Dialectics, nature and the

dialectics of nature
Camilla Royle

n 1873 Karl Marxs collaborator Frederick Engels started work on an

ambitious volume entitled Dialectics of Nature.1 He described in a letter
to Marx how, while lying in bed one morning, he had concluded that
the natural sciences were really all about matter in motion. He also
asked his friend to keep quiet about the idea so that no lousy Englishman
may steal it.2 Engels was starting to spell out the relevance of a Marxist
approach to his own extensive studies in the natural sciences. Writing
up his ideas was a project that he would keep returning to over the next
decade but ultimately never get a chance to complete.
The notion of a dialectics of nature has remained controversial ever
since. Dialectics, as applied to the study of society, is contested, with many
interpretations of what dialectics is and what it is supposed to be used for.
But various theorists who are in favour of understanding human societies
dialectically have rejected the notion that it is also applicable to nature.
The debates about the dialectics of nature raise further questions about the
type of philosophy Marxism is and whether it can help us understand more
fundamental aspects of the world we live in. It also depends on what we
might mean by naturea subject just as contentious as dialectics.
1: Engels, 1939. Thanks to Paul Blackledge, Alex Callinicos, Joseph Choonara and Alex
Loftus for their invaluable advice and comments on an earlier version of this article.
2: Quoted in Sheehan, 1993, p24.

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Engels and the science of the 19th century

Engels was arguably one of the most impressive self-taught intellectuals
of his (or any) day. He taught himself not just about social science and
philosophy but about anthropology, chemistry, mathematics and the arts.
He lived through a time when there were revolutionary changes in all of
these fields. Perhaps most notably, Charles Darwin had published On the
Origin of Species in 1859 demonstrating that species of organisms, rather than
being fixed and separate entities, are able to evolve into new and radically different forms. Both Marx and Engels read Darwins work and saw it
as evidence of a conception of nature that changes through timeat least
analogous to their own ideas about historical change in human societies.3
But it wasnt just biology that was revolutionised in the 19th century.
In physics James Prescott Joule had shown that heat can be transferred into
mechanical energy and vice versa. In geology Charles Lyell had discovered
the continual creation and destruction of strata within the earths crust.4
Alex Callinicos argues that Engelss insights must be seen in the context
of real developments in the physical sciences at the time when he was
writing. Science had previously been based on a modelrelated to
Newtons lawswhere mechanical processes are reversible in time. In the
19th century science started to take into account the nature of irreversible
processes such as evolution where nature does not just change but develops.5
Marxism has helped further our understanding of scientists and their
role within society. However, Engels wasnt just interested in the social position of sciencehe also analysed debates within science. And his writings on
the subject make it clear that he was himself well informed enough to take part
in those debates. Some of Engelss insights have since been proved correct.
In The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man Engels argued
that early humans erect posture freed up their hands and allowed them to
develop tool use, which took place alongside the development of larger brains.
This idea has been praised by scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould as an early
example of what is now referred to as gene-culture coevolution.6
3: Marx and Engels famously described Darwins theories as providing, in the field of
natural history, the basis for our viewsFoster, 2000, p197. Although the claim that Marx
proposed to dedicate Capital to Darwin is, unfortunately, false, the persistence of this myth
shows that it is plausible enough that people still believe it (see Blackledge, 2002, p11).
4: Sheehan, 1993. The young Marx was also trained in geology having studied under
Johann Steininger, who was himself a student of Abraham Werneran early exponent of the
then radical idea that the earth has a historyFoster, 2000, p117.
5: Callinicos, 2006, pp210-211.
6: Foster, 2000, p203.

