I had this question proposed to me recently, and thought I would give it my best shot. I would love any input you guys have on how I can refine this further, make it more clear, more accurate, more succinct, all that.
Also, this is specifically geared towards Marxist-Leninists and Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, and that understanding of dialectics, just to be clear. I’m not interested in the hyper-orthodox understanding of dialectical materialism.
I don’t understand the ins and outs of gravity perfectly, but here goes.
Internal contradiction is what drives all things. This is true for gravity, as much as anything in the world. Gravity could then be analyzed in the framework of the contradictor forces within gravity. What would those forces be?
Well, Einstein’s general relativity is probably the best place to start. I will outline the two contradictory forces below.
Again, I don’t know a ton about the in’s and out’s of it, but the way I see it, there are two sets of contradictions at work in “gravity”.
First, the contradiction of Mass and Spacetime Curvature. We have the force of attraction, where masses attract each other, but contradictory to that, we also have the resistance of compression, where the curvature of space resists this attraction.
Second, we have the contradiction of Inertia and Graviational Pull. Objects resist changes to their existing state of motion, but the force of attraction seeks to change the motion of objects
In the case of general relativity, I would say the first contradiction is the primary one, since that relationship is what defines the attraction between masses, and the resistances between each one. I would say the second contradiction is the secondary one, since it’s still crucial for understanding how gravity works, but, it explains the result of gravitational attraction, rather than the fundamental cause of it.
In the case of the primary contradiction, I would say that the force of attraction is the primary aspect of the contradiction, over resistance to compression, since the attraction of mass to itself is the fundamental reason why spacetime is distorted in the first place. In the secondary contradiction, gravitational pull is of course, the primary aspect there.
Let me know what you think, and thank you.
The most direct example I know of is Lenin explaining at length the importance of a historical materialist grounding in “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism”. Here’s the link to an English translation since I don’t know Russian.
That said, I think a still simpler and more direct inference can be drawn from the fact that historical materialism (which, let us remember, is diamat applied to history) is the core of Marxism, something summarized well in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and Lenin, as a dedicated Marxist, is working from this framework.
There’s no need to be cute, and crying fallacy fails to prove the antithesis even if we assumed you were correct that what I said was fallacious.
But it was not, as the three groups in discussion were early Soviets (Marxists), latter Soviets (revisionists), and liberals. The question was where the revisionists fell in the power struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Now, if you believe the revisionists were actually some other, completely distinct thing despite their track record of liberalizing the Soviet Union, that’s not necessarily invalid, but then you would need to introduce what you think it is. Without your having done that, what we are left with is a broadly successful early Soviet Union and the moribund late Soviet Union, and we need to figure out some way to distinguish why one was superior to the other. I suggested one framework, but you can refute it and suggest another, though I encourage you to not nebulously talk about being taught “politics” as though historical materialism is not a political theory. If you believe another political theory is superior, you can say so, but don’t dally in vagaries.