Development as Progress

p And so, we have ascertained that as a result of negation one or another contradiction is solved, the old is destroyed and the new arises. But does this bring development to an end? No, the rise of the new does not stop development. Anything new does not remain new for ever. While developing, it prepares the prerequisites for the rise of something newer and more progressive. And when these prerequisites and conditions ripen, negation again occurs. This is a negation of the negation, i.e., the negation of that which itself previously overcame the old; this is replacement of the new by something newer. The result of this second negation is again negated, overcome, and so on ad infinitum. Development thus appears as a countless number of successive negations, as an endless replacement or overcoming of the old by the new.

p Since each higher stage of development only negates what has become obsolete in the lower and at the same time accepts and augments the achievements of preceding stages, development as a whole becomes progressive. Progress is the general direction that is typical of dialectical development.

p Progress takes place in all spheres of reality. Let us outline the progressive development on our planet.

p We have said that gas-dust matter containing the simplest chemical substances was the primary material from which the planets of the solar system, including the Earth, were formed. In the course of nature’s development these substances became more and more complex. As a result living, organic nature arose. Living organisms also developed from the simple to the complex: from pre-cellular forms to the cell, from unicellular to multicellular and then to more complex animals, whose evolution led to the appearance of anthropoid beings and later to the appearance of man. With 113 the rise of man the process of social development began. The consecutive stages in the progressive development of society were: primitive-communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist, and socialist systems.

Constant acceleration of the rate of development is a primary distinction of the progress of society. The process of man’s development began approximately a million years ago. Since the history of contemporary man is limited to tens of thousands of years, we can imagine how slow the process of man’s emergence was. Progress in the slave-owning and feudal societies was faster, although it, too, dragged out for millenniums. Capitalism developed much faster than feudalism. With the transition to socialism, the rate of economic and cultural growth has been tremendously accelerated. In future when communism triumphs throughout the world, when mankind gets rid of capitalist relations retarding progress and gains the opportunity to concentrate all efforts on harnessing the forces of nature to improve conditions of life and the development of man, this growth will proceed at an unprecedented pace.

The Spiral-Like Character of Development

p The progressive character of development is the principal but not the only feature of the law of negation of the negation. This law describes development not as movement along a straight line, but as an extremely complicated, spiral-like process, with a definite repetition of stages already passed, a certain return to the past. “A development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis (’the negation of negation’), a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line.”  [113•* 

p The spiral-like character of development may be seen in various spheres of reality.

p Mendeleyev’s periodic law is perhaps one of its most striking manifestations in inorganic nature.

p In the periodic table chemical elements are arranged according to the magnitude of the positive charge of their atomic nucleus. They form periods and series in which we observe a certain repetition of properties. Let us take, for 114 example, the second period beginning with lithium. Lithium is an element with certain pronounced metallic properties, it is an alkali metal. As the charge of the nucleus in the elements following lithium grows, the properties characteristic of metals diminish and the non-metallic properties gradually increase. At the end of the period we find a typical metalloid (non-metal) fluorine and the inert gas neon. The next, third period again begins with an alkali metal (sodium) and ends with the non-metallic chlorine and the inert gas argon. The same is repeated in the subsequent periods where the metallic properties are negated by the non-metallic, and then in the following period the latter are again negated by the metallic properties. A seeming return to the old, the negation of negation, takes place.

p This system of elements can be roughly pictured as an ascending, unwinding spiral. A repetition of the properties occurs at increasing intervals (two elements in the first period, eight in the second period, and so on), and it proceeds on a qualitatively different basis at each stage: the elements of each new period have a bigger nuclear charge, a more complex structure and new properties.

p Spiral-like development occurs in the organic world as well. Engels illustrated the operation of this law by referring to the development of a grain of barley. From a grain, landing in favourable conditions, there grows a stalk; this represents a negation of the grain. Then, an ear with new grains grows on the stalk; the new grains are a negation of the stalk—the negation of the negation. At the same time there is a certain return to the starting point, the grain, but on a new basis. The new grains differ from the original grain not only quantitatively (10-20 instead of 1) but often also in terms of their properties. Here development proceeds in the form of a spiral. It begins with a single grain from which several grow, and these in turn give rise to an even larger number, and so on.

p Spiral-like development also takes place in social life. The primitive-communal system was the first form of social organisation. It was a classless society based on common ownership of the extremely primitive tools. Further development of production led to the negation of this system by the class, slave-owning society. Then slave-owning system gave way to feudalism which in turn was negated by 115 capitalism. In place of capitalism has come socialism, the first stage of communism. This is also a certain negation of the negation, a return to the initial point of development in a certain sense, but on an entirely different, qualitatively new basis. Negation of the negation means a certain periodicity, recurrence in the progressive development of matter. But we should stress that a repetition of past stages of development is not’ an actual return to the old, bu* a rise of the new which often bears only an outward, formal resemblance to the old and has a totally different essence. Sodium which opens the third period in Mendeleyev’s Table belongs, like lithium, to the group of alkali metals, but it has a more complex structure and its own intrinsic properties.

p Social property prevailing under socialism reproduces, in a certain sense, the communal property of primitive society, but reproduces it on an entirely new material and spiritual basjs, which can in no way be compared with the primitivecommunal system.

p And so, development occurs through the negation of the old by the new, the lower by the higher. Since the new, negating the old, retains and develops its positive features, development acquires a progressive character. At the same time development proceeds along a spiral, with repetition at higher stages of certain aspects and features of the lower stages.

Such is the essence of the dialectical law of negation of the negation.