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However, the idea of a dialectics of nature remains controversialand

this isnt helped by the fact that Engels never lived long enough to finish
writing the book or to defend his project. In March 1883 Karl Marx died.
Engels put his own work aside to take on the formidable task of preparing
volumes 2 and 3 of Capital for publication. But the manuscript of Dialectics of
Nature survived and was published in Russian in 1925 and in English in 1939.
J B S Haldane was responsible for the English version. He was an eminent
scientist responsible for advancing our understanding of how evolution relates
to genetics, but also a committed Marxist and member of the Communist
Party. Throughout his life he became progressively more convinced of the
explanatory power of a dialectical approach, arguing in his preface to Dialectics
of Nature that had it been published earlier it would have saved him a lot of
muddled thinking.7 But publishing Engelss work wasnt an easy task: it
was basically a series of notes. Engels may have intended to edit or even to
leave out sections of the work.
Is it useful to call nature dialectical?
To discuss whether Engelss ideas have any merit we need to also have
some idea of what dialectics is and what it is supposed to be used for. There
is little point learning about dialectics if it is just a scholastic exerciseif
we learn about it in books and at conferences but then instantly forget it
afterwards because it has no relevance to everyday practice. Marx agreed, in
an afterword to Capital, that materialist dialectics is essentially a philosophy
for people who want to change the world. It is in its essence both critical
and revolutionary.8 Marx based many of his ideas on those of the German
idealist philosopher Georg Hegel, who lost his sympathy for revolutionary
movements, especially towards the end of his life. However, I would argue
that the materialist, Marxist version of dialectics only makes sense when
seen as central to the project of revolutionary change.
For many theorists the most important aspects of dialectics are change
and contradiction. It allows us to grasp the nature of a world that is constantly changing, an element that John Molyneux highlights and deals with
in his recent guide to Marxist philosophy.9 Dialectics can be called a critical philosophy because it calls into question the idea that our world has
always remained the same and will carry on unchanged into the future. But
it also argues that change is not always gradualthat things can progress by
7:
8:
9:

Sheehan, 1993, pp316-326.

Marx, 1976, p15.
Molyneux, 2012.

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leaps10what might be described as revolutionary change. In Dance of the

Dialectic Bertell Ollman likens trying to understand this world to trying to
jump on to a moving carwould you want to try to jump into a car if you
were blindfolded and did not know what direction the car was moving in
and how fast? Ollman argues that the world around us is changing and we
need theory that can understand that.11 Most theories take it for granted at
the outset that we can start by looking at the world as if it is static and then
try to explain any changes that we see. For dialectical thinkers the reverse is
true. Change is the default state of the universe; it is stasis that is unusual and
requires explanation.
The Marxist geographer David Harvey has also argued for several
years that the method he uses in his work as a social theorist is a dialectical
one. Harveys approach is perhaps most easily explained by looking at what
it is not. He opposes Cartesian reductionism, which is based on the assumption that we can study the world by dividing it up into separate things.
Cartesians argue that the parts have their own properties that exist independently of the whole. We can analyse each in isolation and then look at
how they relate.12 So a geographer trying to understand cities on a Cartesian
basis might look at London (perhaps defined as everything within the M25
motorway). They could ask who lives in London, what kind of housing
they live in, what kind of industries are present in different parts of the
city and many other questions. They could then go on to do the same for
another city, maybe New York. Only once they understood the attributes
of each city as a separate entity would they attempt to compare the two.
A dialectical thinker would turn their sights to the processes that constitute those cities, processes such as migration into and out of cities, or the
growth of neoliberalism in both the US and Britain. Cities are then considered not as discrete things but as complexes of processes. Harveys way of
thinking questions whether we can consider a city without taking its context
into account. To look at immigration into cities we also need to understand
what is happening in the places outside the city where immigrants come
from. But it also draws attention to the similarities between citiesso immigration in both London and New York might affect both in similar ways.
Harveys dialectical approach turns our common sense way of thinking on its
head. He is effectively saying that there is no such thing as a thing. What
10: See John Molyneuxs article in the previous issue of International SocialismMolyneux, 2013.
11: Ollman, 2003 (although the moving car metaphor had previously been used by Louis
Althusserthanks to Alex Callinicos for pointing this out).
12: Harvey, 1996.

