease, and economy are all examples of unity in contradiction.'']]
+When we think of a war, we think of the contradictions which exist ''between'' the opposing nations. When we think of a disease, we define it by the oppositional forces ''between'' the ailment and the human body. When we think of an economy, we think of the oppositional forces of production and consumption ''within'' the economy.
+In other words, the identity of contradictory relationships is ''defined'' by the ''unity'' of the opposing sides with one another.
+The concept ''struggle of opposites'' refers to the tendency of opposites to eliminate and negate each other. There exist many diverse forms of struggle between opposites. Struggle can manifest in various forms based on:
+* The nature of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea.
+* Relationships within a thing, phenomenon, or idea (or between things, phenomena, and ideas).
+* Specific material conditions [see Annotation 10, p. 10].
+The process of unity and struggle of opposites inevitably leads to a ''transformation between them''. The transformation between opposites takes place with rich diversity, and such transformations can vary depending on the properties of the opposite sides as well as specific material conditions.
+-----
+==== Annotation 190 ====
+Opposing sides, by definition, ''oppose'' one another. If forces or characteristics which exist within or between things, phenomena, or ideas do ''not'' oppose one another, then they are not, by definition, ''opposites''. Thus, it can be understood that opposing sides have a tendency to ''struggle against'' one another. It is this very struggle which defines two sides as opposites, and as contradictory.
+Lenin explained that some contradicting opposite sides can exist in what he described as ''equilibrium'', but that this is only ever a temporary state of affairs, as exemplified in his article ''An Equilibrium of Forces.''
+[See Annotation 64, p. 62 for relevant text and more info on equilibrium.]
+Clearly, Lenin sees that this equilibrium of contradictory forces is not permanently sustainable. Indeed, ''no'' equilibrium of contradictory forces can be permanent. Eventually, one opposing side will overtake the other, and eventually, any given contradiction will result in one opposing side overcoming the other.
+According to the law of unification and contradiction between opposites, the struggle between two opposing sides is absolute, while the unity between them is relative, conditional, and temporary; in unity there is a struggle: a struggle in unity. According to Lenin: “The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”<ref>''On the Questions of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.</ref>
+-----
+==== Annotation 191 ====
+“Absolute” and “Relative” are philosophical classifications which refer to interdependence. That which is ''absolute'' exists independently and with permanence. That which is ''relative'' is temporary, and dependent on other conditions or circumstances in order to exist.
+So Lenin’s point is that ''unity'' exists temporarily in any given pair of opposing sides, as the unity only exists as long as the opposing sides are opposing one another. As soon as one side eliminates or negates the other, the unity subsides. However, ''opposition'' is considered absolute, because it is opposition which drives motion and change in all things, phenomena, and ideas through contradictory processes of opposing sides.
+In the same text quoted in the passage above, ''On the Questions of Dialectics,'' Lenin notes:
+<blockquote>
+The distinction between subjectivism (skepticism, sophistry, etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that in (objective) dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is itself relative. For objective dialectics there is an absolute within the relative. For subjectivism and sophistry the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute...
+Such must also be the method of exposition (i.e., study) of dialectics in general... To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., with any proposition: the leaves of a tree are green; John is a man: Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics (as Hegel’s genius recognised): the individual is the universal.
+The individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes) etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs, the concepts of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a dog, this is a leaf of a tree, etc., we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other.
+</blockquote>
+In other words, we must understand that in materialist dialectics, the absolute and the relative exist within one another; in other words, the absolute and the relative have a ''dialectical relationship'' with one another in all things, phenomena, and ideas.
+''Relative unity'' refers to the nature of ''unity'' between contradictory subjects. Contradictory subjects are ''unified'' in the sense that any given contradiction is essentially defined by the contradiction between two subjects. Thus, the two subjects are ''unified'' in contradiction. However, this unity is ''relative'' in the sense that this unification is temporary (the unity will end upon negation and synthesis) and relative (i.e., defined by the relationship between the two contradicting subjects).
+''Absolute struggle'' refers to the fact that contradiction, negation, and synthesis will go on forever; in this sense, contradictory processes are ''absolute'' because such struggle exists ''permanently;'' struggle has no set beginning or end point, and exists independently of any specific thing, phenomenon, or idea.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-64.png|''Relative Unity refers to the temporary and relative nature of specific relationships which define and unify specific contradictions; Absolute Struggle refers to the permanent, constant nature of development through contradiction.'']]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-65.png|''The relationship between relative unity and absolute struggle defines and drives change, motion, and development through contradiction.'']]
+This applies to contradictions. The ''relative unity'' and the ''absolute struggle'' between opposing sides have a dialectical relationship with one another. The permanent absoluteness of struggle — the fact that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing processes of change through contradictory forces — can only manifest in the relative unity of opposing sides, which can only exist through the temporary existence of conditional relations between opposing sides.
+-----
+The interaction that leads to the transformation between opposites is a process. At the beginning, contradictions manifest as differences and then develop into two opposing sides. When the two contradictions are fiercely matched and when the conditions are ripe, they will transform each other, and finally, the conflict will be resolved. As old contradictions disappear, new contradictions are formed and the process of mutual impact and transformation between opposites continues, which drives the motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas. The relationship, impact and transformation between opposites are the source and driving force of all movement and development in the world. Lenin affirmed: “Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.”<ref>''On the Questions of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.</ref>
+-----
+==== Annotation 192 ====
+Any given process of development — that is to say, of transformation or motion — can be seen as a struggle between opposites. Various forms of struggle can exist simultaneously for any given subject, and the way we interpret struggle can depend on our point of view.
+For an engineer, a car moving along a road might be seen as a struggle between the power generated by the engine against the mass of the car itself and the friction of the tires on the ground. The driver of the car might see the process in terms of the struggle between the driver and the environment as they navigate across town avoiding accidents and following traffic laws.
+An organism’s life can be seen as a struggle between the organism’s life processes and its environment, or it might be seen as a struggle of contradictory forces within the organism itself (i.e., forces of consumption of nutrition vs. forces of expending energy to survive, forces of disease vs. forces of the organism’s immune system, etc.).
+Materialist dialectics requires us to identify, examine, and understand the opposing forces which drive all development in our universe. Only through understanding such contradictions can we intercede and affect changes in the world which suit our purposes.
+For example, in order to fight against capitalism and other forms of oppression, we must first understand the contradictory forces which exist within and between those oppressive social structures. Only then can we determine how we might best apply our will, through labor processes, to dismantle such oppressive structures. We might do this by exacerbating existing contradictions within oppressive structures, by introducing new contradictions, by negating contradictions which inhibit our own progress, etc.
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
+Given that contradictions are objective and universal, and that they are the source and driving force of movement and development, it is therefore necessary to detect, recognize, and understand contradictions, to fully analyze opposing sides, and to grasp the nature, origin and tendencies of motion and development in our awareness and practice.
+Lenin said: “The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts… is the ''essence…'' of dialectics.”<ref>''On the Questions of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.</ref>
+-----
+==== Annotation 193 ====
+In other words, materialist dialectics is simply a system of understanding the world around us by viewing all things, phenomena, and ideas as collections of relationships and contradictions which exist within and between all things, phenomena, and ideas.
+Since contradictions exist with such rich diversity, it is necessary to have a historical point of view [see Annotation 114, p. 116] — that is, to know how to analyze each specific type of contradiction and have appropriate methods for resolving them. In our perception and practice, it is necessary to properly distinguish the roles and positions of different types of contradictions in each situation and condition; we must also distinguish between different characteristics which contradictions might have in order to find the best method of resolving them.
+-----
+==== Annotation 194 ====
+The historical viewpoint is vital because in order to fully understand any given contradiction, we must understand the process of development which led to its formation.
+For example, before a car engine can be repaired, we must first find out what caused the engine to stop working to begin with. If the car is out of fuel, we must determine what caused it to run out of fuel. Did the driver simply drive until the fuel tank was empty, or is there a hole or leak in a fuel line, in the tank, etc.?
+It is vital to know the history of development of a given pair of opposing sides, as well as the characteristics and other properties of both opposing sides, to fully understand the contradiction. Since all conscious activity (like all processes of motion and change) ultimately derives from the driving force of contradiction, it is vital for us to develop a historical and comprehensive perspective of any contradictions we hope to affect through our conscious activities.
+=== 3. Law of Negation of Negation ===
+The law of negation of negation describes the fundamental and universal tendency of movement and development to occur through ''dialectical negation'', forming a cyclical form of development through what is termed “''negation of negation''.”
+==== a. Definition of Negation and Dialectical Negation ====
+The world continuously and endlessly changes and develops. Things, phenomena, and ideas that arise, exist, develop and perish, are replaced by other things, phenomena, and ideas; one form of existence is replaced with another form of existence, again and again, continuously, through this development process. This procedure is called ''negation''.
+All processes of movement and development take place through negation. From certain perspectives, negations can be seen as end points to the development (and thus, existence) of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea [which we can think of as “terminal negations;” see Annotation below]. But from other perspectives, negations can also create the conditions and premises for new developments. Such negations, which create such conditions and premises for the development of things and phenomena, are called ''dialectical negation''.
+-----
+==== Annotation 195 ====
+''Negation'' refers to any act of motion or transformation which arises from contradiction. Specifically, negation is what occurs when one opposing side completely overcomes the other. Nothing in our universe can transform or move all by itself, without any contradiction. Thus, negation drives all development and motion of all things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 119, p. 123]. There are various forms of negation, and the same negation process may be seen to take different forms depending on viewpoint of analysis [see Annotation 11, p. 12, and Annotation 114, p. 116], as depicted in the diagram below.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-66.png|''An overview of various forms of negation as they relate to dialectical development.'']]
+''Dialectical negation'' occurs when the end of development leads directly to some new development process. Dialectical negation occurs through quality shifts [see Annotation 117, p. 119], which, themselves, occur through negation of opposite sides.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-67.png|''Replacement negation refers to the replacement of one thing, phenomenon, or idea with another through dialectical negation.'']]
+'''Translation Note:''' ''The terms “terminal negation” and “replacement negation” do not appear in the original Vietnamese text. We chose to assign terms to these concepts for clarity.''
+''Replacement negation'' occurs when one thing, phenomenon, or idea takes the place of another. Replacement negation is always a dialectical process, where one subject is replaced gradually by another. Replacement may be relatively fast or slow, but it is never instantaneous — nothing can pop in and out of existence instantaneously. For example: swords were gradually replaced by firearms as the primary weapons of war over the course of many centuries. Today, swords have been completely replaced by firearms on the battlefield. This was a process of ''replacement negation'' — weapons are still used in war, but the type of weapon used has been completely replaced. Development continues, even though development of swords as battle weapons has essentially ended.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-68.png|''Terminal negation refers to the end of a specific cycle of development.'']]
+''Terminal negation'' is what happens when development completely ends for a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. For example, from one viewpoint, the development of swords as weapons of war can be seen as having ended — having been ''terminally negated'' — due to the innovation of firearms. In essence, swords are no longer developed, nor implemented, in modern warfare.
+Replacement negation and terminal negation must be considered in relative terms. From one viewpoint, we can see the rise of firearms as the underlying reason for the ''terminal negation'' of military use of swords. Today, no army on Earth uses swords as primary battlefield weapons and militaries no longer develop sword technology for battlefield use. However, from another viewpoint, the development of battlefield weapons has continued on long after the end of the primacy of swords, and it could be said that firearms have ''replaced'' swords as the primary battlefield weapon.
+Consider the death of a human being. From one perspective, death is a ''terminal negation'' — the person’s consciousness has ended, and no further development of consciousness will occur for that individual. From other perspectives, development continues. The individual may have had children who will continue their familial lineage, they may have contributed ideas which will continue to impact other people for centuries to come, and so on. In that sense, replacement negation may be viewed as dialectical negation. For example, someone studying modes of transportation in the history of the USA may see the process of steam locomotives replacing horses, and then cars replacing steam locomotives, as processes of dialectical negation from the overarching perspective of the transportation system.
+-----
+Materialist dialectics is concerned with all forms of negation, but focuses primarily on dialectical negation. Therefore, materialist dialectics is not just a theory of transformation in general, but fundamentally a theory of development
+-----
+==== Annotation 196 ====
+All transformation is driven by negation. Development is a process, specifically, of ''dialectical'' negation, which is a specific form of transformation in which an end of development creates the conditions for new development, either through internal quality shifts or through replacement by some external subject.
+Materialist dialectics is primarily concerned with dialectical negation (which drives development) because it is ''development'' which brings forth continuous change in our world. Terminal negations and other forms of transformation which do not drive further development are of limited utility, and can only represent certain limited viewpoints [i.e., the viewpoint of that which is terminated].
+From a broader perspective, nearly all “terminations” are replaced in some way or another by some other form of development. For instance, even when a person dies, although the consciousness of that person may terminate, there will be continuous impacts which will be carried forward from the deceased person’s lifetime of consciousness, as well as from the developments which arise from the death itself.
+This dialectical definition of negation differs greatly from metaphysical conceptions of development [see Annotation 201, p. 195], which are essentially viewed as terminal. From the metaphysical perspective, all things, phenomena, and ideas are viewed as separate from one another; therefore negations are viewed as terminal processes which bring development processes to their ends.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-69.png|''The metaphysical perspective of terminal negation views negation as an essentially terminal process representing the end point of the existence of a static and isolated thing, phenomenon, or idea.'']]
+In the above example, the metaphysical framework would present smashing a vase with a hammer as a terminal negation from the perspective of the observer. Once the vase is smashed, the vase is considered to no longer exist, and the broken shards are not considered to be “a vase” any more. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, view “the shards” as merely a developed form of the vase; a transition to a new stage of development; the negation was only terminal from the perspective of the vase itself.
+'''''Excerpt From'' Vietnam’s High School Freshman Civic Education textbook:'''
+Metaphysical and dialectical negation share one commonality: they both see development as the replacement of an old subject with a new subject. However, metaphysical negation happens when outside forces impact on a subject, deleting completely the existence of the old subject. According to this metaphysical perspective, the old subject and the new subject which replaces it do not have any connection.
+Dialectical negation fundamentally differs from metaphysical negation because it views development as a process of internal development. Dialectical negation does not view complete erasure or deletion of any former subject; instead, dialectical development sees the older subject, which is replaced (negated), as the premise or basis of existence for the new subject.
+'''Comparison Examples:'''
+{|
+| | '''Metaphysical Negation'''
+| '''Dialectical Negation'''
+|
+|-
+| | The earthquake destroyed the house.
+| The house was impacted by the external force of an earthquake, which caused it to collapse, due to internal characteristics of the house itself (which could not withstand the forces of the earthquake). The debris from the collapsed house will be cleared away, and will continue to develop. The space where the house stood will also continue to develop in some way, with the earthquake and the resulting collapse serving as the basis for this further development.
+|
+|-
+| | Water eroded the mountain.
+| The external force of water caused erosion by transferring material away from the mountain, due to the internal characteristics of the mountain’s composite material. The water, the material which was washed away, and the mountain will all continue to develop. The erosion process will be the basis for this further development.
+|
+|-
+| | The car has a new tire because it ran over a nail.
+| The external force of the nail caused the tire to permanently deflate, due to the internal characteristics of the tire, which could not withstand running over a nail. This served as the basis for further development: the old tire was removed and will be disposed of, which will serve as the basis for further development (i.e., the tire may be recycled or sent to a landfill); the removal of the tire serves as the basis for the further development of a new tire being installed.
+|
+|-
+| | When you add water, sunlight, and nutrition to a seed, it will grow into a plant.
+| The seed went through a process of negation as a sprout grew, through various stages of development, into a plant, facilitated by outside forces (such as water, nutrition, sunlight, etc. — the seed would not grow in isolation) as well as the internal characteristics of the seed itself; the seed served as the basis of the sprout’s development. The sprout then served as the basis for the growth of a seedling, and the seedling served as the basis for the growth of a fully grown plant. All of this development was driven by negation processes as quantity shifts gradually led to quality shifts through those various stages of development.
+|
+|}
+As you can see from the examples above, the metaphysical perspective focuses on external forces affecting a given subject and views every development process as terminal, with a beginning, middle, and end. The metaphysical perspective thus views negation as a termination of the subject (and, by extension, of development).
+Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, views development as a continuous and never-ending process of mutual impact, negation, and further negation of each negation. A comprehensive and historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] must thus be sought to fully comprehend development and negation processeses.
+Dialectical negation has two basic characteristics: ''objectivity'' and ''inheritance''.
+Dialectical negation is ''objective'' because negation arises from contradictions which exist between two opposite sides. These opposing sides may exist within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, but the opposing sides are still, by definition, externally opposed to one another from the perspective of either side.
+-----
+==== Annotation 197 ====
+Though any given negation may be viewed as terminal from a certain perspective, materialist dialectics is most concerned with processes of development wherein the end of one stage of development creates the conditions for further development [see Annotation 117, p. 119].
+Therefore, every development is simultaneously an ''internal'' and an ''external process,'' depending on perspective. Development processes may, from certain perspectives, be seen to take place ''within'' a subject or ''between'' two subjects, but they are always ''external'' (and, therefore, objective — see Annotation 108, p. 112) from the perspective of either opposing side while simultaneously ''internal'' to the relationship.
+For example: The relationship between a husband and wife may be seen as an ''internal process of development'' of “the marriage” from the perspective of a marriage counselor. However, from their own perspectives, each “opposing side” (i.e., the husband and the wife) see one another as external to each other.
+Therefore, the development of a marriage may be seen as an internal process, but the mutual impacts and negations which occur within the relationship are objective and external forces from the perspective of either opposing side.
+This is important because it means that all development and all negation are essentially objective processes; therefore no entity has complete, omniscient control over any development process. We must, therefore, understand the nature of development and negation in order to be able to properly plan and affect change in our world.
+Dialectical negation is, therefore, the result of the process of resolving inevitable contradictions within a subject [i.e., a relationship] itself. Dialectical negation allows for the old to be replaced by the new, thereby creating trends of development. Therefore, dialectical negation is also self-negation.
+-----
+==== Annotation 198 ====
+To reiterate: from the perspective of either opposing side, development is an ''external, objective'' process. From the perspective of the contradictory ''relationship'', processes of development are ''internal'' processes of ''self-negation''. Thus, dialectical negation is both an objective process which no entity can completely control, while, simultaneously, an internal process of self-negation and self-development.
+If two nations go to war, either nation may view the war as an objective, external development process, but from a wider perspective, the war is an internal development process of the diplomatic relationship between the two warring nations. This is drastically different from the metaphysical perspective, which views any negation process as a purely external process of development wherein one subject is permanently deleted from existence, then replaced by another subject [see Annotation 196, p. 188]. From the metaphysical perspective, a war is simply a conflict between two distinct and separate nations, and the conclusion of the war is a terminal negation which ends development of the war. From the materialist dialectical perspective, on the other hand, the end of the war would be seen as the basis of future development of the relationship between the two formerly warring nations.
+Dialectical negation also has an ''inheritance'' characteristic: when one opposing side negates another, the remaining side inherits factors from the negated side which are suitable with present conditions.
+-----
+==== Annotation 199 ====
+Every negation process arises from contradictions between two opposing sides. Within any such negation process, we can think of one side as the “negator” and the other side as the “negated.” Negation, like all relational processes, leads to mutual impact between both sides [see Annotation 136, p. 138]. Therefore, the negated will impact the negator; in other words, the negated side will be somehow ''reflected'' in the negator [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. This means that the negator will inherit and carry forward certain attributes, factors, and characteristics which it receives from the negated side.
+Again, consider a war between two nations. Even if one nation completely conquers and subjugates the other in total victory, the victorious nation will still inherit certain factors from the defeated nation. Which factors are inherited will depend on the conditions. The victorious nation may pick up some cultural aspects from the defeated nation, such as cuisine, fashion, etc., they may incorporate tactics and strategies which they observed the defeated enemy using on the battlefield, and so on. The point is that the victorious nation will be impacted in some way by the defeated nation.
+The factors which are adopted will be ''suitable with the present conditions''. Take, for example, a car breaking down due to engine failure. This can be seen as an opposing relationship between the car itself and the car’s owner. If the present conditions are suitable [i.e., the owner has the funds and resources available, and the desire to repair the car], then the car may be repaired and continue operating for years to come. If, on the other hand, conditions aren’t suitable [i.e., the owner does not have the funds or resources or the owner no longer wants the car], then the car may be sent to the scrapyard.
+As another example, if a fox eats a rabbit, it will inherit certain characteristics from the rabbit. It will inherit nutrition from the rabbit’s body. It may also inherit other characteristics, such as a disease the rabbit was carrying, if the conditions of the fox’s biological composition are suitable [i.e., if the disease can be transferred from the rabbit to the fox].
+Dialectical negation is not a complete negation [i.e., deletion] of the old. Rather, dialectical negation is a continuity of growth in which the old develops into the new. In processes of dialectical negation, “the new” forms and develops on its own [see Annotation 62, p. 59], through the process of filtering out unsuitable factors, while retaining suitable content. Vladimir Lenin described dialectical negation as:
+“Not empty negation, not futile negation, not skeptical negation, vacillation and doubt is characteristic and essential in dialectics — which undoubtedly contains the element of negation and indeed as its most important element — no, but negation as a moment of connection, as a moment of development, retaining the positive, i.e., without any vacillations, without any eclecticism.”<ref>''Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic,'' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref>
+-----
+==== Annotation 200 ====
+The passage from Lenin above comes from Clemence Dutt’s popular English translation of one of Lenin’s notebooks. Below is our translation from the Vietnamese version of this text from the original text of this book, which we hope might be somewhat easier to understand:
+<blockquote>
+Dialectical negation is not empty negation, it’s not negation without any thoughts, it’s not skeptical negation, it’s not hesitation. Skepticism is not a feature of the essence of the dialectic — of course, dialectics include the negative, it even plays as one of the important factors of a given subject — no, it is negation as the moment of development. Dialectical negation retains the positive, meaning there is no hesitation, there is no eclecticism.
+</blockquote>
+In order to understand what Lenin is saying here, we should first understand what Lenin is responding to. The above notes are referring to the chapter titled “The Absolute Ideal” within Hegel’s ''Science of Logic [see note at the end of this Annotation]''. In this chapter, Hegel recounts various critiques of dialectics and counters them.
+''Skepticism'', here, refers to the tendency to address all human knowledge with doubt.
+Philosophical skepticism never moves past two questions: 1. “Is this knowledge true?” 2. “Will human beings ever obtain true knowledge?” Skeptics of this nature engage in a sort of metaphysical inquisition in which every thesis that is ever encountered is immediately and utterly refuted and thus “negated” in the metaphysical sense of termination [see Annotation 196, p. 188].
+''Eclecticism'' refers to philosophical and ideological conceptions which draw from a variety of theories, styles, and ideas in an unsystematic manner. Lenin contends that dialectical negation is non-eclecticist because it rises above mere rhetorical combativeness and “total negation.” [This concept is explained more below within this annotation.]
