User:RD/9k/diamat not yet molecular (Q618)
Main entry
Dialectical materialism hasn't been molecularized yet
-> how did it only occur to me today. the reason I've always been so confident in dialectical materialism is because I think it can be molecularized. many people will go "but what is a contradiction"?? and that's always sounded stupid to me because I'm always able to visualize the parts of a contradiction assembling together into an object, and scattering away from being an object, and contradictions existing while the object exists. to me that is totally intuitive — contradictions are the things that exist during the time objects made of multiple pieces exist. objects like rocks don't contain many contradictions, except at very small scales. objects like chickens contain a wild array of contradictions. that's what Materialist contradictions are: they're not primarily things that destroy each other, but combinations of physical objects that make interactions possible. that said, most people don't think hard enough about the beginning and ending steps of forming and scattering. there are serious questions to be asked about whether a diffuse scattering of "grains" can have contradictions before it forms a single identifiable object or group, and whether these contradictions could lead to forming objects. I'm inclined to think the answer to that is "yes". thinking about a Marxist party, it would seem there are processes of accumulating good theorists and good ideas and networks that structure representatives into a nation before the final object, the party-nation, exists. in one sense there are no real separations between objects, because otherwise objects would never be able to form; in another sense (the Heideggerian sense), there must be separations between objects for objects to have successfully formed. so contradictions exist throughout an object's whole lifetime from the first moment it is a bunch of scattered grains, and a startling consequence of this is that some objects that appear to contain contradictions relating to the development of that object are actually multiple objects that are not contributing to each other's development directly but are instead developing into two separate objects containing their own contradictions.
Arguments against
- Economic Problems of the USSR (Stalin 1951) / (9k)
- Dialectical materialism was molecularized by 1951 / Dialectical materialism hasn't been molecularized yet (false) -> so, I think I actually have evidence against this now. Stalin wrote at least one text that outright sounds molecularized. he goes into talking about all these fine-scale structures and how all the specific small-scale structures have to change in the course of resolving a larger contradiction. that to me is molecularization, there is not a lot more you need to do if you are describing classes as composing specific structures that transition and evolve and you are doing it extensively. so 'molecular Stalinism' has existed if only briefly; it didn't not exist.
I thought of this proposition while the server was down months ago and it's a little funny that I got to refuting it before it was even posted. but it's a very important discovery. if there are texts that absolutely contain molecularized political economy then there could be some that contain molecularized descriptions of revolution or of dialectical materialism in general — find the latter, and this proposition is dead.
what would I do if I found out every non-erroneous Marxist text before about 1960 was molecularized? would I retire the distinction between crimson Marxism and violet Marxism? the thing is, I genuinely don't think that's the case. I think there are a bunch of Marxist-Leninist texts that are "amorphous" and deal with The People as one big mass rather than touching on the fine structure of the country, and more importantly don't realize there's a distinction. it would be awesome to find that dialectical materialism was already molecularized and that a lot of Marxism was actually distorted 'four legs good' descriptions not intended by Marx. but I doubt it already is.
molecular Marxism: contains fine structure, incorporates special relativity and descriptions of (space)time, understands the basic structure and goals of all movements enough to not get confused about how other movements behave (applying basic behaviors of classes can definitely get you there sometimes), takes descriptions of fine structure and shows how they evolve through relativity such that Liberal-republicans can't use a structural model of a system on one day to show systems will simply stay the same, applies observations of fine structure to how they produce large-scale structure today or tomorrow
Ideologies or fields
- (none)