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we think of as solid objects are actually made up of processes. Different processes can come together temporarily to produce things but these are always
transitory. Things are always in the process of being created or destroyedall
that is solid melts into air. In this approach a thing could be an idea or concept
or something concretely existing like a city. Engels also argued something
similar in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy: The
world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but
as a complex of processes, in which the things...go through an uninterrupted
change of coming into being and passing away.13
For Marx, and for many of his followers, dialectics is about contradiction as well as change. The two are related, internal contradictions drive
change forward and lead to the dynamism that we observe. Everything
under capitalism seems, and is, contradictory.14 However, Harvey argues
that thinking in terms of contradictions is compatible with his own
approach. If things are made up of shifting complexes of processes it stands
to reason that some of those processes will be in opposition to each other.15
Take the example of the Labour Party in Britaina bourgeois organisation but one that maintains a mainly working class membership. To call it
bourgeois and working class sounds like a contradictory thing to say. This
is because it does refer to a contradiction. The key is to look at the diverse
processes that caused the Labour Party to come into existence. At the time
the welfare state was becoming increasingly important to sections of capital,
while workers were looking towards reformist ideas and reformist parties.
The needs of workers and of capitalists are in opposition to each other
but were able to coalesce at a particular point in historyin this case to
form a very contradictory organisation. This approach to the question of
contradiction recognises the real presence of contradictions but looks for
the concrete mechanisms by which they develop, through the processes
by which things come into and out of existence. It is not enough simply to
state that everything is contradictory without asking why.
The dialectical biologists
If dialectics helps Marxists understand something about human society
could it also be useful for natural scientistspeople trying to understand
very different aspects of the world? Few natural scientists have explicitly
argued that they are doing dialectical science, but there are a few notable
13: Engels, 1947, p52, emphasis in original.
14: Ollman, 2003.
15: Harvey, 1996.

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exceptions. In 1985 Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin published a

collection of essays entitled The Dialectical Biologist. Both were (and still are)
distinguished biology professors at Harvard in the US. As the name of the
book suggests, Levins and Lewontin avoided saying that they were trying to
apply dialectics to biology.16 This is not the dialectics of biology as they are
not philosophers approaching biology from the outside. Instead they argue
that they had adopted it as a method and incorporated it into their practice
as biologists. The book was dedicated to Engels, who got it wrong a lot of
the time but got it right where it mattered.17 Readers familiar with Levins
and Lewontin will be aware that between them they have a wide range
of interests. They criticise some of the statistical methods used in biology,
take on biological determinism (the notion that human behaviour is purely
explainable by genetics) and advocate the rights of Latin American migrant
workers in the US.
However, one of the most innovative lines of reasoning Levins and
Lewontin develop is what they refer to as the idea of the organism as both
subject and object of evolution.18 Lewontin in particular points out that
classical approaches within evolutionary biology have viewed organisms
as the passive objects of forces beyond their control. Those forces may
be either internal to the organism or external.19 Darwin saw organisms as
responding to changes in their environment. Individuals within a population vary in their ability to survive and reproduce but it takes external
pressures from the environment to act on that variation and determine
which individuals will be the most successful. Those individuals pass on
their genes to the next generation. When evolution is explained in this
way the environment is seen as presenting a species with a particular set of
problems that it must find a solution to through a process of trial and error.
For example, the environment of the humpback whale is cold and full of
nutritious krill and small fish. It solves the problem of how to live in this
environment by evolving blubber to survive the icy waters, a huge mouth
and some impressive techniques for catching its food. The job of a large,
cold-water-swimming krill eater is what ecologists refer to as a niche.
Where classical Darwinists see organisms as responding to forces
16: This discussion of the role of dialectics in biology is not intended to imply that there
is no role for dialectical thought in other areas of science such as physics. I chose biology
because of the particular influence of Levins and Lewontin and also because it is the subject I
am most familiar with. For a useful overview of physics see McGarr, 1994.
17: Levins and Lewontin, 1985.
18: Levins and Lewontin, 1985; Lewontin, 1982.
19: Levins and Lewontin, 1985, pp85-106, see also Clark and York, 2005.

