Every science has its own vocabulary, the terms of which frequently do not coincide with everyday usage. This can lead to difficulties and misunderstandings. The word “negation” is commonly understood to signify simple destruction, or annihilation. It is important to understand that in dialectics negation has an entirely different content. It means to negate and to preserve at the same time. One can negate a seed by crushing it underfoot. The seed is “negated” but not in the dialectical sense! If, however, the same seed is left to itself, under favourable conditions, it will germinate. It has thus negated itself as a seed and develops into a plant, which at a later stage will die producing new seeds.

Apparently, this represents a return to the starting point. However, as professional gardeners know, identical seeds vary from generation to generation, giving rise to new species. Gardeners also know that certain strains can be artificially induced by selective breeding. It was precisely this artificial selection which gave Charles Darwin a vital clue to the process of natural selection which takes place spontaneously throughout nature, and is the key to understanding the development of all plants and animals. What we have is not only change but actual development, generally proceeding from simpler to more complex forms, including the complex molecules of life itself, which, at a certain stage, arises from inorganic matter.

Consider the following example of negation from quantum mechanics. What occurs when an electron unites with a photon? The electron experiences a “quantum leap” and the photon disappears. The result is not some kind of mechanical unity or compound. It is the same electron as before but in a new state of energy. The same is true when the electron unites with a proton. The electron vanishes and there is a leap in the proton’s state of energy and charge. The proton is the same as before but in a new state of energy and charge. It is now electrically neutral and becomes a neutron. Dialectically speaking, the electron has been negated and preserved at the same time. It has disappeared, but is not annihilated. It enters into the new particle and expresses itself as a change of energy and charge.

The ancient Greeks were well acquainted with the dialectic of discussion. In a properly conducted debate, an idea is put forward (the Thesis) and is then countered by the opposing view (the Antithesis) which negates it. Finally, through a thorough process of discussion, which explores the issue concerned from all points of view and discloses all the hidden contradictions, we arrive at a conclusion (the Synthesis). We may or may not arrive at agreement but by the very process of discussion, we have deepened our knowledge and understanding and raised the whole discussion onto a different plane.

It is quite evident that almost none of the critics of Marxism have taken the trouble to read Marx and Engels. It is frequently supposed, for example, that dialectics consists of “Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis”, which Marx is alleged to have copied from Hegel (who, in turn, was supposed to have copied it from the Holy Trinity) and applied to society. This childish caricature is still repeated by supposedly intelligent people today. As a matter of fact, not only is Marx’s dialectical materialism the opposite of Hegel’s idealist dialectic, but the dialectic of Hegel is itself very different from that of classical Greek philosophy.

George Plekhanov rightly ridiculed the attempt to reduce the imposing edifice of Hegelian dialectic to the “wooden Triad” of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis. The advanced dialectics of Hegel bears approximately the same relation to that of the Greeks as modern chemistry to the primitive investigations of the alchemists. It is quite correct that the latter prepared the ground for the former, but to assert that they are “basically the same” is simply ludicrous. Hegel returned to Heraclitus, but on a qualitatively higher level, enriched by 2,500 years of philosophical and scientific advances. The development of dialectics is itself a dialectical process.

Nowadays the word “alchemy” is used as a synonym for quackery. It conjures up all kinds of images of spells and black magic. Such elements were not absent from the history of alchemy, but its activities were by no means limited to this. In the history of science, alchemy played a most important role. Alchemy is an Arabic word, used for any science of materials. Charlatans there were, but not a few good scientists too! And chemistry is the Western word for the same thing. Many chemical words are, in fact, Arab in origin – acid, alkali, alcohol, and so on.

