/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Not a maoist, but the tree has internal contradictions. The cells bumping up against each other is one.
Different components of the tree bark, roots, leave, at time enter and exit contradictory space to establish their location.

>However, I don't see how this can be applied to anything other than social conflict.
Honestly it never really crossed my mind that he intended it to be applied to anything other than sociology and politics.
>Some contradictions do depend on one another, but believing that some are antagonistic and some aren't looks more politically motivated than scientific.
I think his point there is simply that non-antagonistic contradictions can be resolved in ways where both forces win, whereas antagonistic ones can only be solved by the victory of one over the other. For example, workers in the fossil fuel industry could come into conflict with farmers if emissions and pollution contribute to a drought, but this could be resolved in a way where nobody is harmed and everybody wins (e.g. a retraining program to transfer oil/coal workers to green energy industries, or new irrigation projects that offset the effects of drought). By contrast, the conflict between workers and capitalists, or peasants and landlords, cannot be resolved in such a way because the existence and prosperity of one is by definition contingent on the exploitation of the other. You're right that there is a political utility here, since the concept of non-antagonistic contradiction was important for Mao's other concepts like New Democracy. At the same time though I think it's just a basic fact that not every conflict is a zero sum game, and that many can be resolved to the mutual benefit of everybody.

>>2834975
Another non antagonistic contradiction is gender and sexuality, women hold up half the sky

>>2834975
>Honestly it never really crossed my mind that he intended it to be applied to anything other than sociology and politics.
its definitely an ontological claim lol

>What actually are Mao's contradictions
i dont think theres like a list, its on "contradiction" generally, not contradiction(s)

>politically motivated than scientific
its both. its a scientific orientation for inquiring specific political goals.

if your goal is communism, then imperialism is primary over class contradiction because development of productive forces is a physical prerequisite for the abolition of class distinction that is limited by dependency and extraction, and so on etc

yes there are other ways you could look at it an "objectively" its relative, but if reactionaries want to try to tell you that or both sides you can always remind them where political power comes from

and yes ontology is a technically a synonym for metaphysics, but when mao says metaphysics he means something different more like idealism and though dialectical materialism is a metaphysics they choose to just call it the "correct" outlook as a political choice and say that all alternatives are "doing metaphysics" which is a sort of euphemism for just making shit up

the reason they do this is sort of esoteric and related to hegel, if communism is the completion of the world spirit, then the path of communism is the correct path for mankind. that is kind of teleological if you assume its inevitable, but if you correctly understand dialectics then you know its an interplay between theory and practice, meaning its not inevitable or teleological and those accusations against hegel never held water just as they dont against marx, or engels, or lenin stalin or mao.

so again its a political choice, or if you want even ethical. since to bridge the is-out gap and say that you 'should' do something is necessarily ethical. to say we should do communism is an ethical argument. to say we should seek maximum human freedom by increasing the degrees of freedom of choice through democratic implementation of technology through social planning of production is an ethical argument.

if you accept that argument than the correct policy actions are laid out by the scientific method of dialectical and historical materialism applied by a dictatorship of the proletariat.

the liberal scientific view of positivism is actual a subjective idealism. you cant get away with a gods-eye view-from-nowhere. there is always necessarily a subjective view from somewhere. its the same with the measurement problem and position-momentum. and its not just a matter of disclosing bias. the only proper way is dialectics, reintegrating the subject back into the whole so its cancels out. and we identify the universal(or at least majority) subject to be the proletariat. so instead of saying science is "objective" which is impossible, we take the proletarian standpoint and impose it on the rest of humanity through the force of workers dictatorship.

ill stop now feel free to ask for elaborate, unless of course you are not a commie and are looking to poke holes than you can gfy

>>2834993
so how exactly is it "ontological" ? how is a tree a unity of opposites ?

>>2835003
>so how exactly is it "ontological"
it is a claim about the structure of reality

>>2835007
yes but how is that the entirety of reality is defined in relation to its contradictions ?

>>2835009
Because without contradiction, nothing would exist

>>2835011
How is a tree a unity of opposites ?

>>2835014
The tree itself is in contradiction with the ground it plants itself in and feeds off of and the sky, which is empty except when it is raining

>>2835014
idk man try reading it again or asking better questions

>>2835015
That's not how contradictions work because these are both external to unity of the tree.

>>2834975
“The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of nature"

wthmbt?

>>2835027
The tree cannot exist without nutrients from the soil, nor without the sunlight and the rain

>>2835035
>>2835041
These are external tensions, not inner tendencies. The ground is not "in" the tree. It's not an inner contradiction.