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acting on them from the outside, genetic determinists look from the other
direction. They argue that plants and animals respond to internal forces
originating from their genes. Richard Dawkins has repeatedly compared living things to robots: We are survival machinesrobot vehicles
blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.20
In this view of biology organisms, including humans, develop along a
predetermined path decided by the information coded in our genes.
This is not to say that either approach is wrong, or that they are
incompatible with each other. Dawkins has consistently tried to defend
evolution against creationists. But both approaches, the one emphasising
external factors and the other emphasising internal ones, only look at part
of the picture. Levins and Lewontin argue that such approaches ignore the
role that the organism itself plays in its own evolution.21 The organism is
seen as a passive site where genes and environment interact. The dialectical
biologists contend that an organism is also, in a way, not just the object
but the subject of its own evolution.22 Organisms define a niche around
themselves as they determine which aspects of their immediate surroundings are most relevant. For example, a woodpecker might find the bark of
a tree relevant but not the stones at the base of the tree. Other birds that
use those stones to smash snail shells will find them relevant and treat them
as part of their environment.23 We cannot know what a niche is in the
absence of the organism that inhabits it. There was never a job vacancy for
something that lives in cold water just waiting for a humpback whale to
evolve to fill it. That particular niche developed in a relationship with the
evolution of the whale.
Levins and Lewontin have also drawn attention to the numerous
examples of ways in which organisms act on their environment as well as
just responding to it. Beavers build dams to make their immediate surroundings more habitable for themselves; plant roots change the composition of
the surrounding soil so that they can extract nutrients more easily. Living
things have changed the planet on a spectacular scale, even altering the
atmosphere irreversibly by adding oxygen. We are not merely objects to be
acted on by external forces. Levins and Lewontin study the ways in which
organisms actively relate to the environment around them implying that
neither organism nor environment can be understood without reference to
20:
21:
22:
23:

Dawkins, 1976, p.ix.

Levins and Lewontin, 1985, pp87-89.
Levins and Lewontin, 1985, p89.
Levins and Lewontin, 1985, p99.

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the other. This is in direct contrast to Cartesian approaches that might try
to look at an organism in isolation. Furthermore, this relationship develops
through time as the organism growsanimals and plants have a history.
Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge also applied a dialectical
understanding of processes that develop in a disjointed rather than smooth
and gradual way. In their theory of punctuated equilibrium evolution is
characterised by long periods of stasis interspersed with instances where
new species evolve very quickly.24 Gould admitted that the theory was
influenced by Marxist philosophy and argued that dialectical thinking
should be taken more seriously by Western scholars.25 But despite the
close similarity between punctuated equilibrium and dialectical insights
about gradualness and leaps it has remained remarkably resilient as a theory.
Steven Rose, a neuroscientist and popular writer on the philosophy of
biology, cites the dialectical tradition as one of his influences.26 His argument that complex systems have properties which cannot be explained by
looking at each part of the system in isolation does resemble some of the
insights of dialectical thinkers like Harvey.
Arguments against a dialectics of nature
However, not all Marxists have accepted the idea that there are dialectical processes in nature in the way that the dialectical biologists have done.
Engelss views on the subject have attracted controversy ever since Dialectics
of Nature was first published, with his ideas distorted by both enemies and
many would be friends.27 Perhaps part of the confusion is due to Engelss
formulation of the three laws of dialectics. These lawsoriginally borrowed from the German idealist philosopher Hegelwere supposed by
Engels to describe processes in both the social and natural worlds. The
laws are the interpenetration of opposites, the transformation of quantity
to quality and the negation of the negation. We often use examples from
science and nature to explain these three laws. For the law of transformation of quantitative change into qualitative people often mention that water
turns into steam once its temperature reaches 100C. A quantitative change
in temperature leads to a qualitative change from one state to another.
There is also the one about the chicken and the egg. When a chick hatches
from an egg it destroys that eggnegates itbut when it grows into a hen
24:
25:
26:
27:

104

Eldredge and Gould, 1972.

Gasper, 2002.
Rose, 1997.
McGarr, 1994.

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that negates the chick so this is the negation of the negation.

