Negation of the negation

The negation of the negation is one of the three fundamental laws of dialectical materialism, alongside the law of the unity and struggle of opposites and the transformation of quantity into quality. This law expresses the spiral character of development through contradictions, where a process returns to certain features of its initial stage but at a qualitatively higher level of development. As Lenin emphasized, it is "neither barren negation, nor purposeless negation, nor sceptical negation, nor vacillation, nor doubt" but rather "a moment of connection, is a moment of development with a retention of the positive."

Historical Development of the Concept

Hegelian Origins

The law of negation of negation was first formulated by G. W. F. Hegel in idealistic form. Hegel saw development as proceeding through "a negation of a negation." As Marx noted in The Poverty of Philosophy:

"But once it has placed itself in thesis, this thought, opposed to itself, doubles itself into two contradictory..."

— Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy

Hegel's dialectical method represented a significant advance over metaphysical thinking, which viewed development as linear and saw contradictions as mere errors.

"something 'final,' eternal, immutable, simple, is the unmistakable characteristic of the metaphysical method."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 276

Hegel's contribution was his recognition that development proceeds through contradictions.

"The new element introduced by Hegel into the solution of the problem is this — he proceeds from the dialectical movement of thought from a lower grade to a higher and on this ground resolves the question of the connection of the sensational and the logical, criticizing the one-sidedness both of empiricism and rationalism."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 253

Marxist Transformation

Marx and Engels, as materialist-communists, transformed Hegel's idealist dialectic into a materialist science of development. They were the first to show the essentially revolutionary character of this law. In numerous works including Capital, Anti-Dühring, The Poverty of Philosophy, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Dialectics of Nature, they demonstrated the theoretical and practical importance of this law as a universal principle governing nature, society, and thought.

Engels provided the classic formulation in Dialectics of Nature:

"Matter moves in an eternal cycle in which every particular form of the existence of matter — be it the sun or a nebula, a particular animal or biological process, a chemical combination or decomposition — is equally in transition, and in which there is nothing permanent except eternally moving matter and the laws of its movement and change."

— Engels, Dialectics of Nature

Lenin further developed the concept in his philosophical notebooks, particularly in his notes on Hegel's Logic, where he emphasized that "dialectical 'moment' requires an indication of 'unity'; i.e. of the connection of the negative with the positive, requires the finding of this positive in the negative."

The lessons we get from Trotskyism and right opportunism teach us the necessity of disclosing the specific quality of the internal contradictions of any process. This understanding transformed dialectics from abstract speculation into a practical tool for revolutionary action.

Theoretical Explanation

Dialectical Negation

The core of the law lies in understanding negation dialectically. Unlike mechanistic or metaphysical conceptions that view negation as external and antagonistic, dialectical negation emerges from the internal contradictions of a process itself.

"Every unit contains a contradiction, and that each stage in the development of a process — both negation and negation of negation — emerges as a determined phase in the development of the unity of opposites. He does not understand that this very unity of opposites is also the impulse which initiates and carries through the development of the process."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 367

Dialectical negation is not simple destruction but what Hegel called "sublation" (Aufhebung) – a simultaneous negation and preservation.

"other as the preservation of particular aspects of it as a subordinated moment. Such dialectical denial was called by Hegel 'sublation.'"

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 369

The law operates through the division of unity and the disclosure of essential opposites:

"He speaks at leaps of the breaking of continuity, of the transition of quantity into quality. But he has not seized the main, the essential thing in the conception of development. He has not understood the duality which is found within the unity, in other words the unity and conflict of opposites, fundamental conception which alone gives the key to the understanding of leaps in evolution of breaks in gradualness, of the transition of quantity into quality, in fact, of the whole developmental process in nature and history."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 299</ref>

The Triadic Process

The law operates as a triadic process:

1. An initial stage or thesis

2. Its negation (the emergence of its opposite)

3. The negation of that negation (a return to certain features of the initial stage but at a higher level)

Engels explains this in Anti-Dühring:

"A true, natural, historic and dialectical negation is (formally) the initial impulse of every development — the division into opposites, their conflict and resolution, in which (in history partly, in thought fully), on the basis of actual experience, the starting-point is reached anew..."