>>2835047
>The ground is not "in" the tree.
yes it is. ground and tree are both matter and the distinction is only subjective.

>>2835057
But one could argue the tree is a thing unto itself and within that thing unto itself there are internal contradictions.

>>2835062
>But one could argue the tree is a thing unto itself
yes one could be wrong if they want

>>2835057
That's just wrong according to maoist dialectics. The ground and the tree are different unities. Just don't reply if you don't know the answer

>>2835070
>Just don't reply if you don't know the answer
u2

In dialectical materialism, every single thing is a process of contradictory aspects that both depend on and struggle against each other. The "unity" is temporary, relative, and conditional; the "struggle" is absolute and ceaseless. This is not a static taxonomy but a dynamic law of motion. Mao writes:

>"The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist."

So when we say a tree is a unity of opposites, we mean that its very existence as a tree is constituted by contrary forces that are simultaneously bound together and in conflict, and that these conflicts drive its growth, change, and eventual death.

The most important contradictions for understanding the tree's development are its internal ones. Mao emphasizes that internal contradictions are the primary cause of change; external causes operate through them.

A tree continuously takes in water, minerals, carbon dioxide, and sunlight, and synthesizes complex organic compounds (assimilation). At the same time, it continuously breaks down organic matter to release energy for its life processes (dissimilation). These two processes are opposites: one builds up, the other breaks down. They coexist in every living cell; their unity constitutes the tree's life, and their struggle determines its growth, health, and senescence. When dissimilation irreversibly overtakes assimilation, death begins.

Even as the tree grows taller and thicker, parts of it die: leaves fall, inner heartwood ceases to conduct water and becomes inert structural support, root hairs are shed. The tree is always simultaneously building new tissue and abandoning old tissue. This is not simply one thing after another; at any given moment, the tree is a compound of the new and the old, the living and the dead. The contradiction between the new (emerging) and the old (dying) is a universal feature of development that Mao explicitly discusses.

The tree's DNA contains a set of potentialities; but which potentialities are realized, height, branching pattern, disease resistance, depends on the soil, climate, and competition. The contradiction here is between an inherited "norm of reaction" and the actual conditions of life. This is an internal contradiction because the tree's own metabolic system actively processes the external inputs according to its own laws; the external nutrients become the tree itself only by being negated as external and transformed internally.

A tree is a decentralized organism: each leaf, each root tip, each meristem acts with a degree of autonomy, yet the tree maintains a systemic unity. There is a constant tension between the parts' local interests (growing toward light, competing with sibling branches for resources) and the whole's viability. Apical dominance versus lateral bud break is a botanical example: the leading shoot suppresses growth below it, but if it's damaged, a lateral bud takes over. The unity of the tree as an individual is a result of the ongoing regulation of contradictory tendencies.

The contradiction between the tree and the ground, and the tree and the sky was mentioned. In dialectical terms, these are external contradictions that become internalized in the tree's life process.

The tree requires minerals and water from the soil, but the soil is not the tree. The root system actively alters the soil chemistry (exudates, acidification) and competes with soil microorganisms for nutrients. The tree is in a constant struggle with the soil's tendency to be depleted, and simultaneously the soil's resistance (compaction, salinity) shapes the tree's development. This external contradiction becomes internal because the tree’s metabolic apparatus has to process the soil's offerings and defend against its toxins. The very structure of the root system is a product of the contradiction between the tree's needs and the soil's resistance.

The sky is not "empty", it supplies light, carbon dioxide, rain, wind, heat, and cold. The tree's canopy is a structure for capturing light and gas exchange. Wind is a mechanical stress that induces reaction wood to strengthen the trunk; the tree's shape is a resolution of the conflict between its genetic growth pattern and the wind's force. Drought is a contradiction between the tree's water demand and the atmosphere's humidity. The contradiction with the sky is not a one-time event; it's a perpetual process of stress and adaptation.

These external contradictions operate through the internal contradictions. For instance, a drought does not simply "kill" the tree directly; it intensifies the internal contradiction between assimilation and dissimilation by forcing stomatal closure (reducing CO2 intake) while cellular respiration continues. The tree's response, abscising leaves, redirecting energy, is a shift in its internal balance. This illustrates Mao’s principle: external causes are the condition of change, internal causes are the basis of change; external causes become operative through internal causes.

