Reviewing the law of non-contradiction: A Marxist reading

Abstract

Karl Popper argues that (i) because dialectics fails to comply with the law of non-contradiction (LNC) and (ii) a thought system that violates the latter is destructive to scientific theorising, dialectics cannot serve as the basis for scientific theorising. In connection with Popper’s accusation, the article seeks to review evidence of dialectical thinking in Marxist literature in accordance with the LNC to clarify the former’s relation to scientific theorising. Lucio Colletti and Lawrence Wilde are notable examples who have made clear commitments to extricate dialectics from the accusation that it violates the LNC. Despite the commendable contributions made, related conclusions do not arise from a concrete analysis of examples from Marxist dialectics about the LNC. We put forward two claims as our position and hence our contribution. First, we side with Popper’s premise (ii): that any thought system that fails to take the LNC seriously cannot validly support scientific theorising. Second, we oppose the truth of Popper’s premise (i): that dialectics undermines the LNC. Consequently, because premise (i) is unfounded, we are unable to grant the soundness of Popper’s contention against dialectics. According to our method of proof, we deploy the tool of concept analysis on relevant examples from Marxist literature. In the end, our overarching purpose is to show that dialectics operationalises the LNC and therefore Marxist dialectics is not disturbed by Popper’s objection.