— Engels, Anti-Dühring

Lenin further clarified this in his notes on Hegel's Logic, stating that development involves "a repetition ... of certain features and properties of the lower" and "a return as it were to the old" (a negation of negation).

"Synthesis breaks down within itself the previous stage and returns as it were to the thesis, but to a thesis enriched by the development of the antithesis."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 387

This process is not circular but spiral:

"And so synthesis breaks down within itself the previous stage and returns as it were to the thesis, but to a thesis enriched by the development of the antithesis."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 387

Concrete Examples

The Barley Seed

Engels' classic example from Anti-Dühring illustrates the law most clearly:

"The seed, as such, vanishes, is negated and in its place there appears a plant — the negation of the seed. But what is the normal cycle of the life of this plant? It grows, flowers, is fertilized and finally produces barley seeds again; when these are ripe, the stalk withers, for now its turn has come to be negated. The result of this negation is that we have our barley seed again, not one, however, but more than a hundred."

— Engels, Anti-Dühring

Critics like Mikhailovsky misunderstood this example, claiming there are "three negations, not two" (stalk negates seed, flower negates stalk, fruit negates flower). The clarification is that Engels considers "the cycle of life of a plant from its beginning as a fertilized seed to its production of a fertilized seed." A flower does not negate the plant as a whole, but the fertilized ovum (seed) does represent a negation of the given organism as it becomes "the originating point in the development of a new life."

"The fact that this piece of iron weighs three tons, and that four, is quite fortuitous for iron as a definite chemical element. The fact that in this country there are three trusts, in that ten, says something 'final,' eternal, immutable, simple, is the unmistakable characteristic of the metaphysical method."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 276

Historical Development of Property Forms

Marx demonstrates this in Capital regarding the development of property forms:

"In the first volume of Capital, in the section on 'Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation,' Marx shows the course of development of private ownership in the means of work from its initial moments right down to its historically inevitable annihilation, to its transition into its opposite — into social ownership."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 363

This represents the triad: communal ownership (thesis) → private ownership (negation) → social ownership (negation of negation). The final stage only resembles in its external aspects that individual ownership from which capitalism grew, and is a wholly subordinate moment of the new socialist ownership of the means of production.

The process operates in the development of class consciousness:

"However, even at that stage in the consciousness of the proletariat there is already something which makes possible the transition to a scientific understanding, to a complete, connected synthesis of the facts. This is found in the ideas derived from and actually reflecting the worker's experience of collisions with his employer. It is such ideas that make it possible to escape from the limitations of disconnected experiences, for they reflect the objective relations of concrete reality, even though they may do so in a distorted fashion."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 218

As the working class develops:

"In this process it at first reveals superficial and non-essential properties, by expressing its protest in an elementary fashion and without any organization, by coming forward with particular economic demands of slight importance. But the further it unfolds its 'being as it exists for another,' that is to say, the more its opposition to the capitalists becomes intensified, the more deeply and widely does it manifest its essential properties, the properties of the leading revolutionary class."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 218

Knowledge Development

The development of human knowledge follows this pattern:

"Thus proceeds the development of knowledge of actuality (primitive dialectic — metaphysic — dialectical materialism)."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 383

Here, primitive dialectical thinking (thesis) is negated by metaphysical thinking (antithesis), which is then negated by dialectical materialism (synthesis) – which returns to dialectics but at a higher, scientific level.