"The tree itself" being a thing unto itself with internal contradictions is exactly right. Dialectical materialism denies that the tree is a static substance with fixed properties. It is a process of self-negation: a seed negates itself to become a seedling, which negates itself to become a mature tree, which negates itself in death, returning to the soil. At every stage, the tree is identical to itself and different from itself; it is a unity of being and non-being. The seed is both seed (in its present form) and not-seed (it contains the tree as its negated future). This is the dialectical identity of opposites that Mao draws from Lenin.

The phrase "defined in relation to" might mislead if taken as an epistemic relativism. Dialectical materialism asserts that reality itself is structured by contradictions, not just our descriptions of it. The tree doesn't need a human observer to be a unity of assimilation and dissimilation; those are real material processes. The contradictions are ontological. Saying reality is "defined by" them can be understood as: the essential nature of any concrete thing is given by the particular set of contradictory forces that constitute its mode of existence and its development. You cannot grasp the tree's life without grasping these metabolic and developmental contradictions. So yes, the tree is a thing unto itself, but its selfhood is precisely the temporary, relative unity of a host of opposing tendencies.

Mao cautions that not every difference is a contradiction. A contradiction is a relation of mutual implication and struggle that drives change. For the tree, the relation between leaf and root is a unity of opposites (one produces sugars, the other water and minerals; they depend on each other and yet the balance can shift dramatically). The relation between the tree and a passing bird may not be a contradiction if they don't mutually condition each other in a necessary way. The art of dialectical analysis is to identify the principal contradictions and their aspects, not to absurdly label everything as contradictory.

It's a classic case of learning about a new tool and wanting to apply it to everything even if it makes no sense, child-like wonder

>>2835066
Hegel didnt dismiss the concept.
He just said its kinda a useless label

>>2835084
Thanks for the effortpost, I think I understand it better now. From what I gather, the "opposites" in the unity of opposites that constitute a tree are simply different mechanisms and tendencies that pull in opposite directions, and who in doing so create a relative balance.
So to take the example of a leopard, one could say that there is a constant contradiction in expending energy to chase and bring food, and going hungry and starving from not hunting enough.

>>2835131
the first step is the exercise of neoplatonistic seeing all things as one thing but matter instead of idea. for hegel a tree is a thing unto itself but not for itself. a tree is a tree for humans because tree is a human conception. a tree is not a tree for a squirrel in the same way

the tree is in itself a bundle of physical processes, but that "in-itselfness" is not yet self-knowing or self-articulating. It becomes for itself only through the activity of a subject (human or otherwise) that negates its mere givenness and re-presents it as a concept.

the squirrel relates to the tree as food, shelter, or path, not as "treeness." but Hegel would say the squirrel still relates to the tree in some mode of cognition, just not the fully conceptual, self-explicit mode humans have. the tree is for the squirrel as this usable thing, but the squirrel lacks the ability to hold "tree" as a universal separate from its use.

seeing all as one matter, is a kind of pre-Hegelian immediacy. Hegel would call it abstract identity, lacking the determinate negation that makes actual thinking move. matter alone can't generate the "for-itself" without spirit's self-differentiation. the tree is both in itself (materially continuous with ground) and for itself (conceptually distinct) for a consciousness that can hold the contradiction. not dismissing the label but sublating it.

>>2835394
Probably best reply I have ever received on this Mongolian basket weaving forum

>>2835084
>we mean that its very existence as a tree is constituted by contrary forces that are simultaneously bound together and in conflict
The tree doesn't have contrary forces. The anabolic and catabolic movement you described are not "in opposition". They're not like two mutually opposing armies in a war, where the resolution of said-war can only end in a qualitatively different state. Instead, the catabolic and anabolic movement in a tree are simply complementary process which come about at different stages in the tree. They don't "push" in different directions, they both regulate the behavior of the tree in a determined manner to guarantee his survival.

I agree with Mao's premise that reality is fundamentally a unity of atoms in movement, and that we identify a disposition of these atoms as certain objects. However, this does not imply that reality is ontologically built upon contradictions. Simply describing the inner process of an object through the lens of "opposing forces" is mistakenly adding 2 points on that process corresponding to different elements within it. It's an abstract and idealist vision of the world where everything is in tension between 2 different points, when in reality objects go through these different points by inner motion rather than opposing forces.

What I mean by this is the following : if we take a tree, we can say that it follows a process where the seed grows, develops, and eventually dies. This occurs through multiple inner-processes such as taking in minerals, shedding leaves etc. However, affirming that the tree is the unity of life (absorbing minerals) and death (shedding leaves) amounts to arbitrarily imposing a triadic structure upon it. The tree isn't a stage where both life and death thrust upon one-another through catabolic and anabolic mechanisms. It's just an inner process that occurs naturally as the tree gets older and ceases to gather enough nutrients. The tree's life is not "fighting" against death, it's only existing before it.