+With all this in mind, we see that Lenin is refuting the notion that dialectics are and can only be ''negative'' in nature. The metaphysical-skeptic conception of dialectics holds that negation takes the form of rhetorical arguing and refutation, in which one idea is presented, and a second idea is offered to counter the first idea, which completely and totally negates the first idea. According to this argument, dialectics is, therefore, a ''totally negative process''.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-71.png|''A common misperception of dialectical development is that it is “fully negative,” insomuch as the initial thesis (initial subject) is completely negated by the antithesis (impacting subject). In fact, characteristics from both the thesis and antithesis are carried forward into the synthesis.'']]
+In the chapter from ''Science of Logic'' which Lenin is responding to in the referenced text, Hegel is arguing that the conception of dialectics as ''only negative'' — i.e., a system of thinking in which counter-arguments are presented to completely negate initial arguments — is inaccurate. Hegel explains that when one opposing side negates another, it thereafter “contains in general the determination of the first [opposing side] within itself.” In other words, after one opposing side negates another, it retains features and aspects from the opposing side which was negated. Lenin found this particular point to be so important that he wrote “this is very important for understanding dialectics” in the margin of his notebook.
+The reason both Hegel and Lenin found this idea, that the “negator” contains elements of the “negated” after negation [see Annotation 231, p. 227], is that this counters the accusation that dialectics are “only negative.” This is why Lenin’s notes highlight the importance of the negator “retaining the positive” after negation. Lenin is pointing out the importance of the retention of features of the negated in the negator because it is this retention which prevents dialectical development from becoming a purely negative process.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-72.png|''In materialist dialectics, it is understood that negation is a process of retention: characteristics from both the thesis (initial subject) and antithesis (impacting subject) are retained in the resulting synthesis'']]
+We must also understand what Lenin means when he refers to “skepticism” in his notes. Lenin, here, is referring to the philosophical view that we can never know whether or not our beliefs are true. This belief was popularly known as Machism, or Empirio-Criticism, in Lenin’s time (see Annotation 32, p. 27).
+A common critique of dialectics is that it is an inherently skeptical system of thought, since dialectics is seen as a process of presenting counter-arguments to suppositional arguments. Lenin, in his notes, presents the idea that such skepticism is “not a feature of dialectics” precisely because nothing is ever completely, totally, and entirely negated. In other words, the accusation that dialectical analysis is essentially skeptical is rooted in the mistaken notion that one opposing side (i.e., a counter-argument) ''completely negates'' the original supposition. In fact, according to materialist dialectics, the negator ''always'' retains features and aspects from the negated side, which counters this critique. Thus, dialectical development, which occurs through dialectical negation, is a process of forward motion — not a process of “vacillating” back and forth from one position to another — and there is no skeptical “hesitation” preventing forward progress.
+This same idea (that the negator retains features from the negated) also counters another common critique of materialist dialectics: that dialectical analysis is simply a system of rhetorical sophistry [see Annotation 36, p. 33] and eclecticism.
+''Eclecticism'' is a conceptual approach that is completely unsystematic, drawing from a variety of theories, styles, and ideas without any cohesive and all-encompassing philosophical framework.
+Some critics claim that dialectics must be eclecticist and sophistic in nature. These critics claim that dialectics is simply rhetorical disputation in which any given supposition is counter-argued, and that this counter-argument is negation. But materialist dialectics defines negation as one contradicting side overtaking the other while retaining traces and characteristics from the negated side — it is in no way simply an act of rhetorical dispute or refutation.
+In summary, materialist dialectics upholds that nothing is ever completely and utterly deleted or erased from existence through negation. Instead, any time one opposing side negates another, aspects of the negated side are ''inherited'' by the negating side.
+''Note:'' For reference, here is Hegel’s passage which Lenin is referring to from ''Science and Logic'' in the cited notes above:
+<blockquote>
+...a universal first, considered in and for itself, shows itself to be the other of itself. Taken quite generally, this determination can be taken to mean that what is at first immediate now appears as mediated, related to an other, or that the universal appears as a particular. Hence the second term that has thereby come into being is the negative of the first, and if we anticipate the subsequent progress, the first negative. The immediate, from this negative side, has been extinguished in the other, but the other is essentially not the empty negative, the nothing, that is taken to be the usual result of dialectic; rather is it the other of the first, the negative of the immediate; it is therefore determined as the mediated — contains in general the determination of the first within itself. Consequently the first is essentially preserved and retained even in the other. To hold fast the positive in its negative, and the content of the presupposition in the result, is the most important part of rational cognition; also only the simplest reflection is needed to furnish conviction of the absolute truth and necessity of this requirement, while with regard to the examples of proofs, the whole of Logic consists of these.
+</blockquote>
+-----
+Therefore, dialectical negation is the inevitable tendency of progression of the inner relationship between the old and the new. It is the self-driving assertive force of all motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas.
+==== b. Negation of Negation ====
+In the perpetual movement of the material world, dialectical negation is an inexhaustible process. It creates a development tendency of things from lower level to higher level, taking place in a cyclical manner in the form of a “spiral.”
+-----
+==== Annotation 201 ====
+The concept of the “spiral” form of development in dialectical materialist philosophy stands in contrast to the metaphysical conception of “linear” development.
+==== Metaphysical Conception of Linear Development ====
+The metaphysical viewpoint holds that development is more or less a straight line: as one subject is negated, it is replaced by another. This subject will then be negated by another, and so on, in what is essentially conceived of as a straight line of development [see Annotation 196, p. 188].
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-73.png|''The metaphysical “line development” model sees an initial form as being “replaced” or entirely negated into a completely distinct entity.'']]
+In the above example, metaphysical line development simply sees raw aluminum as being negated and “replaced” in the real world. Once the aluminum can is created, the “raw aluminum” as a metaphysical entity is considered no longer to exist. Likewise, when the soda can is transformed into recycled aluminum, the can is considered “replaced,” and is no longer considered to have a metaphysical existence.
+This conception of metaphysical line development directly contradicts the materialist dialectical concept of ''historical viewpoint'' [see Annotation 114, p. 116].
+==== Dialectical Materialist Conception of Development ====
+The dialectical materialist conception of cyclical development stems from essential attributes of dialectical negation processes:
+. In every dialectical negation, the negating side inherits features and characteristics from the negated side.
+. When the negating side is, itself, negated (i.e., ''negation of the negation''), the new negating side will retain features and aspects of the old negator.
+. This development process will continue indefinitely, so that negation is not simply a straight line of complete negation, but rather takes the shape of a “spiral” of negations of negations which always inherit features from previous forms.
+Note that this conception of development as a spiral is simply an abstraction to help understand the essential characteristics of dialectical development and to distinguish this form of development from metaphysical conceptions of “linear development.”
+In the example below, we see a depiction of the spiral development of aluminum through various stages of development. After raw aluminum is mined from the Earth, it begins a repeating spiral development process of being refined into usable goods, then recycled into raw material.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-74.png|''The “Spiral Development” model of materialist dialectics sees every stage of development as a higher form of the previous stage which carries forward characteristics from previous stages.'']]
+The illustrated example on the previous page plots the spiral development of aluminum as it cycles between stages defined as raw materials and refined products. Another perspective might depict development differently. For example, if we are examining development in terms of external relations between aluminum other elements, the development pattern would look different. In reality, all subjects have countless internal and external relations and development processes which can be examined.
+The “raw aluminum” stage of development pictured in the illustration is not truly the beginning of this development process; there were millions of years of development which occurred before it was first discovered by humans. Similarly, the landfill will not be the end of this development process; there will be continued development forever for as long as motion in the universe continues.
+This is a simplified and abstract model of development of aluminum. A more accurate representation might show any number of interim steps between each step depicted in the graphic above. For example: it must also be recognized that in reality the molecules of aluminum which the development process began with will be scattered and mixed with other subjects throughout the development process, and various other complexities exist in terms of the mutual impacts of internal and external relationships.
+Determining the amount of detail to include or exclude in materialist dialectical analysis is crucial: too much detail and analysis might become unwieldy; too little detail and analysis might become too abstract and idealized to be useful in the real world. So, the idea of development as a spiral should not be taken literally; it is simply a way of conceptualizing the differences between dialectical negation and development as opposed to “straight-line” development upheld by metaphysical conceptions of negation and development, always carrying forward traces of previous stages of development.
+In the chain of negations that make up the development processes of things, phenomena, and ideas, each dialectical negation creates the conditions and premises for subsequent developments. Through many iterations of negation, i.e., “negations of negations,” dialectical negation will inevitably lead to a ''forward tendency of motion''.
+-----
+==== Annotation 202 ====
+The ''forward tendency of motion'' describes the tendency for things, phenomena, and ideas to move from less advanced to more advanced forms through processes of motion and development.
+As a reminder, “lower level” and “higher level,” i.e., “less advanced” and “more advanced,” should not be taken to have any connotations of “good” and “bad,” nor of “desirable” and “undesirable,” nor even of “less complex” and “more complex.”
+Development from “lower levels” to “higher levels” is simply a shorthand for understanding the fact that development processes always move “forward,” that is to say, development can never happen in reverse, just as time itself can never be reversed. For example, society in Italy will never go back to the civilization of the Roman empire. It is conceivable that Italian society could develop to be ''more similar'' to Ancient Rome, but it would be impossible for Roman society to ever take on the ''exact characteristics'' of the Roman Empire ever again.
+Cyclicality of development processes usually takes place in the form of a spiral, which is another result of “negation of negation.” Negations of negations lead to a development cycle in which things, phenomena, and ideas often undergo two fundamental negations carried through three basic forms. Through this negation pattern, basic features of the initial form are ultimately inherited by the “third form,” but at a higher level of development.
+-----
+==== Annotation 203 ====
+Dialectical development tends to take place through a cyclical pattern in which development is carried through a triad of forms which develop through a pair of dialectical negation processes:
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-75.png|''The cyclical pattern of development is an abstract pattern of dialectical change over time.'']]
+The graphic above illustrates this cyclical pattern, in which:
+. The initial form (the Assertion) begins the pattern. Contradiction within the initial subject or between it and another subject leads to the first negation.
+. The first negation leads to a second form (the Negation). This second form inherits some features or characteristics from the initial form.
+. The second form then encounters opposition, which leads to a second negation.
+. The second negation leads to a third form (Unity), which retains the features or characteristics of the second form, but now more closely resembles the first, initial form, only at a higher level of development.
+Imagine a new car (initial form) crashes into another car (contradicting subject). The new car is dialectically developed (negated) into a second form: a wrecked car. This second form is now contradicted by a new subject — a recycling center — and negated into a third form: new steel. The third form possesses characteristics of the first form, but in a more developed form: after being recycled, the resulting steel it is newly made, in good condition for sale, etc., similarly to the first form of the new car.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-76.png|''In this example, a new car goes through a cyclical pattern of development in which the third form (new steel) possesses characteristics of the first form (a new car).'']]
+Keep in mind that this is relative to one’s perspective. If you consider the wrecked car to be the first form, then the steel would be the second form. The new steel will then need to be developed in some way (melted, hammered, cut, etc.) in order to be processed into some new product. From this perspective, the third form (i.e., molten steel) will have characteristics of the first form (i.e.: “unrefined”).
+According to Marx and Engels, the development of capitalism from feudalism assumed this cyclical pattern:
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-77.png|''The development of class structure is a dialectical process in which different classes synthesize to form the next era of class society. For example, the capitalist class emerged primarily as a synthesis of the feudal lords and peasants of the medieval era.'']]
+Note that this is only an abstract description of a tendency of dialectical development; exceptions can and do occur. Presumably, the development of communism as a stateless, classless society would constitute the negation of the “Class Society” form of human civilization. The Post-Class stage of development which follows would, itself, be a higher form — a unity — of pre-class human civilization, carrying forward traces from the Class Society stage of development.
+Also note that determining which form is the “first” or “initial” pattern is entirely relative. Using the example of the development of class society: from one perspective, the Patricians may be seen as the initial form, but from another perspective the Plebeians might be considered the initial form. This depends entirely on the viewpoint and purpose of analysis. These conceptions of “spirals of development” and the pattern of “three forms through two negations” are, in essence, models which describe general tendencies and patterns of development and which help us understand the basic characteristics of dialectical negation and development.
+Lenin describes this cycle of dialectical development as going “[f]rom assertion to negation — from negation to ‘unity’ with the asserted — without this, dialectics becomes empty negation, a game, skepsis [examination, observation, consideration].”<ref>''Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic,'' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref>
+-----
+==== Annotation 204 ====
+Here, “assertion” simply refers to the initial form of a dialectical development cycle. The negation is the second form, and the “unity” is the third form, which resembles the first form (the assertion) at a higher stage of development. So, in this quotation, Lenin is simply recounting the “three steps” of a typical dialectical development cycle, and indicating that it is necessary to recognize this process, which is rooted in the inheritance of properties of prior forms through development into ever-higher forms, to prevent dialectics from becoming “empty negation,” or otherwise falling prey to the critiques that dialectics are purely negative, skeptical, and eclectic in nature [see Annotation 200, p. 192 and Annotation 36, p. 33].
+The law of negation of negation generalizes the pervasive nature of development: dialectical development does not take the form of a straight path, but rather in the form of a spiral path. Lenin summarised that this path is “[a] development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis (‘the negation of the negation’), a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line…”<ref>''Karl Marx'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref> The tendency to develop in a spiral curve demonstrates the dialectical nature of development; i.e., the cycle of inheritance, repetition, and progression. Each new round of the spiral appears to be repeating, but at a higher level. The continuation of the loops in a spiral reflects an endless progression from lower levels to higher levels of things, phenomena, and ideas.
+In short, the law of negation of negation in materialist dialectics reflects the dialectical relationship between the negative and the assertion [i.e., the second and first forms of a dialectical development cycle; see Annotation 203, p. 198] in the development process of things, phenomena and ideas. Dialectical development is driven by dialectical negation; in the development of all things, phenomena, and ideas, the new is the result of inheriting characteristics from prior forms. This process of inheritance, repetition, and progression through negation leads to cyclical development. Engels wrote: “what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general — and for this reason extremely far-reaching and important — law of development of nature, history, and thought.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
+-----
+==== Annotation 205 ====
+In the same text quoted above, Engels elaborates that dialectical development is composed of “processes which in their nature are antagonistic, contain a contradiction; transformation of one extreme into its opposite; and finally, as the kernel of the whole thing, the negation of the negation.”
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
+The law of negation of negation is the basis for correct perception of the tendency of motion and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Development and motion processes do not take place in a straight line; rather, it is a winding, complex road, consisting of many stages, and each process can be broken down into many different sub-processes. However, it must be understood that this complexity of development is only the manifestation of the general tendency to move forward [see Annotation 118, p. 122]. It is important to understand the nature of motion and development so that we can systematically change the world according to our revolutionary viewpoint. In order to consciously impact the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, we need to know their characteristics, nature, and relationships so that we can influence their motion and development in the direction that suits our purposes. We must comprehend and leverage the tendency of forward movement — in accordance with a scientific and revolutionary worldview — in order to effectively and systematically change the world.
+-----
+==== Annotation 206 ====
+Understanding the forward tendency of motion is vital for cultivating a worldview which is both ''scientific'' and ''revolutionary.'' Such a worldview is ''scientific'' because it recognizes the material reality that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing change and development. Nothing in our universe is static, and all things are connected and defined by internal and external relationships (which are also constantly developing). Furthermore, this development progresses with a ''forward tendency'', meaning that no process can be completely “reversed.” For example, you can clean rust from a car [which would be forward progress], but you can’t reverse the temporal process of rust.
+Once we understand that all things, phenomena, and ideas in our universe are constantly developing and moving forward, we can then begin to find ways to ''impact'' motion and development systematically to consciously change the world around us. This is the foundation of a ''revolutionary'' worldview, since revolutionary change requires us to leverage and influence development processes to suit our needs and revolutionary ambitions. Thus, materialist dialectics are an applied system of observation and practice through which we seek to understand development processes and consciously impact them to suit our needs.
+According to the rule of negation of negation, in the objective world, the new must inevitably come to replace the old. In nature, the new develops according to objective laws. In social life, new things arise from the purposeful, self-conscious, and creative actions of human beings. Therefore, it is necessary to leverage ''subjective factors'' as we seek to consciously impact the development of things, phenomena, and ideas.
+-----
+==== Annotation 207 ====
+Subjective factors are factors which we, as a subject, are capable of impacting. This may seem confusing, since we have previously established that all external things, phenomena, and ideas have ''objective'' relationships with all other things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112], meaning that any given subject is ''external'' to every other subject, and thus no subject can directly and completely control the motion and development of any other subject.
+However, from the perspective of any given individual, there are certain things, phenomena, and ideas [as well as processes of motion and development] which we can ''impact''. For example, if I see an apple on a table, the apple is ''objective'' to me. I can’t simply will the apple to move with my consciousness alone. However, I can ''impact'' the apple through conscious activity — I can consciously will my hand to pick up the apple and move it to another location.
+Thus, factors which an individual can consciously impact are ''subjective factors''. As revolutionists, we must focus on subjective factors. In other words, we must concentrate on ''that which we are capable of changing'', since our purpose is to change the world. Focusing on factors which we can’t impact is a waste of time; we must simply determine what ''can be changed'' and then determine the most efficient and effective ways of impacting development processes and changing the world.
+As revolutionists, we must have faith that we can introduce the “new,” faith in the success of the “new,” we must support the “new,” and fight for the victory of the “new.” Therefore, it is necessary to overcome conservative, stagnant, and dogmatic thoughts which restrain the development of the “new” and resist the law of negation of negation.
+-----
+==== Annotation 208 ====
+Change is inevitable. All things, phenomena, and ideas undergo processes of motion and development. Any philosophy, ideology, or strategy which attempts to restrain motion and development is doomed to failure because change can neither be halted nor restrained. Thus, our strategies and actions must align with the material reality that change is inevitable, and we must seek to change the world by ''impacting'' processes of development and motion rather than attempting to reverse, restrain, or halt such processes.
+Ideologies which erroneously strive to restrict change and development include ''rigidity'' (see Annotation 222, p. 218) and ''conservativism'' (see Annotation 236, p. 233).
+In the process of negating the old we must leverage the principle of inheritance with discretion: we must encourage the inheritance of factors that are beneficial to our goals as we simultaneously attempt to filter out, overcome, and reform factors which would negatively impact our goals.
+-----
+==== Annotation 209 ====
+If we understand the principle of inheritance, we can impact inheritance processes which derive from negation. For example, when repairing a car, we can seek out parts of the car which do not function properly or which do not suit the use-case of the car and add or replace parts which are more suitable.
+In the same way, we can impact inheritence processes in our revolutionary political activities. We can seek to inherit characteristics from previous stages of development of our political organizations, social institutions, culture, etc., while simultaneously seeking to prevent the inheritence of traits and characteristics which are unsuitable for our revolutionary purposes. Over time, we can attempt to impact the inheritance of traits and aspects which are more conducive to our purposes while limiting and filtering out traits and aspects which are hindrances.
+In an article titled “New Life” written in 1947, Ho Chi Minh wrote about the dialectical relationship between the new and the old in building a new society, writing:
+<blockquote>
+Not everything old must be abandoned. We do not have to reinvent everything. What is old but bad must be abandoned. What is old but troublesome must be corrected appropriately. What is old but good must be further developed. What is new but good must be done.
+... Growing up in the old society, we all carry within us more-or-less bad traces of the old society in terms of our ideas and habits... Habits are hard to change. That which is good and new is likely to be considered bad by the people because it is strange to them. On the contrary, that which is evil yet familiar is easily mistaken as normal and acceptable.
+</blockquote>
+Ho Chi Minh understood the principles of development very well, as well as the difficulties we will face as revolutionaries as we try to change ourselves and our society. We must strive to develop a similar understanding as we move forward and attempt to affect the development of our world through practice and struggle.
+-----
+= Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism =
+In Marxism, epistemological reasoning (or epistemology) is the foundation of dialectics. Dialectical materialist epistemology is a theory of applying human cognitive ability to the objective world through practical activities. It explains the nature, path and general laws of the human process of perceiving truth and objective reality to serve human practical activities.
+-----
+==== Annotation 210 ====
+Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge. It also deals with the philosophical question of: “how do we know what is true?”
+Throughout history, philosophers have tried to determine the nature of truth and knowledge. In the era of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, there was an ongoing dispute between the materialists, who believed that truth could only be sought through sense experience of the material world, and the idealists, who believed that truth could only be sought through reasoning within the human mind.
+Marx and Engels developed the philosophical system of dialectical materialism to resolve this dispute. Dialectical materialism upholds that the material and the ideal have a dialectical relationship with one another: the material ''determines'' the ideal, while the ideal ''impacts'' the material [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88].
+However, it’s important to understand that Marx and Engels didn’t develop the system of dialectical materialism simply to understand the world. As Marx wrote in ''Theses on Feuerbach:''
+<blockquote>
+The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
+</blockquote>
+So, Marxist dialectical materialist epistemology is developed specifically to enable human beings to not only perceive truth and objective reality, but to then be able to apply our conscious thought, through practical activity, in order to bring about change in the world.
+-----
+== 1. Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness ==
+=== a. Praxis and Basic Forms of Praxis ===
+''Praxis'' includes all human material activities which have purpose and historical-social characteristics and which transform nature and society. Unlike other activities, praxis is activity in which humans attempt to materially impact the world to suit our purposes. Praxis activities define the nature of human beings and distinguish human beings from other animals. Praxis is objective activity, and praxis has been constantly developed by humans through the ages.
+<br />
+-----
+==== Annotation 211 ====
+In English, the words “practice” and “praxis” are often distinguished from one another. “Practice” is often used to refer to human activity which provides more information about the world around us and improves our knowledge and understanding, whereas “praxis” often refers to conscious human activity which is intended to change the world in some manner. In their original German, Marx and Engels used the same German word — ''Praxis'' — to refer to both concepts. Similarly, in the original Vietnamese text of this book, the same word — ''thực tiễn'' — is used for both “practice” and “praxis.”
+One reason that these concepts are so closely related is that all conscious activity serves both rolls by simultaneously telling us more about reality ''and'' consciously changing reality in some way. For example, by pushing a heavy stone, you may be able to move the stone a small amount — constituting praxis — while simultaneously learning how heavy the stone is and how difficult it is to move — constituting practice. The main point of distinction, therefore, is ''intention''. Virtually all conscious activity is practice, but only activity which has ''purpose'' and ''historical-social characteristics'' might be considered praxis:
+''Purpose'' simply describes a goal or desired outcome; specifically: a desired change in nature or human society. Activities with ''historical-social characteristics'' are activities which contribute in some way to the development of human society.