The process of knowledge development:

"At first — impressions, as in a flash, then — something is distinguished, then — ideas of quality are developed (leading to a definition of a thing or phenomenon) and subsequently, ideas of quantity. Then study and reflection direct the thought to questions of identity and difference — basis — essence. All these moments or steps of knowledge are directed from the subject to the object, verify themselves by practice and proceed through this verification to truth."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 241

Further explanation:

"A correct grasp of the whole serves as a guiding principle in the examination of the details. The first synthetic stage of knowledge prepares one for the study of the parts, gives a general orientation for a further analytical investigation."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 241

The Nodal Line of Measurements

An essential aspect of the negation of the negation is the concept of the nodal line of measurements:

"Pure quantity exists only in abstraction. In objective actuality every quantitative definiteness appertains to a certain quality. Three, four, five, etc. as generalities do not exist, but there are three or four trees, stones, tons of iron, metres of cloth, etc."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 276

This concept shows how quantitative changes accumulate until they reach a critical point (the "nodal line") where a qualitative leap occurs:

"The establishment of such quantitative definitions, specific for each particular thing at each given moment of its development, has great practical and theoretical importance. However, the connection of quality and quantity in the examples just given has a more or less external character, each given magnitude is independent of the general characteristic of the quality."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 276

This concept is crucial for understanding revolutionary transitions, where gradual quantitative changes in class consciousness and organization eventually reach a critical threshold that enables revolutionary action.

Misinterpretations and Criticisms

Kautsky's Mechanistic Interpretation

Karl Kautsky fundamentally misunderstood the law, treating negation as purely external:

"Kautsky thus completely fails to understand negation dialectically, fails to see that every unit contains a contradiction, and that each stage in the development of a process — both negation and negation of negation — emerges as a determined phase in the development of the unity of opposites."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 367

As a mechanist, Kautsky would like to separate these two stages by an absolute interval in time, not understanding that in actual development the destruction of the old is also the emergence of the new. He failed to grasp that negation and the negation of negation coexist in the developmental process.

Kautsky's error:

"He speaks at leaps of the breaking of continuity, of the transition of quantity into quality. But he has not seized the main, the essential thing in the conception of development. He has not understood the duality which is found within the unity, in other words the unity and conflict of opposites..."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 299

Bukharin's Schematism

Nikolai Bukharin forced development into narrow categories, failing to grasp the concrete, contradictory nature of the process. Bukharin, with the schematism characteristic of his approach, forces all development into narrow categories.

Bukharin's error was treating development as a simple repetition rather than a spiral progression.

"The second peculiarity arises from the insistence on the material unity of the world. We are here in this real world and all our thinking is about it. Moreover we think about it not as if we were looking at it from the moon, but because it is a going concern and we are on it. Every moment it is doing something and going somewhere, and it does nothing of itself."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 255

Right Opportunism and Reconciliation of Opposites

Misinterpretations of the law connect to political errors, particularly right opportunism:

"The right wing of the older reformism and of modern reformist socialism are based on theories of this sort and derive from the idea of the reconciliation of opposites. Thus instead of Marx's proposition on the irreconcilability of the conflict of classes, they preach a harmony of interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat..."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 390

This represents a failure to understand that the negation of negation requires the irreconcilable struggle of opposites, not their reconciliation.

Example of how this error manifested in party politics:

"And we returned to the point of departure of the conflict of pure idea; but now this 'thesis' was enriched by all the results of the 'antithesis' and was transformed into a higher synthesis, in which the isolated, fortuitous error on Clause 1 had grown into a system of opportunist views on the organization problem, so that the connection between this phenomenon and the basic division of our party into revolutionary and opportunist wings became more and more apparent to all."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 387

Relationship to Other Dialectical Laws

The law of negation of negation is inseparable from the law of the unity and struggle of opposites. The law of negation emerges as the further concretization of the law of the unity of opposites. Development through contradictions is the central movement that produces negation and the negation of negation.

The law also relates to the transformation of quantity into quality, as the accumulation of quantitative changes through the developmental process leads to qualitative leaps at each stage of negation.

The relationship:

"Every universal is also only part of a system of wider connections and is in a state of internally necessary relations with other universals. Thus, all the relations of things constitute an extraordinarily complex and variegated network."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 260

The interconnection of these laws is essential for understanding the dialectical process:

"Our ideas, in proportion to the development of human knowledge and its closer approximation to reality, become more and more flexible, and therefore more and more adequate to reflect the universal connection, the division of unity, the conflict of opposites in objective actuality."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 241

Practical Significance for Proletarian Revolution

The law of negation of negation has profound practical significance for understanding and guiding revolutionary processes:

1. It reveals that revolutionary change requires an irreconcilable, pitiless negation –

"Without an irreconcilable, pitiless negation nothing new can emerge."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 385

2. It explains the transitional nature of historical stages. For example, the Soviet Union's transition from War Communism to the New Economic Policy (NEP) represented a negation, but socialist construction would ultimately negate NEP itself as "the ener-gizing negative of the contradictions of N.E.P."