>>2835656
>>2835084
I don't think these 2 positions really contradict one another. I think that we could formalize Mao's position in this way :

>Reality is a continuous flow of physicochemical processes.
<"The world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement"


>Certain stable arrangements of this flow constitute what we call "objects" : they have possible states in a structural space of possibilities determined by their internal constitution.
<"Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction. This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the internal cause, or as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of things in the world."

>These objects transition between real qualitative states (life/death, growth/decline) that represent their inner motions
<"The new aspect changes from being minor to being major and rises to predominance, while the old aspect changes from being major to being minor and gradually dies out. The moment the new aspect gains dominance over the old, the old thing changes qualitatively into a new thing."

>these transitions "contradictions" or "negations" are description of the different qualitative states, which results from inner motion, that any being/structure can reach

>>2834971
I think it's telling that your initial framing of the topic is around ideas specific to Mao, but you go on to mainly ask basic questions about dialectical materialism itself. Like this is all Marxism 101 here, more or less existing in written form since the 1860s.

>How can you say that a tree is a unity of opposite forces? There are no "opposite" forces internal to a tree.
Living things are in general fantastic examples of things as a unity of opposites. A tree can be broken down into numerous contradictions: the contradiction between internal homeostasis and varying external conditions, the need to maintain homeostasis versus the need to continue gathering new and better resources, the countless contradictions utilized to chemically move resources throughout the organism, etc. We can see then that there are a litany of contradictions internal to a tree, and each aspect (side) of the contradiction produces new contradictions through their struggle. Far from being abstract, "life and death" and "growth and stagnation" describe very concrete things, unless you're 12 and think you'll live as a kid forever.

>Furthermore, albeit this is more abstract, I don't really see how Mao can assert that there is a hierarchy in the contradictions. Some contradictions do depend on one another, but believing that some are antagonistic and some aren't looks more politically motivated than scientific.
Whether a contradiction is fully antagonistic or not is absolutely a matter of politics, and science is a matter of politics as well. Again, this is Marxism 101, or do you think Marx and Engels referred to themselves as "scientific socialists" for funsies? Scientific practice is not some higher, "true neutral" practice above politics. It is fundamentally molded by the dominant class politics in society. For revolutionaries, the key is expressing a scientific outlook in the interests of the proletariat, whether we're analyzing history or human biology.

Scientific racism and sexism (for example) are not — contrary to the claims of liberal historical revisionists and modern day apologists — products of scientists simply "not knowing any better" or having a classless "facts don't care about your feelings" dispassionate view of reality. These are "scientific" expressions of bourgeois class politics and imperialism, and the struggle against them is directly a part of the wider struggle against imperialism and gender oppression, themselves an inseparable part of the struggle against capitalism. It is these movements which has produced the modern, genuinely scientific understanding of race and gender as being products of the wider class contradictions in capitalism, and the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois within academia continue to try to resist (Dawkins, Hossenfelder, etc.) or pervert this science (postmodernism, intersectionality). Thus the hierarchy of contradiction is political, and scientific.

To give another, more strictly "scientific" example lets return to the tree and analyze the contradiction between maintaining homeostasis and gathering resources. I would say that in ideal conditions, this is a non-antagonistic contradiction. Organisms are, in general, capable of growth and maintaining their internal environment. In fact, they're necessary for one-another. However as this non-antagonistic contradiction develops it produces an antagonistic contradiction: the contradiction between the tree's growing roots and the soil (later bedrock). Soil/rock cannot remain as it is if the tree is to continue growing, but it likewise resists being moved/split through weight and hardness. One side or the other must triumph for the continued development of the organism. The roots will either move through the soil/rock, or move around it, this resolution being driven by and a product of the greater contradiction between homeostasis and growth.

>>2835656
>I agree with Mao's premise that reality is fundamentally a unity of atoms in movement, and that we identify a disposition of these atoms as certain objects.