+In this translation, we use “practice” and “praxis” interchangably to mean “conscious activity which improves our understanding, and which has purpose and historical-social characteristics.” You are likely to find these words used differently (as described above, or in other ways) in other texts. Engels explains the importance of practice/praxis in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
+<blockquote>
+The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we [use] these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.
+</blockquote>
+Marx wrote in ''Theses on Feuerbach'' that “the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice [German: ''revolutionäre Praxis''].” Engels further expounds upon this concept in ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', writing:
+<blockquote>
+The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical fancies is practice [original German: Praxis], viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible or ungraspable.
+</blockquote>
+Praxis defines the nature of human beings because human beings are (to our present knowledge) the only beings which undertake actions with conscious awareness of our desired outcomes and comprehension of the historical development of our own society, which distinguishes human beings from all other animals. Praxis is ''objective'' activity, meaning that all praxis activities are performed in relation to external things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112].
+Praxis has been constantly developed by humans through the ages, meaning that as we learn more about the nature of reality, of human society, and the laws of nature, we are able to develop our praxis to become more efficient and effective.
+Praxis activities are very diverse, manifesting with ever-increasing variety, but there are only three basic forms: material production activities, socio-political activities, and scientific experimental activities.
+''Material production activity'' is the first and most basic form of praxis. In this form of praxis activity, humans use tools through labor processes to influence the natural world in order to create wealth and material resources and to develop the conditions necessary to maintain our existence and development.
+''Socio-political activity'' includes praxis activity utilized by various communities and organizations in human society to transform political-social relations in order to promote social development.
+''Scientific experimental activity'' is a special form of praxis activity. This includes human activities that resemble or replicate states of nature and society in order to determine the laws of change and development of subjects of study. This form of activity plays an important role in the development of society, especially in the current historical period of modern science and technological revolution.
+-----
+==== Annotation 212 ====
+The three basic forms of praxis activities listed above obviously do not include all forms of human activity, as praxis only includes activities which have ''purpose'' and ''historical-social characteristics''.
+''Material production activity'' has a very clear purpose: to improve the material conditions of an individual human being or a group of human beings. Material production activity has historical-social characteristics because developing material conditions for human beings leads directly to the development of human society. For example, as food production increases in terms of yield and efficiency, society can support a larger number of human beings and a wider range of human activities, which leads to the development of human society.
+''Socio-political activity'' has the purpose of promoting social development, which is obviously inherently historical-social in nature. An example of socio-political activity would include any sort of political campaign, liberation struggle, political revolutionary activity, etc.
+''Scientific experimental activity'' has the purpose of expanding our understanding of nature and human society, which leads directly to historical-social development in a variety of ways. For example, improving our scientific understanding of medicine through scientific experimental activity leads to longer lives and improved quality of life. Improving our scientific understanding of chemistry through scientific experimental activity leads to all sorts of materials which improve the quality of life and enable human beings to solve a variety of social problems.
+In order to qualify as praxis activity, a given human activity must have a purpose and it must have historical-social characteristics. For instance, drawing is not always praxis in the sense of the word used in this text, but it would be praxis if it would qualify as material production activity (i.e., making art in order to sell, so as to make a living) or if the art is made with the intention of invoking social change.
+Every basic praxis activity form has an important function, and these functions are not interchangeable with each other. However, they have close relationships with each other and different praxis activity forms often interact with each other. In these relationships, material production is the most important form of praxis activity, playing a decisive role in determining other praxis activities because material production is the most primitive activity and exists most commonly in human life. Material production creates the most essential, decisive material conditions for human survival and development. Without material production there cannot be other praxis activities. After all, all other praxis activities arise from material production praxis and all praxis activities ultimately aim to serve material production praxis.
+-----
+==== Annotation 213 ====
+Without material production activity, human beings would not be able to live at all.
+Thus, material production activities make all other forms of human activities possible. In addition, the primary reason we participate in socio-political activity is to ensure material security (food, water, shelter, etc.) for members of society, which ultimately relies on material production activity. Therefore, the primary reason we engage in scientific experimental activity is to improve material production activities in terms of efficiency, yield, effectiveness, etc
+Of course, we engage in scientific experimental activity and material production activity for other reasons (art, entertainment, recreation, etc.), but these activities require that material security be secured first for those participating in the production and consumption of such products. In other words, material production activity is a prerequisite for all other forms of activity, since without some measure of material security humans cannot survive.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-78.png|''Material production activity has a dialectical relationship with all other praxis activity, with material production activity determining, while being impacted by, all other forms of praxis activity.'']]
+Thus, material production activity has a dialectical relationship with other forms of praxis activities, in which material production activity determines both socio-political and scientific experimental activity while socio-political and scientific experimental activity impact material production activity.
+-----
+=== b. Consciousness and Levels of Consciousness ===
+The dialectical materialist perspective sees consciousness as a process of reflecting the objective world within the human brain on a practical basis to create knowledge about the objective world. Consciousness is a self-aware process that is productive and creative.
+This view stems from the following basic principles:
+* The dialectical materialist worldview acknowledges that the material world exists objectively and independently of human consciousness.
+* The dialectical materialist worldview recognizes the following human abilities:
+** To perceive the objective world.
+** To reflect the objective world into the human mind, which enables human subjects to learn about external objects. [see Annotation 66, p. 64]
+** To admit that there are no material things nor phenomena which are unrecognizable, but only material things and phenomena that humans have not yet recognised. [see ''The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues,'' p. 48]
+The dialectical materialist worldview affirms that conscious reflection [see Annotation 67, p. 64] of the objective world is a dialectical, productive, self-aware, and creative process. This reflection process develops from the unknown to the known, from knowing less to knowing more, from knowing less profoundly and less comprehensively to knowing more profoundly and more comprehensively.
+-----
+==== Annotation 214 ====
+The above principle (that human knowledge develops from less, and less comprehensive, to more, and more comprehensive states) stands in contrast to various other philosophical systems of belief, including:
+Hegel’s ''Absolute Idealism'' upholds a belief in an “absolute ideal” which constitutes an ultimate limit or “end point” of knowledge which humanity is moving towards. Dialectical materialism upholds that there is no such absolute ideal and thus no such terminal end point of human understanding. [See Annotation 234, p. 230] As Engels wrote in ''Anti-Dühring'':
+<blockquote>
+If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.
+</blockquote>
+''Fideism'', which is the belief that knowledge is received from some higher power [i.e., God]. Fideism upholds that all knowledge is pre-existing, and that humanity simply receives it from on high. Dialectical materialism, on the other hand, argues that knowledge is developed over time through dialectical processes of consciousness and human activity.
+''Positivism, or empiricist materialism'', which holds that there are hard limits to human knowledge, or that human knowledge — which can only be obtained from sense data — can’t be trusted. Dialectical materialism upholds that all things and phenomena can be known and understood, and that sense data can be trusted as an objective reflection of reality. For more information about skepticism about human sense data as well as positive and empiricist materialism, see Annotation 10, p. 10, and Annotation 58, p. 56].
+-----
+The dialectical materialist worldview considers praxis as the primary and most direct basis of consciousness, and as the motive and the purpose of consciousness, and as the criterion for testing truth. [See: ''The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness'', p. 216]
+-----
+==== Annotation 215 ====
+Given the above principles — that human consciousness exists independently from the material world yet is capable of accurately perceiving and reflecting the material world, and that knowledge develops over time through a synthesis of consciousness and practical activity — we can conclude that consciousness is a self-aware process which is productive and creative.
+Consciousness is productive and creative in the sense that conscious processes, in conjunction with practical experience and activity in the material world, leads to the development of knowledge and practical experience which allows humans to develop our understanding of the world as well as our own material conditions through the application of knowledge to our own labor activities.
+Next, we will examine different ways of categorizing conscious activities as they pertain to developing knowledge and practical understanding of our world.
+From the dialectical materialist point of view, consciousness is a process of development. Consciousness develops from ''empirical consciousness'' to ''theoretical consciousness''; and from ''ordinary consciousness'' to ''scientific consciousness''.
+-----
+==== Annotation 216 ====
+In dialectical materialist philosophy, all systems of relation exist as processes of development in motion [see Annotation 120, p. 124]. Thus, consciousness can be defined as a system of relations between human brain activity and two forms of data input:
+''•'' ''Sense experience'': observations of the external world detected by our senses.
+''•'' ''Knowledge'': information which exists in the human mind as memories and ideas.
+Consciousness is thus a process of the development of knowledge through a combination of human brain activity and human practical activity in the physical world (i.e., labor).
+In the section below, we will explore different forms of consciousness, the development of consciousness, and the relationship between consciousness and knowledge. Note that these are ''abstractions'' of consciousness and knowledge, meant to help us understand how knowledge and consciousness develop over time. Thought processes are extremely complex, so we seek to develop a fundamental understanding of how consciousness develops and how knowledge develops because these processes are fundamental to the development of human beings and human societies.
+Just as consciousness is a process of developing knowledge through brain activity, consciousness itself also develops over time. The development of consciousness can be considered based on the criteria of ''concrete/abstract'' and of ''passive/active''.
+Consciousness develops from a state of direct and immediate observation of the world which results in concrete knowledge to a higher stage which constitutes a more abstract and general understanding of the world. We call consciousness which is focused on direct, immediate, concrete, empirical observation of the world ''empirical consciousness'', and we call consciousness which is focused on forming abstract generalizations about the world ''theoretical consciousness''.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-79.png]]
+Empirical consciousness is a process of collecting data about the world, which we call knowledge. We can gather two forms of knowledge through empirical consciousness: ordinary knowledge, and scientific knowledge.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-80.png]]
+Ordinary knowledge is the knowledge we accumulate through our everyday experiences in the world. Scientific knowledge is gathered through more systematic scientific observations and experiments. Scientific knowledge usually develops from ordinary knowledge, as we begin to seek a more formal and systematic understanding of the things we witness in our daily lives.
+According to ''Themes in Soviet Marxist Philosophy,'' edited by T. J. Blakely:
+<blockquote>
+Ordinary knowledge notes what lies on the very surface, what happens during a certain event. Scientific knowledge wants to know why it happens in just this way. The essence of scientific knowledge lies in the confirmed generalization of facts, where it becomes necessary rather than contingent, universal instead of particular, law-bound, and can serve as a basis for predicting various phenomena, events and objects...
+The whole progress of scientific knowledge is bound up with growth in the force and volume of scientific prediction. Prediction makes it possible to control processes and to direct them. Scientific knowledge opens up the possibility not only of predicting the future but also of consciously forming it. The vital meaning of every science can be expressed as follows: to know in order to predict and to predict in order to act.
+An essential characteristic of scientific knowledge is that it is systematic, i.e., it is a set of information which is ordered according to certain theoretical principles. A collection of unsystematized knowledge is not yet science. Certain basic premises are fundamental to scientific knowledge, i.e., the laws which make it possible to systematize the knowledge. Knowledge becomes scientific when the collection of facts and their descriptions reach the level where they are included in a theory.
+</blockquote>
+Theoretical consciousness arises from conscious reflection on accumulated knowledge, as human beings seek to develop general and abstract understanding of the underlying principles of processes we experience in the world. Once general principles of natural and social law are established, human beings then test those general conclusions against empirical reality through further observation (i.e., through empirical consciousness).
+Thus, there is a dialectical relationship between empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness, as one form leads to another, back and forth, again and again, continuously.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-81.png|''Empirical and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship in which empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness lead to and mutually develop one another.'']]
+Consciousness also develops from passive and surface-level observation and understanding of the world (i.e., simply considering what, where, and when things happen) to more active pursuit of the underlying meaning of the world (i.e., trying to understand how and why things happen).
+Consciousness which passively observes the world, directly, in daily life is referred to as ''ordinary consciousness''. Ordinary consciousness often develops into more active consciousness. This active pursuit of understanding through systematic observation and indirect experiences (i.e., experiences that do not occur in daily activity — such as scientific experimentation) is referred to as ''scientific consciousness''.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-82.png]]
+These concepts will be discussed in further detail below.
+-----
+''Empirical consciousness'' is the stage of development of consciousness in which perceptions are formed via direct observations of things and phenomena in the natural world, or of society, or through scientific experimentation and systematic observation. Empirical consciousness results in ''empirical knowledge''.
+''Empirical knowledge'' has two types: ''ordinary empirical knowledge'' (knowledge obtained through direct observation and in productive labor) and ''scientific empirical knowledge'' (knowledge obtained by conducting scientific experiments). These two types of knowledge can be complementary, and can enrich one other.
+''Theoretical consciousness'' is the indirect, abstract, systematic level of perception in which the nature and laws of things and phenomena are generalized and abstracted.
+Empirical consciousness and Theoretical consciousness are two different cognitive stages but they have a dialectical relationship with each other. In this dialectical relationship, empirical consciousness is the basis of theoretical consciousness; it provides theoretical consciousness with specific, rich material [i.e., knowledge]. Empirical consciousness is linked closely to practical activities [since practical activity in the material world is the chief method of gathering knowledge through empirical consciousness], and forms the basis for checking, correcting, and supplementing existing theories and summarizing, and generalizing them into new theories. However, empirical consciousness is still limited in that empirical consciousness stops at the description and classification of data obtained from direct observation and experimentation. Therefore, empirical consciousness only brings understanding about the separate, superficial, discrete aspects of observed subjects, without yet reflecting the essence of those subjects nor the underlying principles or laws which regulate those subjects.
+Therefore, empirical consciousness, alone, is not sufficient for determining the scientific laws of nature and society. To determine such laws and abstractions, theoretical consciousness must be applied. So, theoretical consciousness does not form spontaneously, nor directly from experience, although it is formed from the summation of experiences.
+-----
+==== Annotation 217 ====
+The knowledge we gain from our daily activity often inspires scientific inquiry and more systematic observation, which can yield scientific knowledge which will enrich and improve our daily practice and allow us to experience daily life with a deeper understanding of what we’re experiencing. Thus, the ordinary knowledge we gain through daily practice can enrich and yield scientific knowledge (and vice versa).
+Empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship with each other in which empirical consciousness provides the basis for theoretical consciousness. Theoretical consciousness attempts to derive general abstractions and governing principles from empirical knowledge which is gained through empirical consciousness. Once theoretical principles, generalities, and abstractions are determined, they are then tested against reality through empirical consciousness (i.e., practical observation and systematic experimentation) to determine if the theory is sound.
+''Empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship with one another. Our observations of the material world lead to conscious activity which we then test in reality through conscious activity, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of dialectical development.''
+For example, a farmer may notice that plants grow better in locations where manure has been discarded — an act of empirical consciousness. The farmer might then form the theory that adding manure to the soil will help plants grow — an act of theoretical consciousness. This theory could then be tested against reality by mixing manure into the soil and observing the results, which would be another act of empirical consciousness. The farmer may then theorize that ''more'' manure will help plants grow ''even more'' — another act of theoretical consciousness — continuing the cycle of testing and observing.
+This dialectical relationship between ordinary and theoretical consciousness is what allows human beings to develop and improve knowledge through practical experience, observation, and theoretical abstraction and generalization of knowledge.
+Theoretical consciousness is relatively independent from empirical consciousness. Therefore, theories can precede expectations and guide the formation of valuable empirical knowledge. Theoretical consciousness is what allows human beings to sort and filter knowledge so as to best serve practical activities and contribute to the transformation of human life. Through this process, knowledge is organized and therefore enhanced, and develops from the level of specific, individual, and solitary knowledge to a higher form of generalized and abstract knowledge [what we might call ''theoretical knowledge''].
+-----
+==== Annotation 218 ====
+Knowledge which comes from empirical observations (empirical consciousness) is ''empirical knowledge.'' ''Theoretical knowledge'' is a product of theoretical consciousness. Over time, as repeated and varied observations are made through theoretical consciousness activities, knowledge becomes more generalized and abstract; this general and abstract knowledge is what we call ''theoretical knowledge''.
+Note that empirical and theoretical knowledge can be ''ordinary'' or ''scientific'' in nature; if the knowledge arises passively from daily life activities, it will be ordinary knowledge, regardless of whether or not it is empirical or theoretical in nature. If, on the other hand, the knowledge arises from methodological measurement and/or systematic observation, then it is scientific knowledge.vSo far, we have discussed ways of understanding consciousness based on the criteria of directness vs. abstractness. Next, we will discuss another way of looking at consciousness, based on the criteria of passiveness vs. activeness.
+''Ordinary consciousness'' refers to perception that is formed ''passively'' and ''directly'' from the daily activities of humans. Ordinary consciousness is a reflection of things, phenomena, and ideas, with all their observed characteristics, specific details, and nuances. Therefore, ordinary consciousness is rich, multifaceted, and associated with daily life. Therefore, ordinary consciousness has a regular and pervasive role in governing the activities of each person in society.
+''Scientific consciousness'' refers to perception formed ''actively'' and ''indirectly'' from the reflection of the characteristics, nature, and inherent relationships of research subjects. This reflection takes place in the form of logical abstraction. These logical abstractions include scientific concepts, categories, and laws. Scientific consciousness is objective, abstract, general, and systematic, and must be grounded in evidence.
+Scientific consciousness utilizes systematic methodologies to profoundly describe the nature of studied subjects as well as the principles which govern them. Therefore, scientific consciousness plays an increasingly important role in practical activities, especially in the modern age of science and technology.
+-----
+==== Annotation 219 ====
+Logical abstraction refers to an understanding of the underlying rules which govern things, phenomena, and ideas which underly objective processes, relationships, and characteristics. Logical abstraction is the result of scientific inquiry. Over time, our understanding of the rules which govern the things, phenomena, and ideas in our lives become more reliable and applicable in practical activities. This attainment of understanding and practical ability through scientific practice is ''scientific consciousness''.
+Ordinary and scientific consciousness are two different qualitative steps of cognitive processes which, together, allow humans to discover truth about our world. Ordinary and scientific consciousness have a strong dialectical relationship with each other. In this relationship, ordinary consciousness precedes scientific consciousness, as ordinary consciousness is a source of material for the development of scientific consciousness.
+Although it contains the seeds of scientific knowledge, ordinary consciousness mainly stops at the reflection of superficial details, seemingly random events, and non-essential phenomena [see ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156]. Ordinary consciousness, therefore, cannot transform effortlessly into scientific consciousness. To develop ordinary consciousness into scientific consciousness, we must go through the process of accurate summarizing, abstracting, and generalization using scientific methods. Likewise, once scientific consciousness has been developed, it impacts and pervades ordinary consciousness, and therefore develops ordinary consciousness. Scientific consciousness therefore enhances our everyday passive perception of the world.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-83.png|''Ordinary consciousness refers to the passive observation of reality which takes place in our daily lives. Scientific consciousness refers to the systematic application of consciousness to solve specific problems in a methodological manner.'']]
+-----
+==== Annotation 220 ====
+For example, before developing scientific consciousness of farming, a farmer might go through daily life having no idea what makes plants grow to be larger and more healthy and might have no idea how to avoid common problems such as pests. After developing scientific consciousness of farming through scientific experimentation and other systematic methodologies, the farmer will look at things differently in daily life activities. They may see signs of pest infestation and immediately recognize it for what it is, and they may see other indications that plants are unhealthy and know exactly what to do to remedy the situation.
+In this way, scientific consciousness enhances ordinary consciousness. Meanwhile, ordinary consciousness — passive observation of the world during daily activities — will lead to scientific consciousness by inspiring us to actively seek understanding of the world through scientific consciousness.
+=== c. The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness ===
+Praxis serves as the ''basis, driving force,'' and ''purpose'' of consciousness. Praxis serves as the criterion of truth by testing the truthfulness of our thoughts. [See Annotation 230, p. 226]
+Praxis is able to serve these roles because reality is the direct starting point of consciousness; it sets out the requirements, tasks, and modes of consciousness, as well as the movement and development tendencies of consciousness. Humans have an objective and inherent need to explain the world and to transform it.
+-----
+==== Annotation 221 ====
+Remember that the material world defines consciousness while consciousness allows us to impact the material world through conscious activity [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88]. Consciousness itself arose from the physical needs of the material world [see ''The Source of Consciousness'', p. 64], and these physical needs continue to serve as the basis and driving force for all conscious activities, as we must act consciously to survive.
+Our inherent need to explain the world and to transform it arises from our material needs to eat, seek shelter, cure and prevent disease, and so on. These physical needs, which stem from the material world, drive conscious activity and lead to the development of consciousness and knowledge.
+Therefore, humans must necessarily impact things in the material world through our practical activities in order to survive. The impacts of our practical activities on the world cause things and phenomena to reveal their different properties, including their internal and external relationships [for example, hitting a rock will tell you properties about the rock; attempting to build something out of wood will provide data about the wood, etc.]. In this manner, praxis produces data for consciousness to process, and also helps consciousness to comprehend nature and the laws of movement and development which govern the world.
+Scientific theories are formed on the basis of the dialectical relationship between practical activity and consciousness. For example: mathematics developed to allow us to count and measure things for practical activities such as agriculture, navigation, and building structures. Marxism also arose in the 1840’s from the practical activities of the struggles of the working class against the capitalist class at that time. Even recent scientific achievements arise from practical needs and activities. For example, the discovery and decoding of the human genome map was born from practical activities and needs, such as the need to develop treatments for incurable diseases. In the end, there is no field of knowledge that is not derived from reality. Ultimately, all knowledge arises from and serves practice. Therefore, if we were to break from reality or stop relying on reality, consciousness would break from the basis of reality that nurtures our growth, existence and development. Also, the cognitive subject cannot have true and profound knowledge about the world if it does not follow reality.
+Practice also serves as the basis, driving force, and purpose of consciousness because, thanks to practical activities, our human ability to measure and observe reality improves increasingly over time; our logical thinking ability is constantly strengthened and developed; cognitive means become increasingly developed. All of these developments “extend” the human senses in perceiving the world [for example, by developing new tools to measure, perceive, and sense the world such as telescopes, radar, microscopes, etc.].
+Reality is not only the basis, the driving force, and the purpose of discovering truth but also serves as the ''standard of truth.'' Reality also serves as the basis for ''examining the truthfulness of the cognitive process'' [i.e., we can test whether our thoughts match material reality through experimentation and practice in the real world]. This means that practice is the measure of the value of the knowledge we gain through perception. At the same time, practice is constantly supplementing, adjusting, correcting, developing, and improving human consciousness. Marx said: “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.”<ref>''Theses On Feuerbach'', Karl Marx, 1845.</ref>
