A equals A and non-A

Dialectical materialism some notes…

 

 Reality, rationality and necessity are intimately associated at all times.

 

 ideas become forces when the masses accept them

 

Now even Novack fails to articulate the negation of the negation – at one time describing it as the change of reality into unreality or other times as reality into appearance.  The appearance of a thing and the reality of a thing – where is the connection? 

 

Here Novack is talking of Hegel’s negation of the negation.  Hegel was trying to articulate one thing, the transition over time of things into their opposites and it seems Hegel demonstrates this principal by moving from being a revolutionary thinker over time into its opposite, a reactionary! 

 

Hegel says that reality changes into unreality. 

 

So a seed over time is negated by the sprout which is negated by the seedling which is negated by the plant and so on until it finally dies, not before producing new seeds and negating the plant all over again.  But the seed does not become a mere appearance of a seed – it is completely transformed by becoming a sprout – there is no appearance of a seed anywhere to be found in the sprout, there is no unreality of seed to be grasped anywhere within the sprout.  Seed has been superceded by sprout.  What appears is sprout alone.  So Hegel is wrong to describe the movement of seed into sprout as an “appearance” of the seed, or the “unreality” of the seed.  

 

The seed is both merely an appearance and a reality when a seed; not when it no longer exists as a seed and has transformed into sprout.  Seed appears to be seed but when examined it will be found to contain non-seed elements and so investigation will confirm it’s non-seed attributes as a reality, and all together they give the appearance of a seed – at this point I would agree with Hegel and confirm seed’s appearance as an unreality – for there is no seed to be grasped anywhere – just the appearance of seed transforming and becoming sprout.

 

metaphysical essence:  Formal and metaphysical thinkers maintain that the essence of a thing is distinguished from its appearance by the fact that the inner nature of an object is utterly different from and absolutely opposed to its outer appearance. The essence of a thing, they claim, must be something absolute, fixed and finished, while its diverse appearances are relative, fluctuating, fundamentally incomplete, mutable. They cut essence off from appearance by an impassable boundary, an insurmountable opposition. What is essential is not apparent; what is apparent is non-essential. Such is the line of their reasoning.

“Instead of speaking by the maxim of Excluded Middle (which is the maxim of abstract understanding),we should rather say: Everything is opposite. Neither in heaven nor in earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract ‘either-or’ as commonsense thought maintains. All that is, is concrete, with difference and opposition within itself  The finitude of things lies in the want of correspondence between their immediate being here and now, and what they virtually are by themselves.” (Shorter Logic § 119)

Dialectics is the logic of evolution and revolution, that is, of slow and gradual molecular processes, which at a certain stage produce a leap into a new molar quality. Novak

 “We comprehended the concepts in our heads once more materialistically — as images of real things instead of regarding the real things as images of this or that stage of development of the Absolute Idea.” (Feuerbach IV)

 Thanks to this materialist reversal, dialectics itself became transformed into its opposite. “Thus dialectics reduced itself to the science of the general laws of motion — both of the external world and of human thought — two sets of laws which are identical in substance, but differ in their expression insofar as the human mind can apply them consciously, while in nature and also up to now for the most part in human history, these laws assert themselves unconsciously in the form of external necessity in the midst of an endless series of apparent accidents. Thereby the dialectic of the concept itself became merely the conscious reflex of the dialectical motion of the real world and the dialectic of Hegel was placed upon its head; or rather, turned off its head, on which it was standing before, and placed upon its feet again.” (Feuerbach IV)

 This affinity and this antagonism to Hegel’s work has been set forth in the most authoritative manner by Marx himself in the preface to the second edition of Capital. “My own dialectical method is not only fundamentally different from the Hegelian dialectical method, but is its direct opposite. For Hegel, the thought process (which he actually transforms into an independent subject, giving to it the name of “idea”) is the creator of the real; and for him the real is only the outward manifestation of the idea. In my view, on the other hand, the ideal is nothing other than the material when it has been transposed and translated inside the human head . . .

 “Although in Hegel’s hands dialectic underwent a mystification, this does not obviate the fact that he was the first to expound the general forms of its movement in a comprehensive and fully conscious way. In Hegel’s writings, dialectic stands on its head. You must turn it right way up again if you want to discover the rational kernel that is hidden away within its mystical shell.”

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Chavez is right to state in his speech to the UN General Assembly: 

Let us not permit that a few countries try to reinterpret the principles of International Law in order to impose new doctrines such as “pre-emptive warfare.” Oh do they threaten us with that pre-emptive war! And what about the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine? We need to ask ourselves. Who is going to protect us? How are they going to protect us?

I believe one of the countries that require protection is precisely the United States. That was shown painfully with the tragedy caused by Hurricane Katrina; they do not have a government that protects them from the announced nature disasters, if we are going to talk about protecting each other; these are very dangerous concepts that shape imperialism, interventionism as they try to legalize the violation of the national sovereignty. The full respect towards the principles of International Law and the United Nations Charter must be, Mr. President, the keystone for international relations in today’s world and the base for the new order we are currently proposing.

 

“In just seven years of Bolivarian Revolution, the people of Venezuela can claim important social and economic advances.

One million four hundred and six thousand Venezuelans learned to read and write. We are 25 million total. And the country will-in a few days- be declared illiteracy-free territory. And three million Venezuelans, who had always been excluded because of poverty, are now part of primary, secondary and higher studies.

Seventeen million Venezuelans-almost 70% of the population- are receiving, and for the first time, universal healthcare, including the medicine, and in a few years, all Venezuelans will have free access to an excellent healthcare service. More thatn a million seven hundred tons of food are channeled to over 12 million people at subsidized prices, almost half the population. One million gets them completely free, as they are in a transition period. More than 700 thousand new jobs have been created, thus reducing unemployment by 9 points. All of this amid internal and external aggressions, including a coup d’etat and an oil industry shutdown organized by Washington. Regardless of the conspiracies, the lies spread by powerful media outlets, and the permanent threat of the empire and its allies, they even call for the assassination of a president. The only country where a person is able to call for the assassination of a head of state is the United States. Such was the case of a Reverend called Pat Robertson, very close to the White House: He called for my assassination and he is a free person. That is international terrorism! “

 

 

 

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