>amounts to arbitrarily imposing a triadic structure upon it.
i dont think so. i dont think you can know that reality is fundamentally a unity of atoms in movement unless you recognize the static structure of the tree coming into being from nothing, temporarily resonating in an pattern identifiable by conscious beings made from the same (no)thing, and then dissolving back into it, without grounding that knowledge in the universal link between the subject and the object of its observation in that they are both matter. the structure of rational knowledge is traidic and relies on this relation from universal particular and individual. which ones are which is not arbitrary but made by determinant negation within particular context or conditions

>>2836139
>static
triadic* thanks autocorrect

They are literally Chinese whispers of what once was a scientific and philosophically solid dialectics turned into some kind of dogmatic, metaphysical eastern wisdom tradition, a kind of presocratic system of philosophy. Marxism has a true dialectic only until Lenin, after that it's all a blatant vulgarisation and a lot of things are lot in translation.

>>2835937
I’ll respond to you later but diamat doesn’t exist in marxism. It’s Engels who developed it in the anti-duhring and in the dialectic of nature but we still don’t know if Marx actually believed in it, or that he thought that dialectical analysis could be extended to become a materialist ontology. Marx’s « scientific » connotation comes from historical materialism, but he himself never develops on diamat

As for the tree, you’re not really describing contradictions. The elements you talk about or not forces or tendencies opposing each other, they’re specific processes which intervene at different stage of the tree’s development. Homeostasis and gathering resources are simply different processes that the tree goes through, it’s not like a conflict in-between groups.

The key link is that substance (the tree as a mere in-itself) remains abstract, inert, and self-external, it is but doesn't know itself. For Hegel, anything truly real must not just be but also relate to itself as itself, be subject.

Tree not for itself -> The tree exists as a unity of properties (carbon, water, structure), but this unity is not experienced by the tree. The tree cannot say “I am this tree.” Its being is dispersed into external relations (roots in ground, leaves in sun). It is substance: the ground of predicates, but not their self-conscious owner.

Substance is subject -> For something to be fully actual (wirklich), it must not just underlie change but be the process of self‑differentiation and return to itself. That’s what “subject” means: an activity of self-relation through negation. The tree lacks this interior self‑relation, so it is only one moment of substance, not substance as a whole.

The universal substance (Nature, matter, or the Absolute) is therefore incomplete until it has produced a being that can take itself as object, spirit. The tree’s “not‑for‑itself” is a necessary stage, but it shows that substance aspires to subjectivity. The truth of the tree is not the tree itself, but the thinking being (you, Hegel, the squirrel? no, the human) for whom the tree becomes an object of concept.

Thus from the tree’s failure to be for‑itself, we deduce that substance as a whole cannot be dead stuff; it must be living subject that externalizes itself as tree, ground, etc., and then recollects them as its own moments. That’s the move. Not‑for‑itself -> deficiency of mere substance -> only subject (self‑knowing activity) can truly be substance.

For Hegel, “relate to itself as itself” means a process. Immediate being (tree, ground, stone) -> just is, but doesn’t know its own being. Negation -> the being differentiates itself, sets itself over against itself (tree vs. ground, or consciousness vs. world). Return to self -> the being recognizes the other as its own moment, so what appeared external is actually self-mediation. This circle is closed. the end is the beginning, but now explicitly as self-knowing. So substance becomes subject when it has gone through this entire loop. It is the journey not the destination made manifest. a seed -> tree -> seed again, but the new seed carries the history. Nature doesn’t know this loop; spirit does. So the circle is logical and ontological for Hegel, not merely biological.

Marx explicitly inverts Hegel, but the circle remains, now as a material and historical process. Hegel’s subject = absolute spirit / concept. The tree’s failure to be for-itself is overcome by spirit recollecting nature as its own other. Marx’s subject = real, sensuous, material human beings engaged in labour and social production. Nature (trees, ground) is not subject. Only humans, through practice, achieve self‑relation.

Marx preserves the form of the Hegelian circle, self-mediation through otherness, but materially. Human being (as natural being) confronts external nature (tree, ground, ore). Through labour, human objectifies their species‑power into a product. That product is other (alien at first). In communist society, the producer reappropriates the product as their own objectified essence. This closes the circle: producer -> product -> producer now self‑mediated. But Marx rejects the idea that this circle is ontologically prior to human practice. There is no “tree relating to itself.” Nature in itself has no internal teleology toward self‑knowledge. The only circle is historical and practical.

So the Hegelian imperative, “complete the circle”, becomes the political imperative of revolution: the proletariat must become for itself (class consciousness), not just in itself (a class of wage labourers). That’s why Marx’s Capital is a dialectical materialist text: the commodity form is the “tree” that cannot relate to itself; only the scientific observer (and the proletariat in struggle) completes the circle by showing how value becomes self‑moving substance (capital) which then turns into its opposite (crisis, revolution).