+Thus, practice is not only the starting point of consciousness and a decisive factor for the formation and development of consciousness, it is also a target where consciousness must always aim to test the truth. To emphasize this role which practice plays, Lenin said: “The standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge.”<ref>''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.</ref>
+The role of practice in consciousness requires that we always grasp the practical point of view. This point of view requires that we derive our ideas from practice, our ideas must be based on practice, and our ideas must deeply explore practice. In our conscious activities, we must attach a lot of importance to the summarization of practice [i.e., developing theoretical knowledge through theoretical consciousness which reflects practical experience]. Theoretical research must be related to practice, and learning must go hand in hand with practicing. If we diverge from practice, it will lead to mistakes of subjectivism, idealism, dogmatism, rigidity, and bureaucracy.
+-----
+==== Annotation 222 ====
+''Subjectivism'' occurs when one centers one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test one’s own perceptions against material and social reality. Subjectivists tend to believe that they can independently reason their way to truth in their own minds without practical experience and activity in the material world. Related to subjectivism is ''solipsism'', a form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. As Marxist ethicist Howard Selsam wrote in ''Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World'': “If I believe that I alone exist and that you and all your arguments exist only in my mind and are my own creations then all possible arguments will not shake me one iota. No logic can possibly convince [the] solipsist.”
+''Idealism'' has a strong connection with a failure to incorporate practical activity into theoretical consciousness, since idealism holds that conscious activity is the sole basis of discovering truth.
+''Dogmatism'' occurs when one only accounts for commonalities and considers theory itself as the sole basis of truth rather than practice [see Annotation 239, p. 235]. Dogmatists ignore practical experience and considering pre-established theory, alone, as unalterable truth. This results in a breakdown of the dialectical relationship between theoretical consciousness and empirical consciousness, which arrests the development process of knowledge and consciousness.
+''Rigidity'' is an unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.
+''Bureaucracy'' arises when theory becomes overly codified and formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory. Bureaucracy can be avoided by incorporating practical experience and observations continuously into the development of practical systems and methodologies so that theory and practice become increasingly aligned over time to continuously improve efficiency and effectiveness of practical activities in the material world.
+On the contrary, if the role of practice is absolutized [to the exclusion of conscious activity], it will fall into pragmatism and empiricism.
+-----
+==== Annotation 223 ====
+In this context, ''pragmatism'' refers to a form of subjectivism [see Annotation 222, above] in which one centers one’s own immediate material concerns over all other considerations. For example, workers may place their own immediate needs and desires above the concerns of their fellow workers as a whole. This may offer some temporary gains, but in the long run their lack of solidarity and class consciousness will be detrimental as workers collectively suffer from division, making all workers more vulnerable to exploitation and ill treatment by the capitalist class.
+''Empiricism'' is a faulty form of materialism in which ''only'' sense experience and practical experience are considered sources of truth. This is opposed to the dialectical materialist position that the material ''determines'' consciousness, while consciousness ''impacts'' the material world through conscious labor activity. [See ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88]
+Thus, the principle of the ''unification'' of practice and theory must be the basic principle in practical and theoretical activities. Theory without practice as its basis and criterion for determining its truthfulness is useless. Vice versa, practice without scientific and revolutionary theory will inevitably turn into blind practice. [As Ho Chi Minh once said: “Study and practice must always go together. Study without practice is useless. Practice without study leads to folly.”]
+== 2. Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth ==
+=== a. Opinions of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin about the Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth ===
+==== Annotation 224 ====
+The section below outlines and explains ''the Universal Law of Consciousness'', which holds that consciousness is a process of dialectical development in which practical activity leads to conscious activity, which then leads back to practical activity, in a continuous and never-ending cycle, with a tendency to develop both practical and conscious activity to increasingly higher levels.
+In his ''Philosophical Notebook'', Lenin generalized the dialectical path towards the realization of truth as development from vivid visualization to abstract thinking, and then from abstraction back to practice. This process, according to Lenin, is the dialectical path towards the realization of truth, and the realization of objective reality.
+According to this generalization, the dialectical path towards the realization of truth (“truth,” here, referring to a correct and accurate reflection of objective reality) is a process. It is a process that starts from “vivid visualization” (emotional consciousness) to “abstract thinking” (rational consciousness).
+-----
+==== Annotation 225 ====
+Given that consciousness has a material basis, and that practical activities are the driving force of consciousness [see Annotation 230, p. 226], it follows that we must strive to align our conscious thoughts and ideas with the material world. The more accurately we can reflect reality in our consciousness, the more effectively and efficiently our practical activities can become.
+For example, through learning more about the mechanical, material, and physical processes which take place inside of an automobile engine, the more we can improve engines to make them more efficient and effective for practical applications.
+Lenin explained that consciousness develops from “emotional consciousness” to “rational consciousness.” Thought about a subject begins at a base level of consciousness that is rooted in emotional and sense-oriented conscious activity, i.e, “vivid visualization,” which then leads to rational, abstract reflection.
+By “vivid visualization,” Lenin is referring to the active, real-time experience of seeing (and hearing, smelling, and otherwise sensing) things and phenomena in the world.
+When a person experiences something through practical activity, the first conscious activity will tend to occur at the emotional and sensory level — in other words, the conscious activities which occur simultaneously along with practical activities. Only after this initial period of emotional consciousness will one be able to reflect on the experience on a more rational and abstract level.
+For example, if a zoologist in the field sees a species of bird they have never encountered before, their first conscious activity will be at the sensory-emotional level: they will observe the shape, coloration, and motion of the bird. They may feel excitement, happiness, and other emotions. This is emotional conscious activity.
+This emotional conscious activity will then develop into rational conscious activity, as the zoologist may begin to consider things more abstractly, attempting to interpret and understand this experience through reason and rational reflection, asking such questions as: “Where does this bird nest? What does it feed on? Is this a new discovery?” and so on.
+Such abstractions are not the end point of a cognitive cycle, because consciousness must then continue to develop through practice. It is through practice that perception tests and proves its own correctness so that it can then continue on to repeat the cycle.
+This is also the general rule of the human perception of objective reality.
+-----
+==== Annotation 226 ====
+Thus there is a dialectical relationship between emotional consciousness (linked to practical activity) and rational consciousness (linked to purely conscious activity).
+This dialectical relationship is a cycle, in which one engages in practical activity, which leads to emotional consciousness, which leads to rational consciousness, which then leads back to practical activity to test the correctness of the conclusions of rational conscious activity.
+We call this cycle of development of consciousness the cognitive process.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-84.png|''The cognitive process is a continuous cycle which describes the dialectical development of consciousness and practical activity.'']]
+The cognitive process is explained in more detail below.
+-----
+'''- Development From Emotional Consciousness to Rational Consciousness'''
+''Emotional consciousness is the lower stage of the cognitive process.'' In this stage of cognitive development, humans use — through practical activity — use our senses to reflect objective things and phenomena (with all their perceived specific characteristics and rich manifestations) in human consciousness. During this period, consciousness only reflects the phenomena [i.e, ''phenomena'', as opposed to ''essence'' — see ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156] — the external manifestations — of the perceived subject. At this stage, consciousness has not yet reflected the ''essence'' — the nature, and/or the regulating principles — of the subject. Therefore, this is the lowest stage of development of the cognitive process. In this stage, consciousness is carried out through three basic phases: ''sensation'', ''conception'', and ''symbolization''.
+Human ''sensation'' of an objective thing or phenomenon is the simplest, most primitive phase of the emotional consciousness stage of the cognitive processes, but without it there would not be any perception of objective things or phenomena. Every human sensation of objective things and phenomena contains objective content [see Content and Form, p. 147], even though it arises as subjective human conscious reflection. Sensation is the subjective imagining of the objective world. It is the basis from which the next phase of emotional consciousness — ''conception'' — is formed.
+''Conception'' is a relatively complete reflection within human consciousness of objective things and phenomena. Conception is formed on the basis of linking and synthesizing sensational experiences of things and phenomena [i.e., ''sensation'']. Compared with sensation, conception is a higher, fuller, richer form of consciousness, but it is still a reflection of the outward manifestations of objects. Conception does not yet reflect the essence, nature, and regulating principles of the perceived subject.
+''Symbolization'' is the representation of an objective thing or phenomenon that has been reflected by sensation and conception. It is the most advanced and most complex phase of the stage of emotional consciousness. At the same time, it also serves as the transitional step between emotional consciousness and rational consciousness. The defining characteristic of symbolism is the ability to reproduce symbolic ideas of objective things and phenomena within human consciousness. Symbolization describes the act of recreating the outward appearances of material things and phenomena within human consciousness, which is the first step of abstraction, and thus the first step towards rational consciousness.
+-----
+==== Annotation 227 ====
+Here is an example of the three phases of the emotional consciousness stage of the cognitive process:
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-85.png]]
+''1.'' ''Sensation'': Jessica ''senses'' a cake in the window of a bakery. She ''sees'' the frosting, the shape of the cake, and the decorations which adorn the cake. She ''smells'' the cake. During this phase, objective data about the cake is received into her consciousness, developing into an immediate and subjective sense perception of the cake. The beginnings of this cognitive activity will be purely sensory in nature; she may have been thinking of other things as she walked by the bakery, but the sight and smell of the cake, upon registering in her mind, will lead to the beginning of a new cognitive process cycle.
+''2.'' ''Conception'': Jessica begins to ''conceive'' of the cake in her mind more fully. She will associate the immediate sense experiences of seeing and smelling the cake with other experiences she has had with cake, and a complete mental image and concept of the cake will form in her mind.
+''3.'' ''Symbolization'': The word “cake” may now form in her mind, and she may begin thinking of the cake more abstractly, as “food,” as a “temptation,” and in other ways. This is the beginning of abstraction in Jessica’s mind, which will then lead to rational conscious activities.
+Note that all of these phases of emotional consciousness activity may take place very quickly, perhaps in a fraction of a second, and may coincide with other conscious activity (i.e., Jessica may simultaneously be thinking of a meeting she’s running late to and any number of other things). At this point, Jessica will transition to the ''rational consciousness'' stage of the cognitive process'','' which is explained in more detail below.
+-----
+By the end of the emotional stage of the cognitive process, consciousness has not yet reflected the essence — the nature, regulating principles, etc. — of the perceived subject. Therefore, at the emotional stage, consciousness is not yet able to properly ''interpret'' the reflected subject. That is to say, emotional conscious activity does not meet the cognitive requirements to serve practical activities, including the need to creatively transform the objective world. To meet these requirements, emotional consciousness must develop into ''rational consciousness''.
+''Rational consciousness is the higher stage of the cognitive process.'' It includes the indirect, abstract, and generalized reflection of the essential properties and characteristics of things and phenomena. This stage of consciousness performs the most important function of comprehending and interpreting the ''essence'' of the perceived subject. Rational consciousness is implemented through three basic phases: ''definition'', ''judgment'', and ''reasoning''.
+''Definition'' is the first phase of rational consciousness. During this phase, the mind begins to interpret, organize, and process the basic properties of things and phenomena at a rational level into a conceptual whole. The formation of definition is the result of the summarization and synthesis of all the different characteristics and properties of the subject, and how the subject fits into the organized structure of knowledge which exists in the mind. Definition is the basis for forming judgments in the cognitive process.
+''Judgment'' is the next phase of rational consciousness, which arises from the definition of the subject — the linking of concepts and properties together — which leads to affirmative or negative ideation of certain characteristics or attributes of the perceived subject.
+According to the level of development of consciousness, judgment may take one of three forms: unique judgment, general judgment, and universal judgment [see Annotation 105, p. 107]. Universal judgment is the form of judgement that expresses the broadest conception of objective reality.
+''Reasoning'' is the final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject. Before reasoning can take place, judgments must be transformed into knowledge. A judgment can be transformed into knowledge through one of two logical mechanisms: deductive inference (which extrapolates the general from the specific), and inductive inference (which extrapolates the specific from the general).
+-----
+==== Annotation 228 ====
+Here is an example of the three phases of the rational consciousness stage of the cognitive process, continuing from our previous example of the emotional consciousness stage [see Annotation 227, p. 222].
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-86.png]]
+''1.'' ''Definition'': Jessica’s conception of the cake will transition into the rational conscious activity of ''definition''. Jessica will begin to define the concept of the cake more wholly and concretely, summarizing and synthesizing all of the features and characteristics of the cake into a cohesive mental reflection of the cake. The word “cake” may become more pronounced and defined in Jessica’s consciousness, prompting her to think of the object which she defines as a “cake” more fully and rationally.
+''2.'' ''Judgment'': Jessica will begin to form basic judgments about the cake. “That cake looks good,” “that cake smells good,” and so on. Next, these judgments will begin to transform into knowledge through inductive or deductive inferences. An inductive inference might be: “I generally enjoy eating cakes, therefore, I might enjoy eating this cake!” An example of a deductive inference might be: “This cake looks very delicious, therefore, there might be other delicious things in this bakery!”
+''3.'' ''Reasoning'': Processes of inductive and/or deductive inference will begin to transform Jessica’s judgments into the form of knowledge. For instance, she may now possess such knowledge as: “This bakery has delicious looking cakes, this is a cake I would like to eat,” and so on. With this newly acquired knowledge, Jessica can begin reasoning; that is to say, she can begin making rational conclusions and decisions. She might conclude: “I will go into this bakery and buy that cake.”
+Note that this is not the “end” of the cognitive process, because the final phase of the reasoning stage of the cognitive process (reasoning) will lead directly into a new cycle of the cognitive process. In this example, Jessica might engage in the practical activity of checking her watch to see the time, which will begin a new cycle of cognitive process, beginning with the ''sensation'' phase of the emotional stage as the visual sense data of her watch and carrying through to the final ''reasoning'' phase of the rational stage, and so on.
+It should also be noted that this is merely an abstraction of the cognitive process; in reality, the human mind is incredibly complex, capable of carrying out a variety of cognitive processes simultaneously. At any given moment, a person might be considering various different subjects, and each different subject might be at a different stage of the cognitive process. This abstract model of the cognitive process is presented to help us comprehend the component functions of consciousness more easily in the wider context of dialectical materialist philosophy.
+Specifically, this model of the cognitive process is intended to help us understand how human consciousness leads to “truth.” And “truth,” here, refers to the alignment of human consciousness with the material world, so that our perceptions and understanding of the world is accurate and representative of actual reality.
+''- The Relationship Between Emotional Consciousness, Rational Consciousness, and Reality''
+Emotional consciousness and rational consciousness are stages that make up the cognitive cycle. In reality, they are often intertwined within the cognitive process, but they have different functions. If ''emotional consciousness'' is associated with reality, and with the impact of sense data received from observing the material world, and is the basis for cognitive reason, then ''rational consciousness'', based on higher cognitive understanding and abstraction, allows us to understand the essence, nature, regulating principles, and development processes of things and phenomena. Rational consciousness helps direct emotional consciousness in a more efficient and effective direction and leads to more profound and accurate emotional consciousness.
+-----
+==== Annotation 229 ====
+In other words, considering a subject at the level of rational consciousness allows us to then view the same subject, at an emotional consciousness level, with more depth and awareness.
+For example, the more time we have spent rationally considering something like a bicycle, the more quickly and accurately we can examine a bicycle at the level of emotional consciousness. If someone is looking at a bicycle for the first time, they might not be able to distinguish its component parts or functions. On the other hand, if someone has spent more time considering bicycles at the level of rational consciousness, they may be able to immediately and rapidly understand and process a bicycle at the emotional conscious level, so that they can perceive and comprehend the different parts of a bicycle, as well as their functions, immediately and at the emotional-sensory level.
+However, if we stop at rational consciousness, we will only have knowledge about the subjects we perceive, but we still won’t really know if that knowledge is truly accurate or not. In order to be useful in practical activity, we must consciously determine whether knowledge is ''truth'' [i.e., whether the knowledge accurately reflects reality]. In order to determine the truth of knowledge, consciousness must necessarily return to reality. Consciousness must use reality as a criterion — a measurement — of the authenticity of knowledge gained through purely cognitive processes. In other words, all consciousness is ultimately derived from practical needs, and must also return to serve practical activities.
+-----
+==== Annotation 230 ====
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-87.png|''The dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activities means that conscious activities develop practical activities, and vice versa, in a continuous feedback loop.'']]
+One of the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism is that the material determines the ideal, and the ideal impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness]. The fact that the material determines consciousness is reflected in the fact that material needs led to the development of consciousness, and conscious activity stems from material needs [see Social Sources of Consciousness].
+The fact that the ideal impacts the material is reflected in the fact that consciousness must always return to the service of practical activities; as our consciousness develops (along with knowledge), our ability to impact and transform the material world becomes more efficient and effective.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-88.png|''The dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activity is what drives the development of humanity. We imagine better ways of doing things, then test those ideas against reality through practical activity.'']]
+This dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activity is thus cyclical. Conscious activity arises from practical activity, and returns to practical activity, in an endless process of developing both conscious ability as well as practical ability.
+-----
+Therefore, it can be seen that the general, cyclical nature of the process of movement and development of consciousness develops from practice to consciousness — from consciousness to practice — from practical activity to the continued process of cognitive development, and so on. This process is repeated continuously, without end. The development level of consciousness and practice in the next cycle are often higher than in the previous cycle, and the cognitive process gradually develops more and more accuracy, as well as fuller and deeper knowledge about objective reality.
+The universal law of consciousness [see Annotation 224, p. 219] is also a concrete and vivid manifestation of the universal laws of materialist dialectics, including: the law of negation of negation, the law of transformation between quantity and quality and the law of unity and contradiction between opposites. The process of cognitive motion and development, governed by these general laws, is the process of human progress towards absolute truth [see Annotation 232, p. 228].
+-----
+==== Annotation 231 ====
+The universal law of consciousness is governed by the three universal laws of materialist dialectics:
+''The Law of Negation of Negation'' dictates that the new will arise from the old, but will carry forward characteristics from the old. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness in that conscious activity arises from practical activity. This conscious activity then develops into improved practical activity, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of development. Throughout this development process, characteristics of previous cycles of cognitive and practical activities are carried forward and transferred on to newer cycles of cognitive and practical activities.
+''The Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality'' recognizes that quantity changes develop into changes in quality, and vice versa. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness in the development of both conscious and practical activities. Conscious development also develops from quantitative changes to quality changes, and vice versa. For example, once a person accumulates a certain quantity of knowledge, the quality of their knowledge will change. For example, once a person has learned the function of every component part of a car engine, they will have a ''quality shift'' in their understanding of car engines — they will now have competency of the functioning of the engine as a whole. This is also true of practical activities. A quantity of practical experience will lead to quality shifts in practical ability. For example, once a person has practiced riding a bicycle enough that they can reliably ride the bicycle without falling, we would say that the person “knows how to ride a bicycle,” which represents a quality shift from the state of “learning how to ride a bicycle.”
+''The Law of Unity and Contradiction Between Opposites'' states that all things, phenomena, and ideas are defined by internal and external contradictions. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness by the fact that practical needs serve as the basis for conscious activity, and that cognitive processes serve, in essence, to negate contradictions between consciousness and material reality through practical experience. In other words, the cognitive process is defined by a never-ending process of contradiction between the material and the ideal, as human beings seek to negate contradictions between our conscious understanding of the world and our practical experiences in search of ''truth -'' the accurate alignment of consciousness with the material world.
+=== b. Truth, and the Relationship Between Truth and Reality ===
+''- Definition of Truth''
+All cognitive processes lead to the creation of ''knowledge'', which is what we call human understanding of objective reality. But not all knowledge has content consistent with objective reality, because consciousness exists as the subjective reflection of objective reality in the human mind. The collective cognitive practice of all of humanity throughout history, as well as the cognitive practice of each individual human being, has demonstrated that the knowledge which people have gained and are gaining is not always consistent with objective reality. On the contrary, there are many cases of misalignment between consciousness and reality, and even complete contradiction between human thought and objective reality.
+Within the theoretical scope of Marxism-Leninism, the concept of ''truth'' is used to refer to knowledge which is aligned with objective reality. This alignment is tested and proven through practice. In this sense, the concept of truth is not identical with the concept of “knowledge,” nor with the concept of “hypothesis.” According to Lenin: “The coincidence of thought with the object is a '''process''': thought (= man) must not imagine truth in the form of dead repose, in the form of a bare picture (image), pale (matte), without impulse, without motion…”<ref>''Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic,'' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref>
+-----
+==== Annotation 232 ====
+Here, Lenin is dispelling Hegel’s conception of “absolute truth,” which is not to be confused with Lenin’s concept of “absolute truth” as “objective truth” which aligns consciousness with objective reality [see Annotation 58, p. 56]. For Hegel, “absolute truth” was the idea that there will eventually be some end point to the process of rational consciousness at which we will finally arrive at some final stage of knowledge and consciousness. This rational end point of consciousness, at which the dialectic ends and all contradictions are negated, is Hegel’s “absolute truth.”
+Lenin is also pushing back against the metaphysical conception that all “truths” exist as static categories of information which do not change. Instead, Lenin points out that seeking truth — i.e., aligning consciousness with material reality — is a never-ending process, in particular because reality is constantly developing and changing. Thus, the alignment of consciousness with reality — the pursuit of truth — is a living and dynamic process which will never end, since the development of reality will never end.
+''- The Properties of Truth''
+All truths are ''objective, relative, absolute,'' and ''concrete.''
+The ''objectivity'' of truth is the independence of its content from the subjective will of human beings. The content of knowledge must be aligned with objective reality, not vice versa. This means that the content of accurate knowledge is not a product of pure subjective reasoning. Truth is not an arbitrary human construct, nor is truth inherent in consciousness. On the contrary, truth belongs to the objective world, and is determined by the objective world. The affirmation of the objectivity of truth is one of the fundamental points that distinguishes the concept of absolute truth of dialectical materialism from the concept of absolute truth of idealism and skepticism — the doctrines that deny the objective existence of the physical world and deny the possibility that humans are able to perceive the world.
+-----
+==== Annotation 233 ====
+The Dialectical Materialist conception of objective truth stands in contrast to ''idealism'', which states that conscious reasoning alone leads to truth, and that the subjective ideal determines material reality [see Annotation 7, p. 8].
+This objectivity of truth also refutes ''skepticism'', which states that truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality [see Annotation 32, p. 27].
+Distinction must also be drawn between the concept of absolute truth as it is understood in dialectical materialist philosophy and the conception of absolute truth in Hegel’s idealist dialectics. Dialectical materialism defines absolute truth as “objective truth;” that is to say: a complete alignment between objective reality and human consciousness (as compared to relative truth, which is a partial alignment between consciousness and objective reality).
+Hegel, on the other hand, views absolute truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe (see Annotation 232, p. 228) with the ideal serving as the first basis and primary mechanism for bringing absolute truth to fruition.
+Truth is not only objective, but also ''absolute'' and ''relative''. Absolute truth [see Annotation 58, p. 56] refers to truth which reflects a full and complete alignment of consciousness and reality. Theoretically, we can reach absolute truth. This is because, in the objective world, there exists no thing nor phenomenon which human beings are completely incapable of accurately perceiving. The possibility of acquiring absolute truth in the process of the development of conscious understanding is theoretically limitless. However, in reality, our conscious ability to reflect reality is limited by the specific material conditions of each generation of humanity, of practical limitations, and by the spatial and temporal conditions of reflected subjects. Therefore, truth is also ''relative''.