By choosing these particular examples we often take it for granted that
dialectical processes exist in nature. But this assumption is rejected by many
Marxist commentators. The triviality of some of these examples is one reason
that some have questioned the notion of a dialectics of nature. Ian Birchall
rightly points out that making a revolution is...rather more complex than
making a cup of teaor even than breeding chickens.28 The dialectics of
nature has also been criticised as an attempt to find convenient evidence for a
more or less arbitrary set of laws. It should be possible to find evidence in the
natural world for laws such as the negation of the negation if you look hard
enough and are willing to be selective about which examples you choose.
This led Jean-Paul Sartre to comment that the only dialectic one will find in
nature is a dialectic that one has put there oneself.29
Some argue that Engels was fundamentally mistaken for suggesting
it. They say that he did not understand Marxs dialectical method or had
corrupted it by extending its reach beyond social or historical questions.
George Lichtheim, writing in the early 1960s when many Marxist academics
were seeking to rescue Marxism from associations with Stalinism, argued
that Engels was the problem. For Lichtheim and others on the left the
idea that there are laws in nature was irreconcilable with socialism from
below. Laws imply that natureand consequently human historyfollows
a predetermined course. And if history is predetermined there is no role in
it for the conscious action of the working class. If we try to distil dialectics
into a set of three laws we risk breaking its ties with the concrete reality it is
meant to stem from. Applying laws to nature would suggest a dualist distinction between ideas and reality where one determines the other. How can
this be reconciled with a conception of Marxism that argues for a unity of
theory and practice? In the 1960s and 1970s it became accepted among left
wing academics of various tendencies that Engelss ideas were at the root of
the Stalinist interpretation of socialismthat is, as something that could be
handed down to workers by an elite at the top of society. Some have even
cited Engelss comments on nature to dismiss his contribution to the Marxist
tradition entirely.30 More recently writers on gender, for example, have similarly found it much easier to accept Marxs nuanced position, whereas
Engelss view is apparently scientistic and deterministic.31
28:
29:
30:
31:

Birchall, 1983.
Sartre, 2004, p31.
See Rees, 1994.
Brown, 2012, p211.

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However, it seems unlikely that Marx and Engels disagreed fundamentally with each other on questions of science and nature during their
lifetimes. In later life they employed a kind of division of labour in which
Engels dealt with science while Marx was concentrating on writing Capital.
But they visited each other often, especially after Engels moved to London
in 1870, and would have regularly discussed their respective work in detail.
There is nothing in the written correspondence between Marx and Engels
to suggest that they disagreed. This is not to say that Marx was ignorant
when it came to science. In fact he often chose examples from chemistry and
physics to illustrate points in Capital. He uses the example of elliptical motion
in physics to explain contradiction32 and refers to organic chemistry. Marx
explains that making quantitative changes to the chemical structure of a compoundadding carbon, oxygen and hydrogen in different proportionscan
lead to those substances gaining qualitatively different properties.33
It is true though that Engelss Dialectics of Nature was influential within
the Soviet Union after it was published there in 1925. The version of dialectics the Stalinists employed was tied to a rigid application of Engelss
three laws. The laws were repeated by Stalin and his followers accepted
the concept of a dialectics of nature, completely uncritically, it seems.
Professors who had previously been leaders of institutions found themselves
replaced by junior colleagues who had professed their allegiance to dialectical materialism, or a Stalinist interpretation of it. Many formerly respected
scientists found themselves imprisoned and even killed. Trofim Lysenko,
who rejected genetics as a bourgeois deviation, was appointed head of the
Institute of Genetics. These attacks on science were part of a wider drive
towards Bolshevisation in all areas of intellectual life. It was partly an
effort to force science to catch up to the very particular needs of the Soviet
Union to maintain itself as a global power. There was no longer time for
pure science. Scientists had to justify their work by demonstrating its relevance to Stalins Five Year Plans for economic growth. But it was also part
of an ideological effort to justify the existence of the Soviet Union, both to
its own citizens and to potential sympathisers in the West, as a society run
completely in the interests of the proletariat.34
So Engels may have unwittingly played a role in this appalling attempt
to try to force science to be more dialectical. But taking a dogmatic
32: Marx, 1976, p70; Weston, 2012.
33: Marx, 1976, p215.
34: Sheehan, 1993. The proletarian science episode and Lysenko in particular are described
by the historian of science Loren Graham (1993) and also by Levins and Lewontin, 1985,
pp163-196.