The divergence is in that Hegel’s circle is closed (absolute knowing ends in reconciliation). Marx’s circle is open – each completion (communism) is not an end but a new beginning for human self‑creation. Matter itself never becomes subject; only matter organized as society does.

The demand is retained in Marxism as the demand to transform objective material conditions into conditions consciously controlled by the associated producers. Without that completion, substance (nature, capital) remains alien, mute, dominating. But unlike Hegel, Marx never asks the tree to relate to itself, only the human being, through revolutionary practice, closes the circle of nature becoming human nature.

>>2836398
>I’ll respond to you later but diamat doesn’t exist in marxism. It’s Engels who developed it in the anti-duhring
no need to come back and spread retard propaganda

>>2834971
>I don't see how this can be applied to anything other than social conflict
careful with what you understand by opposition/negation/contradiction when reading marxist stuff

To think about anything, you have to think what is it iin contrast to what it is not. Take a simple geometrical shape: the circle.
If you imagine a circle, you necessarily imagine the circle 'on top of a background'. The background is non-circle of course. ANd the boundary between the circle and the outer-(non)circle is pretty much what we think of when talking about 'circle'. It is precisely that curved shape which goes around the centre (the boundary) which is 'our circle'. Since you cannot imagine a boundary in isolation, invoking the concept of a circle thus inevitably invokes the non-circle and their contrast.

He wanted to eliminate practices like foot binding even though it is a based or possibly christpilled anti-imperialist practice to satisfy subversive baizuos karens who hates the east

>>2836398
historical materialism, dialectical materialism, etc etc all mean pretty much the same thing.
Morons who split hairs to convince marxists to discard this or that contribution do this from mainly two positions:

1. Linear, mechanic, vulgar anglobrainism. Definition-obsessed but unable to go one layer deeper and worry about the definition of definition itself.
   
2. An imperialist impulse to make Friedrich Engels the punching bag of Marxism. By presenting him as a midwit who misunderstood Marx and wrote shit.
   

First Stalin was denounced, but precisely to 'preserve' Marx, Engels and Lenin.
Then Lenin was denounced, in the name of 'Marx and Engels', but in fact, from the position of Kautsky and Bernstein.
Then, Engels is discarded as a fraud, binning works of Marx published after his death, edited by Engels.
In the end, Marx will be sacrificed by the Western Marxist to finally resuscitate Adolf. Only then, the well-meaning leftist Westerner will finally have a demographic fit for communism.

>>2836805
>christpilled anti-imperialist practice to satisfy subversive baizuos karens who hates the east
/thread

>>2836398
If you want to split hairs like this, then dialectical materialism doesn't exist in Engels either, who only refers to "modern materialism". If we consider this distinct in the same way that you arbitrarily separate Marx's historical materialism, then the real originators of dialectical materialism would be Lenin and Plekhanov.

>The elements you talk about or not forces or tendencies opposing each other, they’re specific processes which intervene at different stage of the tree’s development.
>This water is not wet, it is simply adding moisture to the surfaces it touches!
Is sophistry just a pastime for you or something?

>>2837027
Except Engels already laid the groundwork by focusing on extending dialectics to nature. What we call dialectical materialism is just his thought systematized. It’s fundamentally different than hismat, which focuses on social agents rather than immutable laws of nature.

>sophistry
It’s not. They don’t oppose one another, they’re just complementary and make the tree tend towards different directions. But thanks for confirming that contradictions are essentially just inner mechanisms that make the tree develop internally

>>2834971
>How can you say that a tree is a unity of opposite forces?

<"Life is the mode of existence of protein bodies, the essential element of which consists in continual metabolic interchange with the natural environment."
<Engels, (Dialectics of Nature)

The trees internal opposition is not a metaphor but a metabolic process. Cell division vs cell death or building up vs breaking down. These are not external forces (wind, sun) but the organisms own internal mode of functioning. In this sense the dialectical description captures something real.

>>2835014
a tree is a multicellular organism but it is necessarily composed of unicellular structures

>>2837775
"Dialectical materialism" in Soviet politics was sophistry meant to deflect and defuse criticism of the state. All the failures and contradictions of AES can be framed as 'dialectical' and thus immune from critique. And if you disagree, being 'undialectical' is grounds for dismissal.

That's the real answer to OP's question. Dialectical materialism has its place in Marxist political economy, and you can cynically abuse the concept in day-to-day political debates. Applying it anywhere outside of those two things is just nonsense, as most of this thread shows.