a) The Concept of Necessity and Accident (Chance)

p The concept of necessity is developed on the basis of a further study of causality, particularly on the basis of understanding the necessary character of the cause-and-effect connection. It is not for nothing that some philosophers and natural scientists equate necessity with causality, though they are different concepts. Indeed, the concept of causality reflects the dependence of some forms of being upon others, their genetic connection. The concept of necessity, on the other hand, reflects the inevitability with which certain connections and properties appear under suitable conditions.

p Properties and connections are called necessary if they have the cause of their existence in themselves and are conditioned by the inner nature of the elements making up a phenomenon. Properties and connections for which the cause is to be found in other objects or phenomena, i.e. that are conditioned by external circumstances, are called accidental. Necessary aspects and connections inevitably materialise under corresponding conditions, whereas accidental properties and connections are not inevitable-they may or may not occur.

p The confrontation between the capitalist and the worker on the labour market, for instance, is a necessary phenomenon. It has been conditioned by the class essence of both, by their social standing. The worker cannot survive without selling 209 his labour to the capitalist, who cannot remain what he is without hiring workers, without exploiting them.

p The hiring of workers by capitalists is necessary, while the turning r»f a worker, for instance, into a capitalist is accidental, as this does not follow from the essence of the worker, but is due to some external circumstances.

Indeed, it does not follow from the workers’ social essence that they should turn into capitalists. On the contrary, according to this essence workers should always remain workers. If one of them becomes a capitalist, this is due to an accidental concurrence of circumstances.

b) A Critique
of Idealist and Metaphysical Views
of Necessity and Accident (Chance)

p Subjective idealists do not recognise the objective existence of necessity. It is, they say, a characteristic feature of consciousness, of thinking.

p Kant, for instance, sought to prove the absence of necessity in nature. In his view, necessity is a form of thinking introduced by man into nature and the world of phenomena. Mach thought necessity to be a logical connection. According to Karl Pearson, an English philosopher and mathematician, necessity exists only in the realm of concepts. The modern German bourgeois philosopher Giinther Jacoby deduces necessity from the logical connection of concepts. His reasoning is as follows: systems and their constituent 210 elements existing in the outside world are in a state of repulsion. They are devoid of any binding identity and necessary interconnection. The latter exists in the identity of a system of concepts, through which we are trying to reflect a particular system of the world. Essentially, Jacoby’s way of reasoning as regards necessity is a repetition of the Kantian viewpoint.

p Some philosophers declare necessity to be a conventional postulate accepted by people as a reference point to facilitate explanation of the world. There is nothing in nature, they maintain, to correspond to this postulate; nature does not have to behave to suit us.

p If there were nothing in reality corresponding to the reference points man uses in the process of cognition, he would not be able to explain, let alone change, a single phenomenon. His practical activities, however, show that man’s notions of the necessity of certain connections in things correctly reflect reality and are, for this reason, reference points for cognising and transforming reality.

p As distinct from idealists, materialists recognise the objective existence of necessity and regard it as one of the universal properties of material entities and their connections. As regards logical necessity, it is, materialists say, a picture, a copy, a reflection of the relevant aspects and connections of the outside world.

p While all materialists recognise the objective existence of necessity, not all of them recognise the objectivity of accident. Some of them believe 211 it to have been invented by people to conceal their ignorance of certain matters. When a man, they say, does not know the cause of a certain phenomenon and cannot explain it, he declares it accidental. This was the view held by Democritus, Spinoza and Holbach, among others. Some thinkers persist to this day in upholding a similar view. As we cannot foresee some phenomena, they argue, we are inclined to consider them accidental. For a person who knew everything, accident would not exist as something unforeseen. Within the confines of human knowledge, these philosophers assert, the category of accident is a brief, minimised expression of the fundamental insufficiency of the explanation of phenomena.