+-----
+==== Annotation 234 ====
+Dialectical materialist philosophy recognizes that it must be theoretically possible to know everything there is to know about a given subject, since we are theoretically capable of accurately perceiving, sensing, and measuring all data which pertains to a subject. However, dialectical materialism also recognizes the practical limitations of human beings. As Engels writes in ''Anti-Dühring'':
+<blockquote>
+If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.
+But are there any truths which are so securely based that any doubt of them seems to us to be tantamount to insanity? That twice two makes four, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, that Paris is in France, that a man who gets no food dies of hunger, and so forth? Are there then nevertheless eternal truths, final and ultimate truths.
+Certainly there are. We can divide the whole realm of knowledge in the traditional way into three great departments. The first includes all sciences that deal with inanimate nature and are to a greater or lesser degree susceptible of mathematical treatment: mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry. If it gives anyone any pleasure to use mighty words for very simple things, it can be asserted that certain results obtained by these sciences are eternal truths, final and ultimate truths; for which reason these sciences are known as the exact sciences. But very far from all their results have this validity. With the introduction of variable magnitudes and the extension of their variability to the infinitely small and infinitely large, mathematics, usually so strictly ethical, fell from grace; it ate of the tree of knowledge, which opened up to it a career of most colossal achievements, but at the same time a path of error. The virgin state of absolute validity and irrefutable proof of everything mathematical was gone forever; the realm of controversy was inaugurated, and we have reached the point where most people differentiate and integrate not because they understand what they are doing but from pure faith, because up to now it has always come out right. Things are even worse with astronomy and mechanics, and in physics and chemistry we are swamped by hypotheses as if attacked by a swarm of bees. And it must of necessity be so. In physics we are dealing with the motion of molecules, in chemistry with the formation of molecules out of atoms, and if the interference of light waves is not a myth, we have absolutely no prospect of ever seeing these interesting objects with our own eyes. As time goes on, final and ultimate truths become remarkably rare in this field.
+</blockquote>
+-----
+Relative truth is truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached ''complete'' alignment between human knowledge and the reality which it reflects. To put it another way, relative truth represents knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. In relative truth, there is only partial alignment — in some (but not all) aspects — between consciousness and the material world.
+-----
+==== Annotation 235 ====
+''False consciousness'' is consciousness which is incorrect and misaligned from reality. Discovering and rooting out false consciousness is one of the primary concerns of dialectical materialism, as false consciousness can be a serious impediment to human progress. The term “false consciousness” was first used by Friedrich Engels in a personal letter to Franz Mehring in 1893 (a decade after the death of Karl Marx), and in this letter Engels uses the term interchangeably with the word “ideology”* to describe conscious thought processes which do not align with reality:
+<blockquote>
+Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines false or apparent motives. Because it is a process of thought he derives both its form and its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere thought material which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, he does not investigate further for a more remote process independent of thought; indeed its origin seems obvious to him, because as all action is produced through the medium of thought it also appears to him to be ultimately based upon thought. The ideologist who deals with history (history is here simply meant to comprise all the spheres – political, juridical, philosophical, theological – belonging to society and not only to nature), the ideologist dealing with history then, possesses in every sphere of science material which has formed itself independently out of the thought of previous generations and has gone through an independent series of developments in the brains of these successive generations. True, external facts belonging to its own or other spheres may have exercised a co-determining influence on this development, but the tacit pre-supposition is that these facts themselves are also only the fruits of a process of thought, and so we still remain within that realm of pure thought which has successfully digested the hardest facts.
+</blockquote>
+Although the ''term'' “false consciousness” is not found in writing until after Marx’s death, the ''concept'' underlying the term “false consciousness” is found often in the works of Marx and Engels. For instance, in ''The Holy Family,'' Marx and Engels explain how communist, class conscious workers have been able to break free of false consciousness of capitalist society:
+<blockquote>
+They (the communist workers) are most painfully aware of the difference between being and thinking, between consciousness and life. They know that property, capital, money, wage-labor and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement.
+</blockquote>
+This allusion to “the difference between being and thinking” recurs again and again in the works of Marx and Engels.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Lenin also discussed the concept of false consciousness extensively, and argued that dialectical materialism was the key to negating the false consciousness of the working class, writing in ''What the “Friends of the People” Are'':
+<blockquote>
+It never has been the case, nor is it so now, that the members of society conceive the sum-total of the social relations in which they live as something definite, integral, pervaded by some principle; on the contrary, the mass of people adapt themselves to these relations unconsciously, and have so little conception of them as specific historical social relations that, for instance, an explanation of the exchange relations under which people have lived for centuries was found only in very recent times. Materialism removed this contradiction by carrying the analysis deeper, to the origin of man’s social ideas themselves; and its conclusion that the course of ideas depends on the course of things is the only one compatible with scientific psychology. Further, and from yet another aspect, this hypothesis was the first to elevate sociology to the level of a science.
+</blockquote>
+Note that this convention of using the word “ideology” to mean “false consciousness” has never been common, and Marx and Engels both used the word “ideology” more often in its more usual sense of “a system of ideas,” but it is still occasionally encountered in socialist literature, as Joseph McCarney explains in ''Marx Myths and Legends'':
+<blockquote>
+Marx never calls ideology ‘false consciousness’. Indeed, he never calls anything ‘false consciousness’, a phrase that does not occur in his work... The noun is almost always accompanied by an epithet such as ‘German’, ‘republican’, ‘political’ or ‘Hegelian’, or by a qualifying phrase, as in ‘the ideology of the bourgeoisie’ or ‘the ideology of the political economist’. More typical in any case is the adjectival usage in which such varied items as ‘forms’, ‘expressions’, ‘phrases’, ’conceptions’, ‘deception’, and ‘distortion’ are said to have an ‘ideological’ character. Even more distinctive is the frequency, amounting to approximately half of all references in the relevant range, of invocations of the ‘ideologists’, the creators and purveyors of the ideological forms.
+</blockquote>
+-----
+“Relative truth” and “absolute truth” do not exist separately, but have dialectical unity with each other. On the one hand, “absolute truth” is the sum of all “relative truths.” On the other hand, in all relative truths there are always elements of absolute truth.
+Lenin wrote that “absolute truth results from the sum-total of relative truths in the course of their development; [...] relative truths represent relatively faithful reflections of an object existing independently of man; [...] these reflections become more and more faithful; [...] every scientific truth, notwithstanding its relative nature, contains an element of absolute truth.”<ref>''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.</ref>
+Correct realization of the dialectical relationship between relative and absolute truth plays a very important role in criticizing and overcoming extremism and false consciousness in perception and in action. If we exaggerate the absoluteness of the truth of knowledge which we possess, or downplay its relativity, we will fall into the false consciousness of metaphysics, dogmatism, conservativism, and stagnation.
+-----
+==== Annotation 236 ====
+Intentional or unintentional exaggeration of the absoluteness of truth — i.e., considering our knowledge to be more complete and/or aligned with reality than it actually is — leads to incorrect viewpoints and mindsets, including:
+''Metaphysics'' is a philosophical system which seeks truth through the systematic categorization of knowledge [see Annotation 8, p. 8]. This is a flawed method of seeking knowledge because it considers truth to be essentially static and unchanging, and upholds the erroneous notion that truth can be systematically broken down into discrete, isolated categories. In addition to being fundamentally incorrect about the nature of truth and knowledge, it leads to the incorrect presumption that such static categorization of knowledge can lead to truth ''at all''. Metaphysics fails to see truth and consciousness as a ''process'', and instead sees truth as a static assembly of categorized facts and data.
+''Dogmatism'' occurs when one only accounts for commonalities and considers theory itself as the sole basis of truth. Dogmatism inherently overstates the absoluteness of knowledge, as dogmatic positions uphold certain theoretical principles as complete, inviolable, and completely developed. This explicitly denies the continuously developing process of advancing knowledge and consciousness.
+''Conservativism'' includes any position that seeks to prevent change, or to undo change to return to an earlier state of development. Such positions deny the continuous development of consciousness, knowledge, and practice, and incorrectly assert incorrect positions; or mistake relative truth for absolute truth.
+''Stagnation'' is an inability or unwillingness to change and adapt consciousness and practice in accordance with developing material conditions. Stagnation can stem from, or cause, overstatement of absolute truth in theory and forestall necessary development of both consciousness and practical ability.
+On the contrary, if we exaggerate the relativity of the truth of knowledge which we possess, or downplay its absoluteness, we will fall into relativism, thereby leading to subjectivism, revisionism, sophistry, and skepticism.
+-----
+==== Annotation 237 ====
+''Relativism'' is the belief that human consciousness can ''only'' achieve relative understanding of the world, and that truth can therefore never be objectively discovered. Relativism is, thus, the overstatement of the relative nature of truth and the denial of the existence of absolute truth. Relativism leads to such incorrect viewpoints and mindsets as:
+''Subjectivism'': which occurs when one centers one’s own self and one’s own conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test their own perceptions against material and social reality [see Annotation 211, p. 205]. This position denies that truth can be discovered in the external material world, falsely believing that absolute truth stems only from conscious activity.
+''Revisionism'': a failure to recognize and accept commonalities in conscious activity, focusing only on the private [see ''Private and Common'', p. 128]. Revisionism leads to constant and unnecessary reassessment and reevaluation of both knowledge and practice. Revisionism, thus, is a position which overstates the relativity of truth and ignores truths which are more fully developed towards absoluteness.
+''Sophistry:'' the use of falsehoods and fallacious arguments to deceive [see Annotation 116, p. 118]. Sophistry is, thus, the intentional denial of truth and the intentional mischaracterization of truths as either overly relative or as not truths at all.
+''Skepticism:'' the belief that truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality [see Annotation 200, p. 192]. By denying that truth is discoverable at all, skepticism explicitly rejects absolute truth and declares that all truth is relative and unreliable.
+-----
+In addition to objectivity, absoluteness, and relativity, truth also has ''concreteness.'' The concreteness of truth refers to the degree to which a truth is attached to specific objects, in specific conditions, at a specific point in time. This means that all accurate knowledge always refers to a specific situation which involves specific subjects which exist in a specific place and time. The content of truth cannot be pure abstraction, disconnected from reality, but it is always associated with certain, specific objects and phenomena which exist in a specific space, time, and arrangement, with specific internal and external relationships. Therefore, truth is associated with specific historical conditions. This specificity to time, place, relations, etc., is what we call ''concreteness''.
+Knowledge, if detached from specific historical conditions, will fall into pure abstraction. Therefore, it will not be accurate — it will not align with reality — and such knowledge cannot be considered truth. When emphasizing this property, Lenin wrote: “Truth is always concrete, never abstract.”<ref>''Once Again On The Trade Unions,'' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.</ref> Mastering the principle of the concreteness of truth has an important methodological significance in cognitive and practical activities. It is required that consideration and evaluation of all things and phenomena must be based on a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. In developing and applying theory, we must be conscious of specific historical conditions. According to Lenin, Marxism’s nature, its essence, lies in the concrete analysis of specific situations; Marx’s method is, above all, to consider the objective content of the historical process in a specific time.
+-----
+==== Annotation 238 ====
+In other words, Marxism is rooted in seeking truth by examining reality from a historical and comprehensive viewpoint. For more information, see Annotation 114, p. 116.
+''- The Role of Truth in Reality.''
+In order to survive and develop, humans must conduct practical activities. These activities involve transforming the environment, nature, and human society. At the same time, through these activities, humans perform — knowingly or unknowingly — the process of perfecting and developing our conscious and practical abilities. It is this process that helps human cognitive activities develop. Practical activities can only be successful and effective once humans apply accurate knowledge of objective reality to our practical activities. Therefore, truth is one of the prerequisites that ensure success and efficiency in practical activities.
+The relationship between truth and practical activities is a dialectical relationship which serves as the basis for the movement and development of both truth and practical activity: truth develops through practice, and practice develops through the correct application of truth which people have gained through practical activities.
+-----
+==== Annotation 239 ====
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-89.png|''Truth and Practical Activities have a dialectical relationship in which truth develops through practice, and practice develops through the correct application of truth.'']]
+Practice only develops when truth about the universe is consciously applied to practical activities. For example, farm output increases as we learn more truth about the way crops grow and how land can be properly managed. Simultaneously, truth can only be developed through practical activity, as all ideas and knowledge must be tested through methodological observation, experimentation, and other forms of practical activity.
+A ''theory'' is an idea or system of ideas intended to explain an aspect, characteristic, or tendency of objective reality. Theories are not inherently truthful; holding incorrect theories constitutes ''false consciousness''. ''Practice'' (or ''praxis'') is purposeful conscious activity which improves our understanding of the world. Theory and practice have a dialectical relationship with one another which, if understood, helps us to discover truth.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-90.png|''Truth and practical activities mutually develop one another over time.'']]
+This dialectical relationship between theory and practical activities means that we must never favor theory over practice, nor practice over theory, but that we must rather balance development of theoretical understanding as we engage in practical activities to test our knowledge against reality and to develop our practice with ever-advancing understanding of the world. As practice and theory develop one another, our understanding of objective reality comes closer and closer to truth.
+In ''Theses on Feuerbach'', Marx summarizes the relationship between theory and practice, writing:
+<blockquote>
+The problem of the external world is here put as the problem of its transformation: the problem of the cognition of the external world as an integral part of the problem of transformation: the problem of theory as a practical problem.
+</blockquote>
+Here, Marx explains that theory is concerned with solving the “problem” of transforming the external world through practice, and that “cognition of the external world” is required to solve the “problem of transformation. In other words, we must improve our theory in order to improve our practical ability to transform our world, and we learn about the world (thus improving our theory) through those practical activities.
+Marx also writes in ''Theses on Feuerbach'' that:
+<blockquote>
+The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory, but it is a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power... of his thinking.
+</blockquote>
+This point is key for understanding the dialectical relationship between practice and theory: in order to be useful, theory must be ''proven through practice''. Thus, we must seek to develop our practice through theory, and our theory through practice.
+Engels summarizes these ideas a bit more colorfully in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
+<blockquote>
+Before there was argument there was action... In the beginning was the deed ... And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
+</blockquote>
+-----
+Engels wrote in ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'' of the uselessness of what might be called “pure theory,” divorced from practice, and the sort of radical skepticism which refutes that any practical knowledge can ever really be obtained by human beings:
+<blockquote>
+There is yet a set of different philosophers — those who question the possibility of any cognition, or at least of an exhaustive cognition of the world... The most telling refutation of this (scepticism and agnosticism) as of all other philosophical crotchets, is praxis, namely experiment and industry.
+</blockquote>
+It is ''practice'', according to Engels, which proves the merit and utility of theory.
+Through experiment and industry — through practical activities in the material world — we can test our ideas and dialectically develop both theory and practice. Lenin built upon these ideas in his own work, writing in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'':
+<blockquote>
+The materialist theory, the theory of the reflection of objects by our mind, is here presented with absolute clarity: things exist outside us. Our perceptions and ideas are their images. Verification of these images, differentiation between true and false images, is given by practice.
+</blockquote>
+Here, Lenin explains how only a proper understanding and application of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice can lead to the negation of false consciousness [see Annotation 235, p. 231] and the dialectical development of both practice and theory. Simply arguing and debating about ideas without relating them directly to practice will never lead to truth, nor will such pure-theory argumentation develop theory or practice in any meaningful way.
+This brings to mind another line from Marx’s ''Theses on Feuerbach'':
+<blockquote>
+The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.
+</blockquote>
+The philosophy of dialectical materialism and the system of materialist dialectics are designed specifically to produce ''action'' and to avoid such “scholastic questions” and “pure-theory argumentation.”
+Ho Chi Minh summarized these ideas perhaps most clearly and precisely of all in the very title of his article: ''Practice Generates Knowledge, Understanding Advances Theory, Theory Leads to Practice:''
+<blockquote>
+Knowledge comes from practice. And through practice, knowledge becomes theory. That theory, again, has to be put into practice. Knowledge advances not just from thought to theory, but, above all, from applying theory to revolutionary practice. Once the world’s law is fully grasped as theory, it is critical to put that theory into practice by changing the world, by increasing production, and by practicing class struggle and struggling for national self-determination. This is a continuous process of obtaining knowledge.
+</blockquote>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-91.png|''“If Uncle Ho says we will win, we will win!” — Propaganda poster from the 30<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1984).'']]
+= Afterword =
+If it seems that this book has come to an end somewhat abruptly, it’s because this is really just the first of four major sections of the full volume from which this text is drawn. If you are reading this afterword after reading the entirety of the preceding contents, then congratulations, you have completed the equivalent to a full semester’s coursework for a class on dialectical materialist philosophy which all Vietnamese college students are required to take!
+The next sections in this curriculum, each covered in the original full volume, include:
+=== Part 2: Historical Materialism ===
+This section covers the definition and basic principles of historical materialism, which is the field of work dedicated to applying dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to human history and human society. In the West, historical materialism and dialectical materialism are often conflated, but this is in error. Historical materialism is an ''applied field'' of dialectical materialist philosophy and materialist dialectical methodology which is used in the pursuit of understanding and interpreting human history.
+=== Part 3: Political Economy ===
+This section condenses the three cardinal volumes of ''Capital'' by Karl Marx and covers three primary doctrines:
+. The doctrine of value.
+. The doctrine of surplus value.
+. The doctrines of monopolist capitalism and state monopolist capitalism.
+Political Economy, in this course, can be considered the application of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to the analysis and understanding of the capitalist mode of production from the perspective of the socialist revolutionary movement.
+=== Part 4: Scientific Socialism ===
+This section relies on an established understanding of dialectical materialism, historical materialism, and political economy as a foundation for developing socialist revolution. The three chapters of this section on Scientific Socialism are:
+. The Historical Mission of the Working Class and the Socialist Revolution
+. The Primary Social-Political Issues of the Process of Building a Socialist Revolution 3. Realistic Socialism and Potential Socialism
+=== Moving Forward ===
+We are already working on the translation of Part 2 of this curriculum, and we hope to complete it as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we believe this book provides the reader with enough of a foundation to continue studying and to begin applying the principles of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics in political struggle.
+We highly discourage readers from self-study in isolation, just as we discourage individual political action. The best way to study socialism is ''alongside other socialists''.
+Depending on where you live, you may be able to find political education resources provided by communist parties, socialist book clubs, or other organizations. If such resources aren’t available, it should be fairly easy to find study groups, workshops, and affinity groups online where you can study with like-minded comrades. Of course, socialist revolution requires more than just study, as we hope this book has thoroughly explained. Theory ''must'' be coupled with practice. As Ho Chi Minh wrote: “If you read a thousand books, but you fail to apply theory into practice, you are nothing but a bookshelf.”
+To avoid atrophying into the proverbial bookshelf, we encourage you to go out into the world and apply these ideas creatively and collectively with other socialists. Dialectical materialism is a philosophy that was developed from the ground up for ''application in the real world''. Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics provide a functional model of reality, a way of looking at highly complicated systems, with all their dynamic internal and external relations. Dialectical materialist philosophy demands that we see human systems as processes in motion. In order to fully comprehend such dynamic processes, we must engage with them, which is why Ho Chi Minh taught that “we are not afraid to make mistakes; we would only be afraid of making mistakes if we were not determined to correct them.”<ref>''Revolutionary Ethics,'' Ho Chi Minh, December 1958.</ref>
+As we mentioned in the foreword, many socialists in the West suffer from a lack of practical ''engagement''. Far too many socialists fall into utopianism, idealism, and social chauvinism and we believe this largely stems from failures to test ideas against reality through ''praxis''. We hope that this book has impressed upon the reader that simply arguing about pure theory is a useless and futile pursuit. Indeed, sparring verbally over such “scholastic questions,” as Marx described them, is counter-productive. Marx and Engels defined such failure to engage in theory as “critical criticism” — that is to say, criticism for the sake of criticism. As Marx and Engels wrote in ''The Holy Family,'' such critical criticism is futile, as we will never ''think'' our way to revolution:
+<blockquote>
+According to Critical Criticism, the whole evil lies only in the workers’ “thinking”. It is true that the English and French workers have formed associations in which they exchange opinions not only on their immediate needs as workers, but on their needs as human beings. In their associations, moreover, they show a very thorough and comprehensive consciousness of the “enormous” and “immeasurable” power which arises from their co-operation. But these mass-minded, communist workers, employed, for instance, in the Manchester or Lyons workshops, do not believe that by “pure thinking” they will be able to argue away their industrial masters and their own practical debasement. They are most painfully aware of the difference between being and thinking, between consciousness and life. They know that property, capital, money, wage-labour and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement and that therefore they must be abolished in a practical, objective way for man to become man not only in thinking, in consciousness, but in mass being, in life. Critical Criticism, on the contrary, teaches them that they cease in reality to be wage-workers if in thinking they abolish the thought of wage-labour; if in thinking they cease to regard themselves as wage-workers and, in accordance with that extravagant notion, no longer let themselves be paid for their person. As absolute idealists, as ethereal beings, they will then naturally be able to live on the ether of pure thought.
+</blockquote>
+Engels expressed his frustration with such endless, utopian, idealist debates in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
+<blockquote>
+Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.
+</blockquote>
+Engels concludes by punctuating ''why'' he and Marx had developed dialectical materialism as a praxis-oriented philosophical foundation for scientific socialism: “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.” We hope that the readers of this text will seek out real bases for your development in theory and praxis, and we trust that you will quickly discover that developing practice develops theory, and vice-versa.
+Remember that Marx and Engels, themselves, were not just theorists who scribbled down their thoughts in an “scholarly” vacuum. They were revolutionists themselves, highly engaged in political struggle and, in so struggling, they risked their lives and freedom over the course of many decades. This struggle is what led to the change and development of their ideas over time. The same can be said for every other successful socialist revolutionary in history.
+Vo Nguyen Giap, the great general who led Vietnam’s military forces through resistance wars against fascist Japan, colonialist France, and the imperialist USA, describes how he applied such principles on the battlefield in his book ''People’s War, People’s Army'':
+<blockquote>
+During the Resistance War, owing to constant fighting, the training of our troops could not be carried out continuously for a lengthy period but only between battles or campaigns. We actively implemented the guiding principles ‘To train and to learn while we fight.’ After the difficult years at the beginning of the Resistance War, we succeeded in giving good training to our army. The practical viewpoint in this training deserves to be highlighted. The content of training became most practical and rich. Training was in touch with practical fighting: the troops were trained in accordance with the next day’s fighting, and victory or defeat in the fighting was the best gauge for the control and assessment of the result of the training. On the basis of gradual unification of the organisation and its equipment, the content of training in the various units of the regular army was also systematised step by step.
+</blockquote>
+Here, Vo Nguyen Giap has provided a concrete example of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, and their inseparability. This fundamental aspect of dialectical materialist philosophy demands that we think and act like ''scientists'' to change the world, rather than simply speculating and imagining ineffectually like armchair philosophers. As Marx wrote in ''Theses on Feuerbach'' “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” We encourage you to apply what you learn in this and other books to ''change the world.''
