Proletarian Logic

The starting point, or rather, the pivotal centre of our logic is the conception of the universe as being a oneness, a unity, an eternal, absolute truth, all embracing, infinite and unlimited. It is impossible to conceive of anything outside the universe. To attempt it would not only be useless, but folly. The parts composing the universe partake of its infinite nature, i.e., of existence. A mahogany chair has the characteristics of all chairs, regardless of where it is found, on earth or in the heavens above. Yet, at the same time, it is finite. The chair is built, wears, breaks and decays into other forms. We cannot know all there is to know about the mahogany chair. We can analyze and dissect it to the smallest particle, but still there is more to find out about it. However, we can know its classification and function. Though the intellect does not fathom all, yet it is true understanding. We know that it is a chair, not a bed or a table. Still further, we know it is a mahogany chair, not an oak or an ash. All things existing are attributes of the universe, each one being infinite and true but not the whole truth. They are all relatively true, i.e., parts of truth; but only the universe itself is the absolute truth — the whole truth. Within this absolute universe, everything is interrelated and in a process of change, e.g., the evolution of the earth from its original gaseous mass, unable to support life, to its present form with its “wonderful civilization.”

The early materialists of the 19th Century strove at understanding by cause and effect. Dietzgen well illustrates the limitations of this theory by his example of the stone. When we throw a stone in the water, ripples result. Were these ripples caused by the stone hitting the water? The elasticity of the water is just as much a cause, for were the stone to strike the ground, no ripples would result. But a knowledge of the general and particular nature of the water and the stone explained the phenomenon. By using the apparatus of the mind correctly, we come to understand that the world unity is multiform and all multiformity a unity.
Dietzgen admirably states the proletarian character of modern logic in the concluding paragraph in the 11th of his 24 “Letters on Logic” to his son Eugene. Our logic, which has for its object the truth of the universe, is a science of universal understanding. It teaches that the interrelation of all things is truth and life, is the genuine, right, good and beautiful. All the sublime moving the heart of man, all the sweet stirrings in his breast, is the universal nature or universe.

But the vexing question still remains. What about the negative, the ugly and the evil? What about error, pretense, standstill, disease, death and the devil? True, the world is vain, evil, ugly. But these are mere accidental phenomena, only forms and appendages of the world. Its eternity, truth, goodness and beauty is substantial, existing, positive. Its negative is like the darkness which serves to make the light more brilliant, so that it may overcome the dark and shine more brightly. The spokesmen of the ruling classes are not open to such a sublime optimism, because they have the pessimistic duty of perpetuating misery and servitude.

Rab from The Western Clarion, August 1918.