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approach to dialectics was the last thing Engels intended. And, of course,
Dialectics of Nature was an unfinished worka series of notes that Engels
might well have revised considerably if he had published it himself. Helena
Sheehan, in Marxism and the Philosophy of Science, argues that his work on the
subject should be viewed more as a pointer to areas that required further
study rather than the final word on the matter.35 This position is also suggested by Engelss own comments on science, again in Ludwig Feuerbach.
Here he discusses the potential useful contribution of Hegels philosophy,
from which he derived the three laws, and rejects some conservative interpretations of Hegel. Engels states: The whole dogmatic content of the
Hegelian system is declared to be absolute truth, in contradiction to his dialectical method, which dissolves all dogmatism. Thus his revolutionary side
becomes smothered beneath the overgrowth of the conservative side.36
Here it seems he is saying that Hegels laws should themselves be
left open to being evaluated and reinterpreted. They are not a fixed set of
rules. However, this is not to say that he intended dialectics to be purely
a method. It also seems clear that, at least as far as Engels was concerned,
ways of thinking about the world cannot be separated from the real nature
of the world we are intending to study.
Lukcs and the dialectics of society
The work of the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukcs was a particularly
powerful tool in the argument against a dialectics of nature. Lukcs was concerned with the practical application of Marxist philosophy, with dialectics
as a vehicle for revolution. Lukcss ideas famously changed throughout his
life and it would be impossible to cover his thought in detail here. However,
his early approach to dialectical philosophy comes through most clearly
in his classic work History and Class Consciousness, which was published in
1923 while he was in exile in Vienna. Lukcs had been a leading member
of Bela Kuns Communist Party, although the left was dominated by the
much larger social democratic party. He was forced to flee Hungary after the
country was taken over by Admiral Horthy who banned the Communists
and executed and imprisoned thousands of their supporters.37
Lukcs argued that we cannot immediately grasp the real nature of the
world around us. We live and think in a bourgeois society that distorts our
ideas. Under capitalism many of the things most essential to us take the form
35: Sheehan, 1993.
36: Engels, 1947, p16.
37: Rees, 1998.

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of commodities that are exchangeable for money. The material properties

of commodities, and their social origins, are therefore obscured as only one
property becomes relevant: their price on the market. Marx argued that capitalist exchange of commodities follows its own logicand can give a sense
of inevitability. As Lukcs put it in History and Class Consciousness:
Objectively a world of objects and relations between things springs into being
(the world of commodities and their movements on the market). The laws
governing these objects are indeed gradually discovered by man, but even so
they confront him as invisible forces that generate their own power.38

So we think of the capitalist system as being made up of a series of

objects which relate to each other but this obscures a much more complex
reality. Lukcs argued that the working class is uniquely able to understand
the capitalist system in the way that the bourgeois class cannot. This is because
we are ourselves central to keeping capitalism running. We sell our labour
power to capitalists for a price, so our ability to labour is, in a way, also objectified and turned into a commodity. The proletariat do not just observe how
capitalism works from the outside but act within capitalism. Lukcs followed
Marx in seeing theory as a tool of class struggle and inseparable from practice:
materialist dialectic is a revolutionary dialectic,39 a way of understanding the
processes at work in the society we live in but also a tool for changing that
society. Lukcs was focused on the role of the working class in uncovering
the reality of capitalist society. But he had little to say on the subject of nature,
showing an almost exclusive concern with the dialectic in society.40 Aspects
of the natural worldanimals, plants, stones, etcdont take on the same
unique role as both subject and object of history that the working class does
in capitalist society, according to Lukcs. They dont engage in class struggle.
Lukcs is often assumed to have dismissed the concept of a dialectics of nature entirely, an assumption which owes a lot to the following
passage in History and Class Consciousness: The misunderstanding which
arises from Engelss presentation of dialectics rests essentially on the fact
that Engelsfollowing Hegels false exampleextends the dialectical
method also to the knowledge of nature.41 However, John Rees questions whether Lukcs completely rejected the idea of a dialectics of nature.
38:
39:
40:
41:

108

Lukcs, 1971, p87.

Lukcs, 1971, p2.
Rees, 1998, p252.
Lukcs, 1971, p24.