+=== Advice on Further Study ===
+As you advance in your studies of socialist literature and theory, we offer the following advice:
+First, you must recognize that the specific language used by revolutionary leaders and thinkers may vary widely across time and around the world. Fashions in language develop over time, and many contributions — like the text you’ve just read — come to us through translation from countless languages. This is why we believe it critical to develop an understanding of the ''spirit'' of the ideas of any particular text, and not to get bogged down in semantics and terminology. Liberal ideologists have done much to distract and divert intellectual energy with endless metaphysical altercation over the “proper” usage of this or that word. We caution strongly against this attitude, which makes us susceptible to sophistry, opportunism, and the sewing of undue conflict and division amidst the working class. We have pointed out various instances where Marx, Engels, and Lenin used different language to describe the same concepts. We also offer the reminder that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were writing in different languages at different times, just as socialists around the world have different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As socialism is an international movement, we must stress the importance of avoiding linguistic barriers by engaging with one another in good faith and testing conflicting ideas and interpretations of theory against one another through practice instead of getting bogged down with “critical criticism.”
+Next, we encourage students of socialist philosophy to always keep in mind that the doctrines and philosophies of revolutionary figures are products of the times and places in which they were conceived. It would be a mistake to view the works of any revolutionary figure as a road map or a set of instructions to follow by rote. Even Marx and Engels changed and developed their own ideas over the decades they were active, as they addressed in the 1872 preface to ''The Communist Manifesto'':
+<blockquote>
+The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’ s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.”
+</blockquote>
+Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Ho Chi Minh also frequently took pains to point out that their revolutionary theories were devised specifically to suit the particular objective conditions of their own respective times and places. For example, in ''What is to be Done'', Lenin discusses the question of secrecy in revolutionary activity. Lenin recognizes that secrecy is not always necessary, such as in the more liberal social democracies which existed in Europe in his era. In Russia, however — with its autocratic monarchy — material conditions called for more covert activity:
+<blockquote>
+In countries where political liberty exists the distinction between a trade union and a political organisation is clear enough, as is the distinction between trade unions and Social-Democracy. The relations between the latter and the former will naturally vary in each country according to historical, legal, and other conditions; they may be more or less close, complex, etc. (in our opinion they should be as close and as little complicated as possible); but there can be no question in free countries of the organisation of trade unions coinciding with the organisation of the Social-Democratic Party. In Russia, however, the yoke of the autocracy appears at first glance to obliterate all distinctions between the Social-Democratic organisation and the workers’ associations, since all workers’ associations and all study circles are prohibited, and since the principal manifestation and weapon of the workers’ economic struggle — the strike — is regarded as a criminal (and sometimes even as a political!) offence.”
+</blockquote>
+Ho Chi Minh was even more explicit about the requirement to tailor theory to current and local material conditions in a speech to the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1950:
+<blockquote>
+Studying Marxism-Leninism is not just a matter of repeating the slogan ‘workers of the world, unite’ like a parrot. We must unify Marxism-Leninism with the reality of Vietnam’s revolution. Talking about Marxism-Leninism in Vietnam is talking about the specific guidelines and policies of the Communist Party of Vietnam. For example, our priority now is: great solidarity!
+</blockquote>
+In a 2001 document, the Communist Party of Vietnam explained how Ho Chi Minh tailored lessons learned from prior revolutionaries to the specific material conditions of revolutionary Vietnam:
+<blockquote>
+Ho Chi Minh’s thought is... the creative application and development of Marxism-Leninism to the specific conditions of our country. Ho Chi Minh learned profound lessons from Lenin and the Russian October Revolution, but he did not simply use those lessons as a template, nor did he just copy that foundation. Instead, he absorbed the spirit of Marxism-Leninism. Lenin’s thesis allowed Ho Chi Minh to see what was necessary for the Vietnamese people — the path of national liberation. Ho Chi Minh had creative arguments that contributed to enriching Marxism-Leninism in the issue of national liberation revolution, building a new democratic regime and the transitional path to socialism in an Eastern, semi-feudal colony which was still very backward: Vietnam.
+</blockquote>
+As you find your own revolutionary path, you must carefully examine the objective conditions of your own time and place, and work collectively and collaboratively with your fellow revolutionists to decide how theory and lessons gleaned from history apply to your own circumstances. And, of course, you must test the validity of your conclusions against reality through ''practice''.
+=== Creative Application of Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics ===
+Finally, we implore you to apply dialectical materialism ''creatively''. Don’t look at this (or any other) book as a set of static instructions. Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics are living, breathing systems of thought which benefit from the ideas and imagination of comrades working and struggling together. Seek the ''spirit'' of these ideas, study revolutionary theory and history, then ''apply'' what you learn in your daily life. Combat dogmatism and avoid arguments over pure theory. Determine what works and what doesn’t through activity in the real world, and apply what you learn from practical experience to your theoretical development. Over time, you will begin to see how practice and theory impact and develop one another. When you are struggling with a particular problem in revolutionary practice, you will find yourself reading theory in a new light, discovering information and ideas which might be applicable to your immediate circumstances. And as you study theory, you will find that it also impacts your practice, giving you tools and perspective and methodologies for action which you might never have imagined on your own.
+We have tried to make this book a useful companion for further study. We have also made the digital version available for free online. If you have found it useful, we hope you will share it freely and widely.
+=== In Closing ===
+One last time we would like to thank Dr. Vijay Prashad and Dr. Taimur Rahman for their wonderful insights on our translation, and to acknowledge the monumental work of the Vietnamese scholars who wrote and revised the original text from which this volume is drawn. We also want to recognize once more the donors and supporters who have given us the precious resource of time to translate and annotate this work. Finally, we want to thank the teams at the Iskra Books and The International Magazine, who have provided invaluable editing and peer review services, promotion, and guidance. You can find all their publications, respectively, at:
+IskraBooks.org
+InternationalMagz.com
+If you would like to download the free digital version of this book, support future translation work, or if you would like to get in touch, you can visit our website:
+BanyanHouse.org
+We will leave you, now, with the immortal words of the Manifesto:
+'''Workers of the world, unite!'''
+You have nothing to lose but your chains.
+=== In Solidarity, ===
+''-'' ''Luna Nguyen, Translator &amp; Annotations''
+''-'' ''Emerican Johnson, Editor, Illustrator, &amp; Annotations''
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-92.jpg|''“Marxism-Leninism — Long Live the Victories” — a demonstration to welcome the liberation army in the South of Vietnam on April 30, 1975.'']]
+<br />
+= [Appendices] =
+== Appendix A: Basic Pairs of Categories Used in Materialist Dialectics ==
+This is a summary of the basic pairs of universal categories and their characteristics which are discussed in depth starting on p. 126.
+{|
+| | '''Private'''
+| '''Common'''
+|
+|-
+| | A specific item, event, or process.
+| The properties that are shared between Private things, phenomena, and ideas.
+|
+|}
+''Private'' is commonly referred to in literature as ''Special/Specific'' while ''Common'' is commonly called ''General''. ''Note:'' When an aspect or characteristic is not held in common with anything else in existence, it is considered ''Unique''. The Unique can become Common, just as the Common can become Unique. Example: a Unique design for an object may be replicated, making it Common. A type of item that is Common may gradually disappear until there is only one example left, making it Unique. ''See p. 128.''
+{|
+| | '''Reason'''
+| '''Result'''
+|
+|-
+| | Mutual impact between things, phenomena, or ideas which causes each to change.
+| The change caused by a Reason.
+|
+|}
+''Reason'' and ''Result'' may be referred to as ''Cause'' and ''Effect'', respectively, though this should lead to confusion with metaphysical conceptions of cause and effect. ''Note:'' Reasons can be Direct or Indirect. ''See p. 138''
+{|
+| | '''Obviousness'''
+| '''Randomness'''
+|
+|-
+| | Refers to events that always and predictably happen due to factors of internal material structure.
+| Events caused by external impacts and interactions which are thus not completely predictable.
+|
+|}
+''Obvious'' may be referred to as ''Necessary,'' while ''Randomness'' may be referred to as ''Accidental. See p. 145.''
+{|
+| | '''Content'''
+| '''Form'''
+|
+|-
+| | What something is made of.
+| The shape that contains content.
+|
+|}
+Ways in which Content and Form are discussed and perceived can can vary wildly depending on the subject being discussed and the viewpoint from which the subject is being considered. ''See p. 145.''
+{|
+| | '''Essence'''
+| '''Phenomena'''
+|
+|-
+| | Features that make something develop a certain way.
+| The expression of the essence in certain conditions.
+|
+|}
+''See p. 156.''
+{|
+| | '''Possibility'''
+| '''Reality'''
+|
+|-
+| | What may happen, or might exist, in the future, if certain developments take place.
+| What is happening, or what exists, at the present moment.
+|
+|}
+''See p. 160.''
+== Appendix B: the Two Basic Principles of Dialectical Materialism ==
+'''The Principle of General Relationships''' This principle states that:
+“Materialist dialectics upholds the position that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in mutual relationships with each other, regulate each other, transform into each other, and that nothing exists in complete isolation.”
+From this Principle, we find the characteristics of ''Diversity in Unity'' and ''Unity in Diversity''; the basis of Diversity in Unity is the fact that every thing, phenomenon, and idea contains many different relationships; the basis of Unity in Diversity is that many different relationships exist — unified — within each and every thing, phenomenon, and idea.
+'''''The Characteristic of Diversity in Unity''''' is derived from the fact that there exist an infinite number of diverse relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas, but all of these relationships share the same foundation in the material world.
+'''''The Characteristic of Unity in Diversity''''' is derived from the fact that when we examine the universal relationships that exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity.
+'''The Principle of Development''' This principle states that:
+'''“'''Development is a process that comes from within the thing-in-itself; the process of solving the contradictions within things and phenomena. Therefore, development is inevitable, objective, and occurs without dependence on human will.”
+'''''The Characteristic of Objectiveness of Development''''' stems from the origin of motion. Since motion originates from mutual impacts which occur between external things, objects, and relationships, the motions themselves also occur externally (relative to all other things, phenomena, and objects). This gives motion itself objective characteristics.
+'''''The Characteristic of Generality of Development''''' stems from the fact that development occurs in every process that exists in every field of nature, society, and human thought; in every thing, every phenomenon, and every process and stage of these things and phenomena.
+'''''The Characteristic of Diversity of Development''''' stems from the fact that every thing, phenomenon, and idea has its own process of development that is not totally identical to the process of development of any other thing, phenomenon, or idea.
+== Appendix C: the Three Universal Laws of Materialist Dialectics ==
+=== The Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality ===
+The law of transformation between quantity and quality is a universal law which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought. The law was formulated by Friedrich Engels in ''Dialectics of Nature'', and states that:
+“In nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion.” ''See more on p. 163.''
+=== The Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites ===
+The law of unification and contradiction between opposites is the essence of dialectics. It states, as formulated by V. I. Lenin in ''Summary of Dialectics'':
+“The fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradiction which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas.” ''See more on p. 175.''
+=== The Law of Negation of Negation ===
+The law of negation of negation describes the fundamental and universal tendency of movement and development to occur through a cyclical form of development through what is termed “negation of negation.” Formulated by Friedrich Engels in ''Anti-Dühring,'' it states:
+“The true, natural, historical, and dialectical negation is (formally) the moving source of all development--the division into opposites, their struggle and resolution, and what is more, on the basis of experience gained, the original point is achieved again (partly in history, fully in thought), but at a higher stage.” ''See more on p. 185.''
+== Appendix D: Forms of Consciousness and Knowledge ==
+''Consciousness'' refers to the self-aware, productive, and creative motion and activity of the human brain. Practical activity is the most direct basis, motive, and purpose of consciousness, and is the criterion for testing truth. See: ''The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness'', p. 216.
+''Knowledge'' is the content of consciousness. Knowledge includes data about the world, such as ideas, memories, and other thoughts which are derived by direct observation and practical activities in the material world, through scientific experiments, or through abstract reflection of practical and scientific activities which occur within consciousness.
+Consciousness and Knowledge have a dialectical relationship with one another: knowledge is developed within consciousness, and consciousness develops to higher levels as knowledge is accumulated and tested against reality (which also develops knowledge itself). In this manner, consciousness and knowledge develop into higher forms over time in individual consciousness and human society. Thus, consciousness and knowledge can be considered as existing in various forms which represent stages of development in dialectical processes of development.
+Note that the development processes of knowledge and consciousness are dialectical in nature, not linear. For example, after empirical consciousness develops into theoretical consciousness, theoretical consciousness will then impact empirical consciousness, developing empirical consciousness into a higher stage of development. This is true for all development processes related to empirical and theoretical consciousness. These development processes and forms of consciousness and knowledge are explained in more detail in Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, starting on page 204.
+=== Forms of Consciousness ===
+Consciousness is a process of the development of knowledge through a combination of human brain activity and human practical activity in the physical world (i.e., labor). The development of consciousness can be considered on the criteria of ''concrete/abstract'' and of ''passive/active''. For more information, see Annotation 216, p. 210.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-99.png]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-100.png]]
+=== The Cognitive Process ===
+The Cognitive Process is a model developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin which represents the dialectical path of consciousness to truth. For more information, see ''Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth'' on page 219.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-101.png]]
+=== Forms of Knowledge ===
+''For more information see Annotation 218, p. 214.''
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-102.png]]
+== Appendix E: Properties of Truth ==
+Truth is the alignment of consciousness with objective reality. All truths are objective, relative, absolute, and concrete. Truths also have characteristics of concreteness and abstractness.
+'''Objectivity:''' The content of truth is external to the subjective will of human beings. The content of knowledge must be aligned with objective reality, not vice versa. This means that the content of accurate knowledge is not a product of pure subjective reasoning but is objective in nature.
+'''Absoluteness:''' Absolute truth<ref>Note: Absolute Truth in dialectical materialist philosophy should not be confused with Hegel’s conception of Absolute Truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe.</ref> is derived from the complete alignment between objective reality and human consciousness. The possibility of acquiring absolute truth in the process of the development of conscious understanding is theoretically limitless. However, in reality, our conscious ability to reflect reality is limited by the specific material conditions of each generation of humanity, of practical limitations, and by the spatial and temporal conditions of reflected subjects. Therefore, truth is also ''relative''.
+'''Relativity:''' Relative truth is truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached ''complete'' alignment. To put it another way, relative truth represents knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. In relative truth, there is only partial alignment — in some (but not all) aspects — between consciousness and the material world.
+'''Dialectical Relationship Between Absolute and Relative Truth:''' Relative truth and absolute truth do not exist separately, but have dialectical unity with each other. On the one hand, “absolute truth” is the sum of all “relative truths.” On the other hand, in all relative truths there are always elements of absolute truth.
+'''Concreteness:''' The concreteness of truth refers to the degree to which a truth is attached to specific objects, in specific conditions, at a specific point in time. This means that all accurate knowledge always refers to a specific situation which involves specific subjects which exist in a specific place and time. The content of truth cannot be pure abstraction, disconnected from reality, but it is always associated with certain, specific objects and phenomena which exist in a specific space, time, and arrangement, with specific internal and external relationships. Therefore, truth is associated with specific historical conditions. This specificity to time, place, relations, etc., is ''concreteness''.
+'''Abstractness:''' Abstract knowledge is knowledge which is not attached (or less attached) to specific times, places, relations, etc. Some degree of abstraction is necessary to develop theoretical understanding of general laws and the nature of objective reality, but care should be taken knowledge does not become completely detached from specific historical conditions, as this will result in ''pure abstraction''. Knowledge which is purely abstract will not align with reality, and such knowledge cannot be considered truth.
+== Appendix F: Common Deviations From Dialectical Materialism ==
+Throughout the history of the development of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics, there have been many philosophical and methodological deviations which have derived from incorrect analysis, interpretation, and a failure to properly link theory and practice. Below are descriptions of some of the more common deviations which the reader should be aware of.
+'''Bureaucracy:''' An expression of ''dogmatism'' which arises when theory becomes overly formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory.
+'''Conservativism:''' A mindset which seeks to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas.
+'''Dogmatism:''' A breakdown of the dialectical relationship between theoretical consciousness and empirical consciousness, which arrests the development process of knowledge and consciousness. Usually the result of: failure to seek commonalities; considering theory itself as the sole basis of truth rather than practice; ignoring practical experience and considering pre-established theory, alone, as unalterable truth.
+'''Eclecticism:''' An approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject; the philosophical error of inconsistently applying different theories and principles in different situations. Empiricism: A broad philosophical position which holds that only experience (including internal experience) can be held as a source of knowledge or truth. Though nominally opposed to idealism, it is considered a faulty (or naive) form of materialism, since it sees the world as only unconnected, static appearances and ignores the reality of dialectical (changing) relationships between objects.
+'''Idealism:''' A philosophical position which holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within human consciousness. Idealists believe that relying on human reason exclusively or as a first basis is the best way to seek truth. Various forms of idealism exist, broadly broken down into subjective idealism, which denies the existence of an external objective world, and objective idealism, which accepts that an external objective world exists, but denies that knowledge can be reliably gained about it through sense perception.
+'''Opportunism:''' A system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, no coherent viewpoint, leaning on whatever is beneficial for the opportunist in the short term.
+'''Revisionism:''' A failure to recognize and accept commonalities in conscious activity, focusing only on the private. Revisionism leads to constant and unnecessary reassessment and reevaluation of both knowledge and practice. Revisionism, thus, is a position which overstates the relativity of truth and ignores truths which are more fully developed towards absoluteness.
+'''Rigidity:''' An unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.
+'''Skepticism:''' The belief truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality. By denying that truth is discoverable at all, skepticism explicitly rejects absolute truth and declares that all truth is relative and unreliable. Solipsism: A form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. As Marxist ethicist Howard Selsam wrote in ''Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World'': “If I believe that I alone exist and that you and all your arguments exist only in my mind and are my own creations then all possible arguments will not shake me one iota. No logic can possibly convince [the] solipsist.”
+'''Sophistry:''' The use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.
+'''Subjectivism:''' The centering of one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test one’s own perceptions against material and social reality. Subjectivists tend to believe that they can independently reason their way to truth in their own minds without practical experience and activity in the material world.
+'''Utilitarianism:''' An ethical philosophical theory founded by Jeremy Bentham which seeks to maximize “utility,” which is considered to be a metaphysical property embodying “benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness.” Karl Marx dismissed utilitarianism as overly abstract, in that it reduces all social relationships to the single characteristic of “utility.” He also viewed utilitarianism as metaphysically static and tied to the status quo of current society, since utilitarianism does not address class dynamics and views all relations in the current status quo of society, making utilitarianism an essentially conservative theory. Marx also pointed out that Utilitarianism essentially views individuals as private individuals, not as social individuals, and seeks to work out solutions to the practical problems of human society through reasoning alone without examining material conditions and processes, and without taking into consideration practice and development, writing:
+<blockquote>
+“The whole criticism of the existing world by the utility theory was... restricted within a narrow range. Remaining within the confines of bourgeois conditions, it could criticise only those relations which had been handed down from a past epoch and were an obstacle to the development of the bourgeoisie... the economic content gradually turned the utility theory into a mere apologia for the existing state of affairs, an attempt to prove that under existing conditions the mutual relations of people today are the most advantageous and generally useful.”
+</blockquote>
+= [Back Matter] =
+== Glossary &amp; Index ==
+{|
+| | '''Absolute Truth'''
+| Absolute Truth can refer to:<br />
+<br />
+. The recognition that objective and accurate truth can be drawn from sense perception of the material world along with labor and practice activities in the material world. The opposite of this position is Relativism. See p. 56, 94, 194, 228–229, 232–234.<br />
+<br />
+. Hegel’s notion of Absolute Truth: that there will eventually be some end point of to the process of rational consciousness at which point humanity will arrive at a final stage of knowledge and consciousness. See p. 228.<br />
+<br />
+See also: Relative Truth, Relativism, Stagnation, Truth.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Absolutization'''
+| To hold a belief or supposition as always true in all situations and without exception. See p. 49.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Abstract Labor'''
+| The abstract conception of expenditure of human energy in the form of labor, without taking into account the value of labor output. When the value of labor output ''is'' taken into consideration, it is referred to as ''concrete labor''. See p. 15, 17.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Adam Smith'''
+| (1723–1790) British logic professor, moral philosophy professor, and economist. Along with David Ricardo, Adam Smith was one of the founders of ''political economy'', which Marx both drew from and critiqued in his analysis and critique of capitalism. See p. 14, 155.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Ahistoric Perspective'''
+| A perspective which considers aspects of human society without due consideration of historical processes of development. For example, Adam Smith and David Ricardo viewed political economy ahistorically, viewing capitalism as a static, universal, and eternal product of natural law rather than seeing capitalism as a product of historical processes of development which would change and develop over time. See p. 116.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Base'''
+| Also known as: Economic Base; Economic Basis. The material processes which humans undertake to survive and transform our environment to support our ways of living. In the dialectical relationship between base and ''superstructure'', the base refers to the relationship which humans have with the means of production, including the ownership of the means of production and the organization of labor. See p. 23. See also: Superstructure.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Biological Motion'''
+| One of the five basic forms of motion described by Engels in ''Dialectics of Nature''. Biological motion refers to changes and development within living objects and their genetic structure. See p. 61.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Biological Reflection'''
+| A complex form of reflection found within organic subjects in the natural world and expressed by ''excitation'', ''induction'', and ''reflexes''. See p. 65.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Bourgeoisie'''
+| The owners of the means of production and the ruling class under capitalism; also known as the capitalist class. See p. 3, 23, 30, 41, 50, 63, 96. See also:<br />
+<br />
+Proletariat, Petty Bourgeoisie.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Bureaucracy'''
+| An expression of dogmatism which arises when theory becomes overly formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory. See p. 217–218.<br />
+C→→M→→C C = A Commodity<br />
+M = The Money Commodity<br />
+The mode of circulation described by Marx as occurring under pre-capitalist economies of simple exchange, in which the producers and consumers of commodities have a direct relationship to the commodities which are being bought and sold. The sellers have produced the commodities with their own labor, and they directly consume the commodities which they purchase. See also: M→C→M’<br />
+Marx called this mode of circulation “simple commodity production.” See p. 16.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Capitalism'''
+| The current stage of human political economy, defined by private ownership of the means of production. ''Referenced throughout.''
+|
+|-
+| | '''Capitalist Class'''
+| See: Bourgeoisie
+|
+|-
+| | '''Capitalist Commodity Production'''
+| The capitalist mode of production which utilizes the M→C→M’ mode of circulation, in which capitalists own the means of production and pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor, which is used to produce commodities. Capitalists then sell these commodities for profits which are not shared with the workers who provided the labor. See p. 15.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Category'''
+| The most general grouping of aspects, attributes, and relations of things, phenomena, and ideas. Different specific fields of inquiry may categorize things, phenomena, and/or ideas differently from one another. See p. 126.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Category Pair'''
+| A pair of philosophical categories within materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics tend to focus on ''universal category pairs'' which can be used to examine the characteristics, relations, and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Examples of category pairs include: private and common; content and form; reason and result; essence and phenomena. See p. 127.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Characteristics'''
+| The features and attributes that exist internally — within — a given thing, phenomena, or idea. See p. 115.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Chemical Motion'''