p As a rule, rejecting the objectivity of accident is connected with the universality of the causeand-effect connection and its necessary character. If every phenomenon, the exponents of this viewpoint say, has its cause necessarily bringing it to life, all the phenomena that exist in the world are necessary. There are no accidents and can be none.

p The idea of the universality of causality and the necessary nature of the cause-and-effect connection is correct. This, however, does not mean that all phenomena existing in the world are necessary, and that there is no chance. It is true that every phenomenon is connected with the cause that engenders it, but it is not this connection that makes it necessary. The ruin of a harvest by hail is a necessary result of the impact of ice on plants, but this phenomenon is not considered 212 necessary. Neither is the death of a man overrun by a car, although it is the inevitable result of the blow of a certain force the man received upon collision with the car. The necessity of a phenomenon stems from the necessity of the cause itself, not from the necessary character of the cause- andeffect connection, nor from the fact that it necessarily follows from its cause.

p Causes may be necessary or accidental. As noted above, the interaction of phenomena or of the elements making up one and the same phenomenon is the cause of these phenomena. But these phenomena or elements may encounter each other and begin to interact owing to their inner nature, as happens, for instance, when the proletariat and the bourgeoisie meet on the labour market, or they may hit upon each other and begin to interact by accident, due to some circumstance. The hail or the traffic accident referred to above are such examples. It does not follow from the inner nature of plants that they should be exposed to ice during their blossoming or ripening periods, nor does it follow from the inner nature of man that he should necessarily be hit by a car. Both phenomena have been caused by the concurrence of external circumstances.

Thus, the necessary character of the cause- andeffect connection does not exclude the objective existence of chance. The latter is a universal form of being, just as necessity is.

c) The Interconnection
Between Necessity and Accident (Chance)

p Necessity and accident are a universal form of being; they do not exist separately, but form an intrinsic unity and are the moments or aspects of one and the same thing. The one-to-one ratio, for instance, of sodium and chlorine atoms in a molecule of sodium chloride is necessary, inasmuch as it is determined by the inner nature of this substance. But the fact that a given atom of sodium interacted with a particular atom of chlorine and formed this very molecule is accidental, the result of certain external circumstances. Or take another example: the growth of a plant from a grain in a spot of fertile soil is necessary, but the fact that the grain was planted in this very spot is accidental. Other circumstances, such as which plants grow nearby and which pests threaten it, are also accidental.

p Being intrinsically connected with necessity, accident (chance) is a form through which necessity manifests itself and is supplemented. Necessity finds its way through a maze of accidental deviations which, although expressing it as a tendency, introduce into a concrete process or phenomenon many new aspects which do not follow from necessity, but are conditioned by external circumstances. Take, for instance, a necessary connection, such as the dependence of a commodity’s price on its value-the amount of socially necessary labour expended on its production. This connection manifests itself in exchange operations only in the form of a tendency, through constant 214 deviations in one direction or another. These deviations, however, being an expression of the dependence of a commodity’s price on its value, supplement the above necessary connection. In particular, they also express the dependence of the commodity’s price on the supply-and-demand ratio established on the market, i.e. on the concrete conditions of the sale and purchase of commodities.

As a phenomenon moves and develops, the accidental may turn into the necessary, and vice versa. Take this example: subsistence economy was dominant in primitive communal society. Each community produced its own means of subsistence and distributed them equally among its members. All this was the necessary effect of a low level of development of the productive forces, which excluded any chance for producing a surplus of material goods over and above the producers’ direct requirements. Under such conditions, an exchange of one product for another was exceptionally rare, an accident conditioned by external circumstances, rather than by the inherent nature of the social system of the time. Later, however, as the productive forces developed, the possibility arose of producing a greater quantity of goods than was required for the direct producer. This led to a growing exchange of one type of product for another. As private ownership of the means of production emerged, this exchange became a necessary aspect of a new economic system arising from the ruins of primitive society. As for subsistence economy, at a 215 certain stage in history it became totally extinct and accidental. Thus, in the development process the accidental becomes the necessary, and vice versa.