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Lukcs criticised Engels for equating the methods by which we study society
with those by which we study nature. For Lukcs we cannot approach the
study of society as a distanced, objective observer in the same way as we
(supposedly) approach nature. We are part of society so we observe it from
within. It does not necessarily follow that there is no dialectics of nature.
However, any dialectical processes occurring in nature without the conscious intervention of humans would be different from that observed in
society.42 It is also worth remembering that in 1923 Lukcs would not have
read Dialectics of Nature and so wasnt responding to that text in particular; it
had yet to be published.
What do we mean by nature?
Later commentators have questioned whether it is possible to cordon off
human society and treat it as separate from the natural world as Lukcs
appears to have done. Antonio Gramsci said of Lukcs that if his assertion presupposes a dualism between nature and man he is wrong. 43 To
assess whether there is anything in the idea of a dialectics of nature it would
seem that we need to at least agree on some idea of what nature actually means. This question is often left out of such arguments. The debate is
generally focused on what dialectics isand this remains disputed. But the
concept of nature is just as difficult to pin down. Raymond Williams refers
to it as perhaps the most complex word in the language.44 So coming
up with a definitive definition would certainly be beyond the scope of this
article. But we can at least question some of the more reactionary assumptions about what the word nature refers to.
Some of the most insightful ideas about nature have been developed
within my own discipline, geography. This is perhaps due to the history of
the subject. Geographers were traditionally the people travelling the world
observing different human societies and suggesting how the environments
people live in might influence those societies. For example early geographers
propagated the racist myth that people from hotter climates tended to be
poorer because the climactic conditions encourage laziness. Today (most)
geographers are more critical of the notion that the environment influences
society in such a simple and unidirectional way. But the interest in the relationship between society and nature remains. Geography is often described

42: Rees, 1998, p252.

43: Gramsci, 1971, p448.
44: Williams, 1976, p219.

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as a bridging discipline, part social science, part natural science.45

One of the most prominent geographers to take an explicitly Marxist
approach to these questions was the late Neil Smith (whose doctoral thesis
was published as a book: Uneven Development).46 Smith argued that many
of our ideas about nature can be linked to the ideology of class society,
and of capitalism as a specific form of class society. His work aims to add
substance to the partial insights Marx left as to his approach to nature. We
tend to see nature as something external to humanity. The natural world
is the wilderness beyond the edges of our cities, a paradise untainted by
human intervention. These images of nature are central to the ideology
of many deep green environmental thinkers. Of course, lots of people
who consider themselves environmentalists are also deeply concerned for
the welfare of humans. However, the ideology of protecting an external
nature can be politically unhelpful. It has fostered the belief that the needs
of humans are in opposition to those of the natural world that can be seen
in the persistent argument that we need to limit human population growth
in order to protect nature. This is demonstrated by David Attenboroughs
recent remarks that humans are a plague on the earth.47 The ideal of a
nature that can be kept separate from human society is also upheld by people
with much less interest in protecting it. Technocratic thinkers argue that we
can take control over nature. They suggest that we can solve all our environmental problems by developing ever more sophisticated technology. We
can run our societies based on the same economic rules as before and simply
treat nature as an externality to be managed.48 Whether nature is a paradise
or a resource for us to exploit, it is still defined by being external to society.
These approaches are all predicated on this nature-society dualism.
Dualism also fosters the idea of an unchanging or universal nature.
Bourgeois thinkers argue that as nature exists independently of society then
whats natural must never change. Appeals to the authority of nature can
be used to justify some of the most conservative ideas about society. Human
nature can never change. Institutions such as marriage, as an exclusively
heterosexual endeavour, are also seen as part of the natural order of things.
Capitalism stalks the globe looking for new ways to destroy natural resources,
but its apologists insist that their way of life must be preserved for eternity.
If bourgeois thought sees nature as an untouched wilderness this only
45:
46:
47:
48:

110

Castree, 2000.
Smith, 1990.
Gray, 2013.
Castree, 2000.