+| Changes of organic and inorganic substances in processes of combination and separation. See p. 61.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Chemical Reflection'''
+| The reflection of mechanical, physical, and chemical changes and reactions of inorganic matter (i.e., changes in structures, position, physical-chemical properties, and the processes of combining and dissolving substances). See p. 65–66.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Circulation'''
+| The way in which commodities and money are exchanged for one another. See p. 16.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Commodity'''
+| In Marxist political economy, commodities include anything which can be bought and sold, with both a use value (i.e. it satisfies a need of any kind) and a value-form (aka. ‘Exchange value’ and understood as the average socially necessary labour time needed to produce this object). Under capitalism, more and more human activity and production is ‘commodified’ (mediated through market exchange). See p. 15, 87, 133.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Common'''
+| See: Private and Common
+|
+|-
+| | '''Common Laws'''
+| Laws (of nature and/or human society) that are applicable to a broader range of subjects than ''private laws'', and which impact many different subjects. For instance: the law of preservation of mass, the law of preservation of energy, etc. See p. 162.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Comprehensive Viewpoint'''
+| A ''viewpoint'' which seeks to consider the internal dialectical relationships between the component parts, factors, and aspects within a thing or phenomenon, and which considers external mutual interactions with with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Dialectical materialist philosophy demands a comprehensive basis in order to fully and properly understand things and phenomena in order to effectively solve problems in real life and develop humanity towards communism. See p. 115, 172, 235.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Conception'''
+| A relatively complete ''reflection'' within human consciousness of objective things and phenomena. See p. 221–22.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Concrete Labor'''
+| The production of a specific commodity with a specific value through labor. When labor is considered without the consideration of output value, it is referred to as ''abstract labor''. See p. 15, 17.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Conditioned Reflex'''
+| Conditioned reflexes are reactions which are learned by organisms. These responses are acquired as animals associate previously unrelated neural stimuli with a particular reaction. See p. 66, 68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Consciousness'''
+| The dynamic and creative reflection of the objective world in human brains; the subjective image of the objective world which is produced by the human brain. See p. 68–69, 70.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Content'''
+| See: Content and Form.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Content and Form (Category Pair)'''
+| Content is the philosophical category which refers to the sum of all aspects, attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from. The Form category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Form thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas.<br />
+<br />
+Content and Form have a dialectical relationship with one another, in which content determines form and form impacts back on content. See p. 115, 147155, 166.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Contradiction'''
+| A contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose one another, leading to mutual development. See p. 123, 159, 163, 169, 175–191.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Consciousness'''
+| The self-aware, productive, creative motion and activity of the human brain. See p. 216, 249.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Conservativism'''
+| Also referred to as Prejudice; a mindset which seeks to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 125, 233.
+|
+|-
+| | '''David Hume'''
+| (1711 — 1776) Scottish philosopher who developed radical skepticism as a philosophy of empiricist rejection of human knowledge. See p. 11, 29, 56, 7273.
+|
+|-
+| | '''David Ricardo'''
+| (1772 — 1823) British economist who, along with Adam Smith, was one of the key figures in the development of Political Economy which was a basis for much of the work of Marx and Engels. See p. 14, 18, 155.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Deductive Inference'''
+| Logical inference which extrapolates from the general to the specific. See p. 224.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Definition'''
+| The first phase of rational consciousness. During this phase, the mind begins to interpret, organize, and process the basic properties of things and phenomena at a rational level into a conceptual whole. See p. 224.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Development'''
+| The change and motion of things, phenomena, and ideas with a forward tendency: from less advanced to more advanced; and/or from a less complete to a more complete level. See p. 38, 45–46, 52, 55, 61, 65, 76–96, 105–107, 114118, 119–127, 131–132, 138–140, 143, 147, 154, 155–165, 169–175, 177–181, 183–207, 210, 213, 216–223, 225–229, 233, 235–237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Development Viewpoint'''
+| A viewpoint which considers that, in order to perceive or solve any problem in real life, we must consider all things, phenomena, and ideas with their own forward tendency of development taken in mind.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dialectic; Dialectical; Dialectics'''
+| In Marxism-Leninism, the term dialectic (adjective: dialectical) refers to regular and mutual relationships, interactions, transformations, motions, and developments of things, phenomena, and processes in nature, society and human thought. “Dialectics” refers to a dialectical system. See p. 3, 9–11, 47.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dialectical Materialism'''
+| A universal philosophical and methodological system which forms the theoretical core of a scientific worldview. Dialectical Materialism was first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with the express goal of achieving communism. Dialectical Materialism has since been defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as many others. See: p. 3, 6, 1011, 19–21, 27–30, 33, 38, 45–47, 48–97, 101, 104, 204, 209, 226, 228, 230–232, 237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dialectical Negation'''
+| A stage of development in which a new subject arises from a contradiction between two previous subjects; dialectical negation is never an endpoint of development, as every dialectical negation creates conditions for further development and negation. See p. 123, 175–176, 183, 185–195, 197–202, 227.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dialectical Relationship'''
+| A relationship in which two things, phenomena, or ideas mutually impact one another, leading to development and negation. See p. 47, 51, 62.
+|
+|-
+| | '''(Characteristic of) Diversity'''
+| The characteristic which all things, phenomena, and ideas share, dictating that no two subjects (and no two relationships between any two subjects) are exactly the same, even if they exist between very similar things, phenomena, and ideas and/or in very similar situations. See p. 114–115, 125.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Diversity in Unity'''
+| The universal principle which states that even though all relationships are diverse and different from one another, they also exist in unity, because all relationships share a foundation in the material world. See p. 109–110, 125, 130.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dogmatism'''
+| An inflexible adherence to ideals as incontrovertibly true while refusing to take any contradictory evidence into consideration. Dogmatism stands in direct opposition to materialist dialectics, which seeks to form opinions and conclusions only after careful consideration of all observable evidence. See p. 136–137, 174, 217–218, 233.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Duality of Labor'''
+| The Marxist economic concept which recognizes labor as having two intrinsic and inseparable aspects: abstract labor and concrete labor. See p. 15.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dynamic and Creative Reflection'''
+| The most advanced form of reflection, which only occurs in matter that has the highest (known) level of structural complexity, such as the human brain. See p. 68–69, 79.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Eclecticism'''
+| An approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject; the philosophical error of inconsistently applying different theories and principles in different situations. See p. 32–33, 101, 118, 192, 194.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Economic Base'''
+| See: Base
+|
+|-
+| | '''Economism'''
+| Economism is a style of political activism, typified by the ideas of German political theorist Eduard Bernstein, which stresses directing the struggle towards short-term political/economic goals (such as higher wages for workers) at the expense of the larger socialist revolutionary project. See p. 30.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Eduard Bernstein'''
+| (1850 — 1932) German political theorist who rejected many of Marx’s theories. See p. 30, 174.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Emotional Consciousness'''
+| The lower stage of the cognitive process. In this stage of cognitive development, humans, through practical activities, use our senses to reflect objective things and phenomena (with all their perceived specific characteristics and rich manifestations) in human consciousness. See p. 219224.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Empirical Consciousness'''
+| Empirical consciousness is the stage of development of consciousness in which perceptions are formed via direct observations of things and phenomena in the natural world, or of society, or through scientific experimentation and systematic observation. Empirical Consciousness results in Empirical Knowledge. See p. 210–214.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Empirical Knowledge'''
+| Knowledge which results from processes of empirical consciousness and which is characterised by rich and detailed, but still incomplete, understanding of phenomena. It can be utilized for practical ends, but still falls short of full theoretical analysis and comprehension. See p. 212–214.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Empiricism'''
+| A broad philosophical position which holds that only experience (including internal experience) can be held as a source of knowledge or truth. Though nominally opposed to idealism, it is considered a faulty (or naive) form of materialism, since it sees the world as only unconnected, static appearances and ignores the reality of dialectical (changing) relationships between objects. See p. 9–12, 29, 94, 96–97, 100, 218.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Empirio-criticism'''
+| A more developed form of empiricism, proposed by Ernst Mach, which holds that sense data and experience are the sole sources of knowledge and that no concrete knowledge of the external material world can ever be obtained due to the limitations of human senses. See p. 26–29, 32, 54, 55–57, 68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Epistemology'''
+| The theoretical study of knowledge. It primarily deals with the philosophical question of: “how do we know what we know?” See p. 45, 98, 204.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Ernst Mach'''
+| (1838 — 1916) Austrian physicist who attempted to build a philosophy of natural science based on the works of German philosopher Richard Avenarius’ philosophical system of Empirio-Criticism. See p. 27–29, 32, 52, 72, 193.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Equilibrium'''
+| A state of motion in which one or more subjects are not undergoing changes in position, form, and/or structure. Equilibrium is only ever a temporary stasis of development which will eventually yield to motion, development, and/or negation. See p. 62–63, 122–123, 181.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Essence'''
+| See: Essence and Phenomena
+|
+|-
+| | '''Essence and Phenomena (Category Pair)'''
+| The Essence category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion and development of things and ideas. The Phenomena category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions. Essence always determines which phenomena appear, but phenomena do not always accurately reflect essence in human perception; in other words, it is possible to misinterpret phenomena, leading to a misunderstanding of essence, or to mistake phenomena for essence. See p. 156–160.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Exchange Value'''
+| A quantity relationship which describes the ratios of exchangeability between different commodities, with Marx’s famous example of 20 yards of linen being equivalent in exchange value to one coat. Through analysis Marx shows that in reality the thing being compared is the amount of socially necessary labour required to make the commodities being compared. See p. 15, 18.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Excitation'''
+| Reactions of simple plant and animal life-forms which occur when they change position or structure as a direct result of physical changes in their habitat. See p. 66, 68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''External Contradictions'''
+| See: Internal and External Contradictions.
+|
+|-
+| | '''False consciousness'''
+| Forms of consciousness (ideas, thoughts, concepts, etc.) which are incorrect and misaligned from reality. Equated with ‘ideology’ by Engels, it refers to an idealistic, dogmatic perspective which will inevitably result in errors of analysis and therefore practice. See p. 231–233, 237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''First International'''
+| Also known as the International Workingmen’s Association; was founded in London and lasted from 1864–1876. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were key figures in the foundation and operation of this organization, which sought better conditions and the establishment of rights for workers. See p. 35
+|
+|-
+| | '''(Basic) Forms of Motion'''
+| Engels broke motion down into five basic forms which are dialectically linked; the different forms of motion differ from one another, but they are also unified with each other into one continuous system of motion. Understanding this dialectical relationship between different forms of motion helped to overcome misunderstandings and confusion about motion and development. See p. 61–62.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Form'''
+| See: Content and Form.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Form of existence of matter'''
+| The ways in which we perceive the existence of matter in our universe; specifically, matter in our universe has the form of existing in space and time. See p. 59.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Form of Value'''
+| See: Value-Form
+|
+|-
+| | '''Forward Tendency of Motion'''
+| The tendency for things, phenomena, and ideas to move from less advanced to more advanced forms through processes of motion and development. See p. 197.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Friedrich Engels'''
+| (1820–1895) a German theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, &amp; co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx. ''Referenced throughout.''
+|
+|-
+| | '''Fundamental and Non-Fundamental Contradictions'''
+| A fundamental contradiction defines the essence of a relationship. Fundamental contradictions exist throughout the entire development process of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction exists in only one aspect or attribute of a thing, phenomenon, or idea. A nonfundamental contradiction can impact a subject, but it will not control or decide the essential development of the subject. See p. 178–179.
+|
+|-
+| | '''(Characteristic of) Generality'''
+| A universal characteristic which holds that all things, phenomena, and ideas interact and mutually transform one another. See p. 108–109, 111, 114, 124125.
+|
+|-
+| | '''General Relationship'''
+| Relationships which exist broadly across many things, phenomena, and ideas. General relationships can exist both internally, within things, phenomena, and ideas, and externally, between things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 106–110, 114.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Generality (of relationships)'''
+| Relationships can exist with across a spectrum of generality; this spectrum ranges from the least general relationships (''unique relationships'' — which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas) to the most general relationships (''universal relationships'' — which occur between or within all things/phenomena/ideas). See p. 109.
+|
+|-
+| | '''George Berkeley'''
+| (1685 — 1753) An Anglo-Irish philosopher whose main philosophical achievement was the formulation of a doctrine which he called “immaterialism,” and which later came to be known as “Subjective Idealism.” This doctrine was summed up by Berkeley’s maxim: “''Esse est percipi''” — “To be is to be perceived.” See p. 11, 27, 29.
+|
+|-
+| | '''George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel'''
+| (1770 — 1831) German philosophy professor &amp; objective idealistic philosopher; developed the system of idealist dialectics which Marx and Engels used as a basis for developing materialist dialectics. See p. 8–11, 29, 69–71, 97, 98, 100–105, 132, 157, 165, 182, 192, 193–194, 209, 228.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Historical Materialism'''
+| The application of materialist dialectics and dialectical materialism to the study of human history. See p. 21–23, 27, 36, 38, 45, 80.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Historical Viewpoint'''
+| A viewpoint which demands that subjects be considered in their current stage of motion and development, while also taking into consideration the development and transformation of the subject over time. See p. 116–118, 125–126, 143, 185, 234.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Idealism'''
+| A philosophical position which holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within human consciousness. Idealists believe that human reason exclusively or as a first basis is the best way to seek truth. See p. 8–12, 26–29, 48–51, 53, 56–58, 69–70, 96, 101–102, 104, 157, 174, 209, 218, 228.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Immanuel Kant'''
+| (1724 — 1804) German philosopher who developed a system of idealist dialectics which were later completed by Hegel and whose metaphysical philosophies of epistemology and rationalism served as the basis for later empiricists such as Bacon and Hume. See p. 20, 29, 56, 72–74, 100–102, 205.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Induction'''
+| The reaction of animals with simple nervous systems which can sense or feel their environments. Induction occurs through unconditioned reflex mechanisms. See p. 66, 68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Inductive Inference'''
+| Logical inference which extrapolates from specific observations to general conclusions. See p. 223–224.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Intelligibility'''
+| The human cognitive capacity to accurately perceive the external material world. See p. 48.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Internal Contradictions'''
+| See: Internal and External Contradictions.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Internal and External Contradictions'''
+| Internal contradictions are contradictions which exist within the internal relations of a subject, while external contradictions exist between two or more subjects as external relations. See p. 178–179.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Judgment'''
+| The phase of rational consciousness which arises from the definition of the subject — the linking of concepts and properties together — which leads to affirmative or negative ideation of certain characteristics or attributes of the perceived subject. See p. 223.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Karl Marx'''
+| (1818–1883) German theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, and leader of the international working class. ''Referenced throughout''.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Knowledge'''
+| The content of consciousness; data about the world, such as: ideas, memories, and other thoughts which are derived through direct observation and practical activities in the material world, through scientific experiments, or through abstract reflection of practical and scientific activities which occur within consciousness.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Labor Value'''
+| The amount of value which workers produce through labor. See p. 14, 17–18, 23.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Law of Negation of Negation'''
+| A universal law of materialist dialectics which states that the fundamental and universal tendency of motion and development occurs through a cycle of dialectical negation, wherein each and every negation is, in turn, negated once more. See p. 163, 185, 195, 198, 200, 201, 202, 227.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality'''
+| The universal law of dialectical materialism which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought, which states that qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of the quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and, ideas, and, vice versa, quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 163–165, 172–173, 227.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Law of Unification Contradiction Between Opposites'''
+| and The universal law of dialectical materialism which states that the fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradictions which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 163, 175, 181.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Law of Development of Capitalism'''
+| Also known as Theory of Accumulation and Theory of Surplus Value. The dynamic through which the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. See p. 18.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Laws'''
+| In dialectical materialism, laws are the regular, common, obvious, natural, objective relations between internal aspects, factors, and attributes of a thing or phenomenon or between things and phenomena. See p. 162.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Laws of Nature'''
+| Laws that arise in the natural world, including within the human body (and are never products of human conscious activities). Such law includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and other natural phenomena which govern the material world. See p. 162, 213.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Laws of Society'''
+| Laws of human activity in social relations; such laws are unable to manifest beyond the conscious activities of humans, but they are still objective. See p. 162–163.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Laws of Human Thought'''
+| Laws which govern the intrinsic relationships between concepts, categories, judgments, inference, and the development process of human rational awareness. See p. 163.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Life-Process'''
+| Processes of motion and change which occur within organisms to sustain life. See p. 69–72, 79, 88.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Ludwig Feuerbach'''
+| (1804 — 1872) German philosophy professor, materialist philosopher; Marx and Engels drew many of their ideas from the works of Feuerbach (whom they also criticized). See p. 8, 11–13, 21, 55, 74, 80, 114, 205, 237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''M→→C→→M’'''
+| The mode of circulation described by Marx as existing under capitalism, in which capitalists spend money to buy commodities (including the commodified labor of workers), with the intention of selling those commodities for ''more money'' than they began with. The capitalist has no direct relationship to the commodity being produced and sold, and the capitalist is solely interested in obtaining more money. See p. 16. See also: C→M→C
+|
+|-
+| | '''Machism'''
+| See: Empirio-Criticism.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Manifestation'''
+| How a given thing, phenomenon, or idea is expressed externally in the material world. See p. 115.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Marxism-Leninism'''
+| A system of scientific opinions and theories focused on liberating the working class from capitalism and achieving a stateless, classless, communist society. The core ideas of this system were first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, then defended and further developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. See. p. 1.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Material Conditions'''
+| The material external environment in which humans live, including the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See p. 6, 22, 40–42, 70–72, 80–81, 87, 92–95, 116–118, 161, 174, 179, 181, 206–207, 210, 229.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Material Production Activity'''
+| Material production activity is the first and most basic form of ''praxis''. In this form of praxis activity, humans use tools through labor processes to influence the natural world in order to create wealth and material resources and to develop the conditions necessary to maintain our existence and development. See p. 206–208.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Materialism'''
+| A philosophical position that holds that the material world exists outside of the mind, and that human ideas and thoughts stem from observation and sense experience of this external world. Materialism rejects the idealist notion that truth can only be sought solely through reasoning and human consciousness. See p. 10–13, 48.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Materialist Dialectics'''
+| A scientific system of philosophy concerned with motion, development, and common relationships, and with the most common rules of motion and development of nature, society, and human thought. See p. 10, 21, 45–47, 98202, 227, 237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Matter'''
+| A philosophical category denoting things and phenomena, existing in objective external reality, which human beings access through our sense perceptions. See p. 26, 27, 32, 48, 51–52, 53–69, 72, 88–95, 97, 103, 164–165.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Means of Production'''
+| Physical inputs and systems used in the production of goods and services, including: machinery, factory buildings, tools, equipment, and anything else used in producing goods and services. See p. 2–3, 7, 14–16.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Mechanical Motion'''
+| Changes in positions of objects in space. See p. 61.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Mechanical Philosophy'''
+| A scientific and philosophical movement popular in the 17<sup>th</sup> century which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices, resulting in a belief that all things — including living organisms — were built as (and could theoretically be built by humans as) mechanical devices.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Mental Reflection'''
+| Reactions which occur in animals with central nervous systems. Mental reflections occur through conditioned reflex mechanisms through learning. See p. 65, 68, 224.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Metaphysical Materialism'''
+| Metaphysical materialism was strongly influenced by the metaphysical, mechanical thinking of ''mechanical philosophy'', which was a scientific and philosophical movement which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices. Metaphysical materialists believed that all change can exist only as an increase or decrease in quantity, brought about by external causes.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Metaphysics'''
+| A branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the fundamental nature of reality. Metaphysical philosophy has taken many forms through the centuries, but one common shortcoming of metaphysical thought is a tendency to view things and ideas in a static, abstract manner. Generally speaking, metaphysics presents nature as a collection of objects and phenomena which are isolated from one another and fundamentally unchanging. See p. 52.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Methodology'''
+| A system of reasoning: the ideas and rules that guide humans to research, build, select, and apply the most suitable methods in both perception and practice. Methodologies can range from very specific to broadly general, with philosophical methodology being the most general scope of methodology. See p. 44.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Mode'''
+| The way or manner in which something occurs or exists. See p. 19–20.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Mode of Existence of Matter'''
+| Refers to how matter exists in our universe; specifically, matter exists in our motion in a mode of ''motion.'' See p. 59.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Motion'''
+| Also known as “change;” motion/change occurs as a result of the mutual impacts which occur between two things, phenomena, or ideas in relation with one another. See p. 23, 47, 59–63. 74, 106–107, 122–127, 145, 163–165, 169-173-186, 197, 201–202.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Motion in Equilibrium'''
+| Motion in equilibrium is motion that has not changed the positions, forms, and/or structures of things. Motion in Equlibrium is only ever temporary in nature; all motion will ''eventually'' lead to changes in position, form, and/or structure. See p. 62.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Narodnik'''
+| Agrarian socialist movement of the 1860s and 70s in the Russian Empire, composed of peasants who rose up in a failed campaign against the Czar. See p. 29–30.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Natural law'''
+| See: Laws of Nature.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Natural Science'''
+| Science which deals with the natural world, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, etc. See p. 13, 19, 26, 103.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Negation'''
+| The development process through which two contradicting objects mutually develop one another until one is overtaken by the other. In dialectical materialism, negation takes the form of ''dialectical negation''. See p. 123, 175176, 183, 185–202.
+|
+|-
+| | '''New Economic Policy'''
+| Also known as the NEP; this early Soviet policy was devised as Vladimir Illyich Lenin to be a temporary economic system that would allow a market economy and capitalism to exist within Russia, alongside state-owned business ventures, all firmly under the control of the working-classdominated state. See p. 33–34.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Objective Dialectics'''
+| The dialectical processes which occur in the material world, including all of the motion, relationships, and dynamic changes which occur in space and time. See p. 98, 102–103, 182.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Objective Existence'''
+| Existence which manifests outside of and independently of human consciousness, whether humans can perceive it or not. See p. 50, 58, 228.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Objective Idealism'''