The alchemists set out from the proposition that it was possible to transmute one element into another. They tried for centuries to discover the “philosopher’s stone”, which they believed would enable them to turn base metal (lead) into gold. Had they succeeded, it would not have done them a lot of good, since the value of gold would have quickly sunk to that of lead! But that is another story. Given the actual level of technique at that time, the alchemists were attempting the impossible. In the end, they were forced to come to the conclusion that the transmutation of the elements was impossible. However, the endeavours of the alchemists were not in vain. In their pursuit of an unscientific hypothesis, the philosopher’s stone, they actually did valuable pioneering work, developing the art of experiment, inventing equipment still used in laboratories today and describing and analysing a wide range of chemical reactions. In this way, alchemy prepared the ground for the development of chemistry.

Modern chemistry was able to progress only by repudiating the alchemists’ basic hypothesis – the transmutation of the elements. From the late 18th century onwards, chemistry developed on a scientific basis. By setting aside the grandiose aims of the past, it made giant steps forward. Then, in 1919, the New Zealand nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) carried out an experiment involving the bombardment of nitrogen nuclei with alpha particles. This led to the breaching of the atomic nucleus for the first time. In so doing, he succeeded in transmuting one element (nitrogen) into another element (oxygen). The age-old quest of the alchemists had been resolved but not at all in a way they could have foreseen!

Now look at this process a bit more closely. We start with the thesis: a) the transmutation of the elements; this is then negated by its antithesis b) impossibility of transmuting the elements; this, in turn, is overturned by a second negation c) the transmutation of the elements. Here we must note three things. Firstly, each negation marks a definite advance, indeed, a qualitative leap forward. Secondly, each successive advance both negates the earlier stage, reacts against it, whilst preserving all that is useful and necessary in it. Lastly, the final stage – the negation of the negation – does not at all signify a return to the original idea (in this case, alchemy), but the reappearance of earlier forms on a qualitatively higher level. Incidentally, it is now possible to convert lead into gold, but would be too expensive to be worth the trouble!

Dialectics envisages the fundamental processes at work in the universe, in society and in the history of ideas, not as a closed circle, where the same processes merely repeat themselves in an endless mechanical cycle, but as a kind of open-ended spiral of development in which nothing is ever repeated exactly in the same way. This process can be clearly seen in the history of philosophy and science. The entire history of thought consists of an endless process of development through contradiction.

A theory is put forward which explains certain phenomena. This gradually gains acceptance, both through the accumulation of evidence which bears it out, and because of the absence of a satisfactory alternative. At a certain point, discrepancies appear, which are initially shrugged off as unimportant exceptions. Then a new theory emerges which contradicts the old one and seems to explain the observed facts better. Eventually, after a struggle, the new theory overthrows the existing orthodoxy. But new questions arise from this, which in turn have to be resolved. Frequently, it appears that we return again to ideas which were earlier thought to be discredited. But this does not mean a return to the starting point. What we have is a dialectical process, involving a deeper and deeper understanding of the workings of nature, society, and ourselves. This is the dialectic of the history of philosophy and science.

Joseph Dietzgen (1828-1888), a companion of Marx and Engels, once said that an old man who looks back on his life may see it as an endless series of mistakes which, if he could only have his time back again, he would doubtless choose to eliminate. But then he is left with the dialectical contradiction that it was only by means of these mistakes that he arrived at the wisdom to be able to judge them to be such. As Hegel profoundly observed, the selfsame maxims on the lips of a youth do not carry the same weight as when spoken by a man whose life’s experience has filled them with meaning and content. They are the same and yet not the same. What was initially an abstract thought, with little or no real content, now becomes the product of mature reflection.

It was Hegel’s genius to understand that the history of different philosophical schools was itself a dialectical process. He compares it to the life of a plant, going through different stages, that negate each other, but which, in their totality, represent the life of the plant itself:

The more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fixed, the more is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contradiction with a given philosophical system, and only to see reason for the one or the other in any explanatory statement concerning such a system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth; rather, it sees only contradiction in that variety. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way, when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole.[40]

  1. Hegel, G. The Phenomenology of Mind, p. 68.