3. It helps identify the specific quality of internal contradictions in any process, which is essential for revolutionary strategy. As noted:

"The lessons we get from Trotskyism and right opportunism teach us the necessity of disclosing the specific quality of the internal contradictions of any process."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 387

4. It provides the methodological basis for seeing historical perspectives and consciously influencing transitions between stages of development:

"The law... is a methodological implement of our knowledge that helps us to see the perspectives of historical and scientific changes and consciously to influence their transition from one stage to another."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 387

The practical application of this law was crucial in understanding revolutionary transitions:

"In the first synthetic stage of knowledge prepares one for the study of the parts, gives a general orientation for a further analytical investigation."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 241

Methodological Implications

The law of negation of negation has significant methodological implications for scientific and revolutionary practice:

"Every particular is by thousands of [relations] connected with other particulars — the sum-total of these relations determines the 'thing' as such, as a unity of defined properties. Thus the 'thing' is a product of the universal connection of things, a product of their relations."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 260

This understanding rejects both idealist and mechanistic approaches to knowledge:

"Proceeding from the ground that every object of knowledge in the last resort appears before us in its sensed form, they have exalted to an absolute, the discreteness, the specific character that belongs to it as a moment, and have in this way deprived the object of every internal necessary connection."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 255

The law provides a framework for understanding complex processes in nature and society:

"The establishment of such quantitative definitions, specific for each particular thing at each given moment of its development, has great practical and theoretical importance."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 276

It also helps avoid the error of demanding that new qualities must have existed previously:

"This avoids the error of demanding that if a new quality emerges at a given moment it must have emerged from somewhere. Where was it before it emerged? This puts the whole question wrongly. Emergence is treated like the emergence of a duck from beneath..."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 230

Conclusion

The law of negation of negation represents the spiral character of all development – not a simple repetition but a return to certain features of earlier stages at a qualitatively higher level. As Engels noted regarding plant development, the process yields "not only a greater quantity of seeds but also a qualitatively improved seed."

Understanding this law dialectically – as emerging from internal contradictions rather than external forces – is essential for comprehending the revolutionary transformation of nature, society, and thought. For the proletariat, mastery of this law provides the theoretical foundation for understanding the historical necessity of socialist revolution and the transition to communism.

As Lenin emphasized, this understanding prevents dialectics from becoming "a barren negation, a word-play" and instead makes it a powerful tool for revolutionary practice.

The law reveals that "the breaking of continuity, of the transition of quantity into quality" is not random but follows from the "unity and conflict of opposites, fundamental conception which alone gives the key to the understanding of leaps in evolution."

"With the constant test of practice, has made of the new philosophy a virile and sinewy intellectual instrument. Its outlines are rough and its details unfinished. It needs elaboration, expansion, much filling in of detail, a good deal of correction and revision, but in spite of this it is fundamentally an excellent illustration of its own thesis, the emergence on a higher level of a new evolutionary type, the fruit of the clash of opposites, the working out of older systems to exhaustion and yet to fulfilment..."

— A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, p. 255

See Also

• Dialectical materialism
• Law of the unity and the struggle of opposites
• Transformation of quantity into quality
• Dialectics
• Marxist philosophy
• Nodal line of measurements
• Spiral development

Further Reading

• Marx, Karl. Capital, Volume I. Chapter on "Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation."
• Engels, Friedrich. Anti-Dühring.
• Engels, Friedrich. Dialectics of Nature.
• Lenin, V.I. Philosophical Notebooks, particularly notes on Hegel's Logic.
• Stalin, J.V. Dialectical and Historical Materialism.