+| A form of idealism which asserts that the ideal and consciousness are the primary existence, while also positing that the ideal and consciousness are objective, and that they exist independently of nature and humans. See p. 50.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Objectiveness'''
+| An abstract concept that refers to the relative externality of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every thing, phenomena and idea exists externally to every other thing, phenomena, and idea. This means that to each individual subject, all other subjects exist as external objects. See p. 111–114, 124.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Obviousness'''
+| See: Obviousness and Randomness
+|
+|-
+| | '''Obviousness and Randomness (Category Pair)'''
+| The philosophical category of Obviousness refers to events that occur because of the essential internal aspects of a subject which become reasons for certain results in certain conditions: the obvious has to happen in a certain way, it can’t happen any other way. The Randomness category refers to things that happen because of external reasons: things that happen, essentially, by chance, due to impacts from many external relations. A random outcome may occur or it may not occur, and may occur in many different ways. Obviousness and Randomness have a dialectical relationship with one another. See p. 144–146.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Opportunism'''
+| A system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, and/or no coherent viewpoint, focusing on whatever actions or decisions might be beneficial for the opportunist in the short term. See p. 174.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Opposites'''
+| Such aspects, properties and tendencies of motion which oppose one another, yet are, simultaneously, conditions and premises of the existence of one another. See p. 61, 175–179, 181, 184, 190, 227.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Ordinary Consciousness'''
+| Perception that is formed passively, stemming from the daily activities of humans. See p. 210–216.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Period of Motion'''
+| Development which occurs between two quality shifts, including the quality shifts themselves. See p. 170.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Perspective'''
+| See: Viewpoint.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Petty Bourgeoisie'''
+| Semi-autonomous merchants, farmers, and so on who are self-employed, own small and limited means of production, or otherwise fall in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Also called the petite bourgeoisie. See p. 3–6.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Petty Commodity Production'''
+| See: Simple Commodity Production.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Phenomena'''
+| Anything that is observable by the human senses. See p. 156. See also: Essence and Phenomena.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Physical Motion'''
+| Motion of molecules, electrons, fundamental particles, thermal processes, electricity, etc., in time and space. See p. 61.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Physical Reflection'''
+| Reflection which occurs any time two material objects interact and the features of the objects are transferred to one other. See p. 67–68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Point of View'''
+| See: Viewpoint.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Populism'''
+| The political philosophy of the Narodnik movement; this political philosophy was focused on bringing about an agrarian peasant revolution led by intellectuals with the ambition of going directly from a feudal society to a socialist society built from rural communes. Populism overtly opposed Marxism and dialectical materialism and was based on subjective idealist utopianism. See p. 30.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Positivism'''
+| The belief that we can test scientific knowledge through scientific methods, and through logic, math, etc.; positivism tends to overlap significantly with ''empiricism'' in theory and practice. See p. 32, 209.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Possibility'''
+| See: Possibility and Reality.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Possibility and Reality (Category Pair)'''
+| The philosophical category of Possibility refers to things that have not happened nor existed in reality yet, but that would happen, or would exist given necessary conditions. The philosophical category of Reality refers to things that exist or have existed in reality and in human thought. See p. 160–162.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Practice'''
+| See: Praxis.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Pragmatism'''
+| Pragmatism refers to a form of subjectivism in which one centers one’s own immediate material concerns over all other considerations. See p. 218.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Praxis'''
+| Conscious activity which improves our understanding, and which has purpose and historical-social characteristics. Used interchangeably with the word “practice” in this text. See p. 205–206, 235.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Prejudice'''
+| See: Conservatism.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Primary and Secondary Contradictions'''
+| In the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, there are many development stages. In each stage of development, there will be one contradiction which drives the development process. This is what we call the primary contradiction. Secondary contradictions include all the other contradictions which exist during that stage of development. Determining whether a contradiction is primary or secondary is relative, and it depends heavily upon the material conditions and the situation being analyzed. See p. 178–179.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Primary Existence'''
+| Existence which precedes and determines other existences; materialists believe that the external material world is the primary existence which determines the ideal, while idealists believe that human consciousness (“the ideal”) is the primary existence from which truth is ultimately derived. See p. 50–51.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Primitive Materialism'''
+| An early form of materialism which recognizes that matter is the primary existence, and holds that the world is composed of certain elements, and that these were the first objects — the origin — of the world, and that these elements are the essence of reality. This was later developed into Metaphysical Materialism and, later, Dialectical Materialism. See p. 52.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Principle of General Relationships'''
+| A principle of dialectical materialism which states that all things, phenomena, and ideas are related to one another, and are defined by these internal and external relationships. See p. 106–107, 110, 114.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Private'''
+| See: Private and Common
+|
+|-
+| | '''Private and Common (Category Pair)'''
+| The Private philosophical category encompasses specific things, phenomena, and ideas; the Common philosophical category defines the common aspects, attributes, factors, and relations that exist in many things and phenomena. Private and Common are relative in nature and have a dialectical relationship with one another. See p. 128–138.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Private Laws'''
+| Laws which apply only to a specific range of things and phenomena, i.e.: laws of mechanical motion, laws of chemical motion, laws of biological motion, etc. See p. 162.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Production Force'''
+| The combination of the means of production and workers within human society. See p. 6, 23, 36.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Proletariat'''
+| The people who provide labor under capitalism; the proletariat do not own their own means of production, and must therefore sell their labor to those who do own means of production; also called the Working Class. See also: Bourgeoisie, Petty Bourgeoisie. See p. 1–8, 22–23, 25–26, 29–31, 33–35, 40–41, 63, 231.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Quality'''
+| The unity of component parts, taken together, which defines a subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. See p. 119–121.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Quality Shift'''
+| A change in quality which takes place in the motion and development process of things, phenomena, and ideas, occurring when quantity change meets a certain perceived threshold. See p. 124, 153, 164, 168–174.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Quantity'''
+| The total amount of component parts that compose a subject. See p. 119–121.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Quantity range'''
+| The range of quantity changes which can accumulate without leading to change in quality related to any given thing, phenomenon, or idea. See p. 168–171.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Quintessence'''
+| Original Vietnamese word: ''tinh hoa''. Literally, it means “the best, highest, most beautiful, defining characteristics” of a concept, and, unlike the English word quintessence, it has an exclusively positive connotation. See p. 8, 21, 43, 45, 52.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Randomness'''
+| See: Obviousness and Randomness.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Rational Consciousness'''
+| The higher stage of the cognitive process, which includes the indirect, abstract, and generalized reflection of the essential properties and characteristics of things and phenomena. This stage of consciousness performs the most important function of comprehending and interpreting the essence of the perceived subject. See p. 219–225.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Reason'''
+| See: Reason and Result
+|
+|-
+| | '''Reality'''
+| See: Possibility and Reality.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Reason and Result (Category Pair)'''
+| The Reason philosophical category is used to define the mutual impacts between internal aspects of a thing, phenomenon or idea, or between things, phenomena, or ideas, that bring about changes. The Result philosophical category defines the changes that were caused by mutual impacts which occur between aspects and factors within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, or externally between different things, phenomena, or ideas. Not to be confused with the metaphysical concept of “cause and effect,” which attributes a single cause to any given effect. See p. 138–144.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Reasoning'''
+| The final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject. See p. 223–225, 228–229.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Reflection'''
+| The re-creation of the features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction. See p. 64–75, 79–80, 90–92, 103, 165, 208–211, 214–215, 219–224, 228, 232, 237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Relative and Absolute'''
+| “Absolute” and “Relative” are philosophical classifications which refer to interdependence: That which is ''absolute'' exists independently and with permanence. That which is ''relative'' is temporary, and dependent on other conditions or circumstances in order to exist. See p. 56, 233. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative Truth, Relativism, Truth.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Relative Truth'''
+| Truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment between human knowledge and the reality which it reflects; knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. See p. 230, 232. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative and Absolute, Relativism, Truth.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Relativism'''
+| A position that all truth is relative and that nothing can ever be absolutely, objectively known; that only Relative Truth can be found in our existence. See p. 56–58, 233–234. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative and Absolute, Relative Truth, Truth.
+|
+|-
+| | '''René Descartes'''
+| (1596 — 1650) French metaphysical philosopher who developed early methods of scientific inquiry. See p. 20, 53.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Result'''
+| See: Reason and Result.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Richard Avenarius'''
+| (1843 — 1896) German-Swiss philosopher who developed a system of subjective idealism known as “Empirio-Criticism.” See p. 27–29.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Rigidity'''
+| An unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness. See p. 217–218.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Robert Owen'''
+| (1771 — 1858) Wealthy Welsh textile manufacturer who tried to build a better society for workers in New Hampshire, Indiana, in the USA by purchasing the town of New Harmony in 1825. Owen’s vision failed after two years, though many other wealthy capitalists in the early 19<sup>th</sup> century were inspired by Owen to try similar plans, which also failed.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific'''
+| An adjective which describes methodologies, approaches, and practices of gaining knowledge and insight which are methodological and/or systematic in nature. See p. 1–2.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific Consciousness'''
+| Conscious activities which actively gather information from the methodological and/or systematic observations of the characteristics, nature, and inherent relationships of research subjects. Scientific consciousness is considered ''indirect'' because it takes place outside of the course of ordinary daily activities. See p. 58, 210, 212, 215–216.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific'''
+| Experimental Human activities that resemble or replicate states of nature and society
+|
+|-
+| | '''Activity'''
+| in order to determine the laws of change and development of subjects of study. This form of activity plays an important role in the development of society, especially in the current historical period of modern science and technological revolution. See p. 206–208.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific Materialist Viewpoint'''
+| A perspective which begins analysis of the world in a manner that is both scientifically systematic in pursuit of understanding and firmly rooted in a materialist conception of the world. See p. 105.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific Socialism'''
+| A body of theory and knowledge (which must be constantly tested against reality) focused on the practical pursuit of changing the world to bring about socialism through the leadership of the proletariat. See p. 1–2, 21, 37–39.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific Worldview'''
+| A worldview that is expressed by a systematic pursuit of knowledge that generally and correctly reflects the relationships of things, phenomena, and processes in the objective material world, including relationships between humans, as well as relationships between humans and the world. See p. 3839, 44–45, 48.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Second International'''
+| Founded in Paris in 1889 to continue the work of the First International; it fell apart in 1916 because members from different nations could not maintain solidarity through the outbreak of World War I. See p. 35, 174.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Self-motion'''
+| In the original Vietnamese, the word “''tự vận động''.” Literally meaning: “it moves itself.” See p. 59–60, 124.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Sensation'''
+| The subjective reflection of the objective world in human consciousness as perceived through human senses. See p. 27, 56–58, 68–69, 72, 85, 221–222.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Sensuous Human Activity; Sensuous Activity'''
+| A description of human activity developed by Marx which acknowledges that all human activity is simultaneously ''active'' in the sense that our conscious activity can transform the world, as well as ''passive'' in the sense in that all human thoughts fundamentally derive from observation and sense experience of the material world. See p. 13.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Simple Commodity Production'''
+| What Marx called the “C→M→C” mode of circulation. See p. 16–18.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Simple Exchange'''
+| When individual producers trade the products they have made directly, themselves, for other commodities. See p. 16–17.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Social Being'''
+| The material existence of human society, as opposed to ''social consciousness''. See also: Base. See p. 24, 54–55.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Social Consciousness'''
+| The collective experience of consciousness shared by members of a society, including ideological, cultural, spiritual, and legal beliefs and ideas which are shared within that society, as opposed to ''social being''. See p. 22, 24, 32, 54–55, 80. See also: Superstructure.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Social Motion'''
+| Changes in the economy, politics, culture, and social life of human beings. See p. 61–62.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Socialization'''
+| The idea that human society transforms labor and production from a solitary, individual act into a collective, social act. In other words, as human society progresses, people “socialize” labor into increasingly complex networks of social relations: from individuals making their own tools, to agricultural societies engaged in collective farming, to modern industrial societies with factories, logistical networks, etc. See p. 6, 36.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Socialized Production Force'''
+| A production force which has been socialized — that is to say, a production force which has been organized into collective social activity. See p. 6.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Socio-Political Activity'''
+| Praxis activity utilized by various communities and organizations in human society to transform political-social relations in order to promote social development. See p. 206–208.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Solipsism'''
+| A form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. See p. 218.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Sophistry'''
+| The use of misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s’ dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. See p. 32–33, 56, 118, 182, 194.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Stage of Development'''
+| The current quantity and quality characteristics which a thing, phenomenon, or object possesses. Every time a quality change occurs, a new stage of development is entered into. See p. 24, 39, 125, 173–174, 179, 190, 196–197, 200, 212, 221.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Stagnation'''
+| An inability or unwillingness to change and adapt consciousness and practice in accordance with developing material conditions. Stagnation can stem from, or cause, overstatement of absolute truth in theory and forestall necessary development of both consciousness and practical ability. See p. 125, 218, 233. See also: Rigidity.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Struggle of Opposites'''
+| The tendency of opposites to eliminate and negate each other. See p. 61, 181, 184.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Subjective Factors'''
+| Factors which, from the perspective of a given subject, that same subject is capable of impacting. See p. 162–163, 175, 202.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Subjective Dialectics; Dialectical Thought'''
+| A system of analysis and organized thinking which aims to reflect the objective dialectics of the material world within human consciousness. Dialectical thinking has two component forms: dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics. See: p. 98–99, 103.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Subjective Idealism'''
+| Subjective idealism asserts that consciousness is the primary existence and that truth can be obtained only or primarily through conscious activity and reasoning. Subjective idealism asserts that all things and phenomena can only be experienced as subjective sensory perceptions, with some forms of subjective idealism even explicitly denying the objective existence of material reality altogether. See also: Empirio-Criticism, Objective Idealism. See p. 26–27, 50.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Subjectivism'''
+| A philosophical position in which one centers one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test their own perceptions against material and social reality. See p. 56, 182, 217–218, 233–234.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Suitability'''
+| The applicability of a subject for a specific application or role. See p. 154.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Superstructure'''
+| The ideal (non-material) components of human society, including: media institutions, music, and art, as well as other cultural elements like religion, customs, moral standards, and everything else which manifests primarily through conscious activity and social relations. See p. 23. See also: Base.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Surplus Value'''
+| The extra amount of value a capitalist is able to secure by exploiting wagelabourers (by paying workers less than the full value of their labour). Workers will spend part of their workday reproducing their own labourpower (through earning enough to eat, secure shelter and other cultural needs) and the rest of the time will be spent producing surplus value which is then appropriated by the capitalist as profit. See p. 18, 22–23, 39.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Symbolization'''
+| The representation of an objective thing or phenomenon in human consciousness which has been reflected by sensation and conception. See p. 221–222.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Systematic Structure'''
+| A structure which includes within itself a system of component parts and relationships. See p. 114.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Theoretical Consciousness'''
+| The indirect, abstract, systematic level of perception in which the nature and laws of things and phenomena are generalized and abstracted. See p. 210–214, 217–218.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Theoretical Knowledge'''
+| Knowledge which is abstract and generalized, resulting from theoretical conscious activities which include repeated and varied observations. See p. 214, 217.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Theory'''
+| An idea or system of ideas intended to explain an aspect, characteristic, or tendency of objective reality. See p. 235.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value'''
+| See: Law of Development of Capitalism.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Thing-in-Itself'''
+| The actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness, ''as it exists outside of our consciousness''. See p. 72–74, 101, 158.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Third International'''
+| Also known as the Communist International (or the ComIntern for short); founded in Moscow in 1919, its goals were to overthrow capitalism, build socialism, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was dissolved in 1943 in the midst of the German invasion of Russia in World War II. See p. 35.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Three Component Parts'''
+| The three essential elements of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, first identified of Marxism-Leninism by Lenin in ''The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism''. 1. The Philosophy of Marxism. 2. The Political Economy of Marxism. 3. Scientific Socialism.See p. 21, 32, 34, 38.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Threshold'''
+| The amount, or degree, of quantity change at which quality change occurs. Truth is primarily discovered through labor and practice in the physical world. See p. 120, 168–169, 171, 173.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Truth'''
+| A correct and accurate conscious reflection of objective reality. See p. 9–10, 49, 56, 70, 75, 94–96, 194, 204, 209, 215–219, 225–237. See also: Labor, Practice.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Unconditioned Reflex'''
+| Reactions which are not learned, but simply occur automatically based on physiological mechanisms occurring within an organism, characterized by permanent connections between sensory perceptions and reactions. See p. 66, 68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Unilateral Consideration'''
+| The consideration of a subject from one side only. See p. 49.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Unintelligibility'''
+| A philosophical position which denies the human cognitive capacity to accurately perceive the external material world. See p. 48.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Unique Relationship'''
+| The least general form of relationship, which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas. See p. 109, 130.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Unity in Diversity'''
+| A concept in materialist dialectics which holds that within universal relationships exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity. See p. 42, 110–111, 114, 125, 130.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Universal Law of Consciousness'''
+| A universal law which holds that consciousness is a process of dialectical development in which practical activity leads to conscious activity, which then leads back to practical activity, in a continuous and never-ending cycle, with a tendency to develop both practical and conscious activity to increasingly higher levels. See p. 219.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Universal Laws'''
+| Laws that impact every aspect of nature, society, and human thought. Materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws. See p. 15, 162–163, 227.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Universal Relationship'''
+| The most general kind of relationship; relationships that exist between and within every thing and all phenomena; along with ''development'', universal relationships are one of the two primary subjects of study of materialist dialectics. See p. 80, 108, 109, 111, 165.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Use Value'''
+| A concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics which refers to tangible features of a commodity (a tradable object) that can fulfill some human requirement or desire, or which serve a useful purpose. See p. 15–18, 95.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Utopianism'''
+| 1. A political and philosophical movement which held the belief that “a New Moral World” of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity could be created through education, science, technology, and communal living. See p. 18. 2. The idealist philosophical concept which mistakenly asserts that the ideal can determine the material, and that ideal forms of society can be brought about without regard for material conditions and development processes. See p. 8, 17–18, 30, 94.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Value-Form'''
+| Also known as “form of value;” the social form of a commodity. Under capitalism, through the exchange of qualitatively different commodities, the money form of value is established as the general equivalent which can functionally be exchanged for all other values; money is therefore the most universal value-form under capitalism. See p. 15, 17, 155.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Viewpoint'''
+| Also known as point of view or perspective; the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking from which phenomena and problems are considered. See p. 12, 20–21, 23, 25, 26, 30, 32–33, 38–39, 5559, 62, 64, 89, 93–94, 105, 111, 114–120, 122, 125–126, 130, 143, 147, 150, 172, 185–188, 195, 200–201, 233–235. See also: Comprehensive Viewpoint, Historical Viewpoint.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Viewpoint Crisis'''
+| A situation in which a specific viewpoint can’t be settled on, found, or agreed upon. See p. 26, 32–33.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Vladimir Ilyich Lenin'''
+| (1870 -1924) A Russian theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Bolsheviks, the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class. ''Referenced throughout.''
+|
+|-
+| | '''Working Class'''
+| See: Proletariat
+|
+|-
+| | '''Worldview'''
+| The whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in the world. See p. 1, 11, 37–39, 44–45, 48, 52, 96, 138, 201, 208–209, 218, 234. See also: Scientific Worldview.
+|
+|}
+<br />
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-2.png]]
+''For centuries, the banyan tree has been the symbol of communal life in Vietnam.''
+''Traditionally, the entrance to a village is graced by a large and ancient banyan tree. It is in the shade of these trees that villagers gather to socialize, draw water from wells, and make collective decisions together. The drooping accessory trunks represent the longevity of villagers — and of the village itself — while the arching canopy represents the safety and protection of the village. The shape of the banyan tree is seen in the full moon, which casts peaceful light across the Earth to guide travelers in the dark of night.''
+''Vietnam’s revolution against Japanese fascism and French colonialism began in 1945 beneath the cover of the Tân Trào Banyan Tree, which still stands in the city of Tuyên Quang.''
+''It is in this deep-rooted, humanistic spirit of collective action that we founded Banyan House Publishing. We hope to deliver volumes which will inspire action and change throughout the village that is our world.''
+''Visit us at:''<br />
+''BanyanHouse.org''
+<br />
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-103.png]]
+<br />
+<references />

Difference between revisions of "User talk:NonZeroSum"

Latest revision as of 01:19, 4 August 2025

Contents

License

Support for This Work

Dedication and Gratitude

Foreword

Preface to the First English Edition

Introduction

Editor’s Note

A Message From The International Magazine

Notes on Translation

Guide to Annotations

Original Vietnamese Publisher’s Note

Original Vietnamese Preface

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism

1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts

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2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism

a. Conditions and Premises of the Birth of Marxism

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b. The Birth and Development Stage of Marxism

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c. The Defending and Developing Stage of Marxism

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Imperialism

Subjective and Empiricist Idealism

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d. Marxism-Leninism and the Reality of the International Revolutionary Movement

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II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

1. Objects and Purposes of Study

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2. Some Basic Requirements of the Studying Method

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Part I: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism — Leninism

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The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism

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