Due to how, in my words, self-explanatory the passage is, you obviously didn’t have to commentate that much on the passage other connecting the obvious. And I don’t have to give an Gregory B. Sadler (of ReasonIO) analysis nor background explanatiob to this passage either. So it works out well as, I think we can all safely say, a resting passage, though we should be critical of what Marx says. Of course critical not in the “wah! why wasn’t this talked?” but in the “okay, I see your point and I understand where this is going.” So I can safely sit down and just enjoy reading; the only thing I would commentate before we go any further: people read the previous two parts that @dirge made. Trust me, it’ll help yah to read them.

So in that way, let’s commerate the passage by talking about Dialectics for a bit. We should obviously start with the baseline assumption of uppercase D Dialectics; that assumption being that everything is ever-changing and that you can’t view/analyze and object in isolation. Now why was this important to announce right away, because uppercase M Metaphysics is the direct opposite with its baseline assumption: things are static and can be viewed in isolation / a void. With that, let’s get the limbs of Dialectics: supersessions (negations and positive kinds), quantity-quality, unity and interpentration of things and helical history.

Negative Supersessions were covered well in this post, but of the positive kind this needs only a special attention here. Positives are two-fold in nature: it can bring back an object from a previous stage and/or it can reaffirm something in new conditions. Now why the hazy distinction, what determines which is which? The former case it simply an accidental (id est contingent) result of a Negative Supersession when it has negated something but negates not the parts connected to it (or it at least not yet). The latter case stands more for antinomies and updating things. In the first case, imagine how the debates for free will and determinism where in the past and look at it now; for sure the debate maybe the same, but the categories had definitely expanded and changed. The second case is just a more general, abstract sense of Positive Supersessions that don’t negate things but brings it into the present.

Now quantity-quality, this one will be fast one. Basically this is purely transformations: qualities determine quantities, quantities can be transformed into qualities, a quality belongs to whole sorts of quantities and even a quantity has a quality all its own (as to quote Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin). The latter two are explanatory: the first simply because, let’s say exempli gratia, the colour “white” can be found in snow, types of napkins, colour itself, chinaware and so on and so on; the second simply because a quantity cannot exist without a definite quality (or to really say, there’s no object without a defining feature nor can an object not be able to effect things). The former two do however need some explaining. Qualities determining quantities is rather straightfoward except in how it does it; how it does it is in the fact that it brands universal traits into an object that gives it both determinancy and can differentiate itself from another very similar object. The talk of quantity transforming to quality follows this rather simple formulation: after so much small quantitative changes, there are times when that alone could lead to qualitative leaps. Exempli gratia, small inventions (which has a quality of its own) can lead to bigger and more defining inventions. Dialectics, they’re crazy!

Now let’s get to the Unity and Interpenetration of objects. Things are united in the fact that if they contradict each other, there is a struggle between the two. Exempli gratia, Prole-Bourgeois class struggle. Yet things interpenetrate each other in that things are permissible and have overlap. Class struggle couldn’t happen if there wasn’t a medium between the two that they interact with each other nor if they didn’t have the same objects of concern they are trying to win. The most simple and complex medium is the physical Réal we all exist in: the molecules that makes and surrounds us, the noises that are created when molecules vibrate and the molecules that can give and take life away is this very medium. Yet there’s another medium the class struggle operates on, Relations of Production (RoP): the Bourgeoisie has the Means of Productions (MoP) and the Prole not; the Prole wants, as the Working class, the MoP and the Bourgeoisie, as the Ruling class, will die to maintain their mastery over the MoP. And of course I could go on to show how the medium of Class Conflict truly unites the two as the interpenetration of the two, but that’s another theoritical thing for another time, since I covered two major mediums that lie within Class Conflict.

Finally, helical history. For the Dialectician (from the Hegelians to Marxists), history isn’t linear but instead helical. That’s because history isn’t where things get progressively more complex, that’s to delegitimize the complexity of life before us, the complexity of the formation of planets and even the complexity big bang! Nor do we have an idealized notion of a “true” beginning; we can always figure out what came before, but there isn’t a definite beginning beginning. However we can still claim the big bang happen, because it doesn’t contradict helical history, and it’s the last thing we could theorize that started this Universe. However there could be things that happened before the big bang like a universe (or many universes) that proceeded before this current one, we all could’ve lived in a string (String Theory) of hypercondensed matter and so on and so on. We truly can never figure out the exact origin of everything, but we’re going to use what we have now to figure out things that proceeded us before hand and what do in our current situations as to alleviate very actual problems. Anyways, I say helical because, despite not being able to prove a “true beginning,” that doesn’t mean the shape is linear now. It’s helical for three reasons: cycles (positive supersessions), aufheben (supersession, but more of the negative kind) and contingencies. Cycles are that: things that loop forever until they are broken or resolved; thus we can get the talks of “first as tragedy, second as farce” and what nots. (The quote coming from Karl Marx’s Brumierre where he talks abour Napoleon as the tragedy and Napoleon III as the farce; Napoleon made history and Napoleon III wanted to relive that in new conditions.) As aforementioned, aufheben (supersession) was already talked about here. And finally contingencies, or the happy accidents of (documented) history and life. Now to imagine a contingency, imagine helical history as a double helix: one helix is Positive Supersessions (cycles) the other Negative Supersessions (aufheben). With that in mind, the contingency is the pouring radiation that strikes the double helix and mutates history! Anyways, to make serious on this talk, contingencies are more than happy accidents that have suprising determinable powers; I mean how can they have such determinancy in their pockets? Contingencies take on a life of their own due to the fact that it actually is more or less the overlap of many necessities (Laws) playing at hand that it creates a life of its own. This overlap, confused and wisping by, has, as aforementioned, radioactive powers but also the distress of necessities overlapping each other. Which, nevertheless, wouldn’t sound crazy if I can say: “contingencies presuppose their own necessities.” And with all this informing (reflexive) History that transcribes a (documented) history, (documented) history in the eyes of (reflexive) History is Chaotic and Orderly at the same time.

Wheezing and with all this, I think this is the ultimate notes I could give on Dialectics. Lies down okay, I think that’ll be enough dialecticting today. Drinks some peckin’ fruit juice okay, have a red day. Upvot’d and resteem’d!