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serves to obscure the real situation. Human beings dont just exist in the
world but also impact on that world. Different types of society treat nature
in very different ways. Capitalism tends to treat every aspect of nature as
something that could potentially become a commodity for exchange on the
market. There is no natural world outside its influence. Even by thinking
about nature we are compelled to think about it in a particular way based
on the needs of whatever type of society we live in. But generally we are
not just contemplating the environment but finding new ways to turn it
into a source of profit or a dumping ground for our waste. Smith argued
that in the form of a price tag, every use-value is delivered an invitation to
the labour process, and capitalby its nature the quintessential socialiteis
driven to make good on every invitation.49
This has become strikingly clear with the rise of carbon markets,
which effectively put a monetary value on the air we breathe. For Smith
and others the theory of the production of nature has been an antidote to
dualist assumptions. To argue that nature is produced doesnt mean that we
humans literally create aspects of it; we dont build mountains. However, we
do literally produce new organisms (by genetic modification) and new ecosystems such as the heathlands created by deforestation. It could be said that
our actions produce a new nature within the old one. There are few parts
of the world that are not impacted by humans. Marx argued that even in his
day there was very little wilderness left.50
Marx saw the ideological separation between society and nature as an
aspect of class society, not as something that has always existed. To quote
Smith: The domination of nature idea begins with nature and society
as two separate realms and attempts to unite them. In Marx we see the
opposite procedure. He begins with the relation with nature as a unity and
derives as a simultaneously historical and logical result whatever separation
between them exists.51
This approach to nature could also in itself be described as dialectical.
In the method Marx developed and employed in Capital he uses what Ollman
refers to as different levels of generalisation.52 The whole of the universe is
49: Smith, 1990, p56.
50: Marx refers to a nature separate from human history as no longer existing anywhere
except perhaps on a few Australian coral islands of recent originFoster, 2000, p116.
It could be added that humanity doesnt have much of an impact on outer space (besides
adding a few satellites and space junk) although for many followers of Smiths ideas on the
production of nature these are academic questions.
51: Smith, 1990, p48.
52: Ollman, 2003.

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both complex and constantly changing. Everything is related to everything

else. But it would be impossible to try to think about the whole universe at
once. Therefore Marx uses dialectics as a method to focus his attention on
different aspects of the world. Sometimes he refers to processes at the level
of capitalist society, sometimes class society more generally. Sometimes he
broadens the scope of his arguments still further by suggesting that what he
is referring to relates to the whole of the natural world. It often makes sense
to refer just to what happens among humans to make a particular point, for
example, to explain the relationship between capitalist and worker. Sometimes
it makes sense to refer to the way capitalists and workers relate in a capitalist
society but this relationship does not exist independently of the wider context
in which it exists. This, for Ollman, supports the argument that Marx, like
Engels, intended dialectics to be applicable to both society and naturenot
just society. Looking at the whole of the natural world, of which human
society is a part, is seeing things at a different level of generalisation than the
one someone might use to make a particular argument about human society.
The question for Marx and Marxists then is not so much about how
society and nature relate to each other. Instead we should question how these
two aspects of the whole ever got separated in the first place. This point
is taken up by John Bellamy Foster, who has revived Marxs concept of a
metabolic rift.53 Marx argued that human beings interact metabolically with
the world around us. It is our ability to workto use our labour power
that facilitates this interaction. Capitalism commodifies labour power and
turns it into a source of profit. It simultaneously creates a metabolic rift
between humanity and nature. So the rift is a historically contingent one that,
it is argued, developed with the development of capitalism. In a passage in
Capital Volume 3 Marx describes how the conditions produced by capitalism
provoke an irreparable rift in the independent process of social metabolism,
a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself.54 Marx asserts in this
passage that there is such a thing as nature (and even goes as far as to suggest
that there are natural laws). He would not have seen nature as entirely socially
constructed in the extreme sense in which the term is sometimes used. It
would be inconsistent with Marx and Engelss approach to focus entirely on
nature/biology as if it is separate from society. But if the two are inseparable it
would also be problematic to focus ones attention entirely on the social side
of the equation and see nature as solely determined by society.
If we produce nature our relationship with it is much more complicated
53: Foster, 2000.
54: Marx, 1981, p949.

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than one of domination or management. However, it also means that we can

change the way we produce nature. We should continue trying to prevent
processes such as climate change and species extinction but should not imagine
that what we are doing is restoring the environment to some imagined natural
state before humans existed. Instead we should turn our attention to the ways
in which nature is produced, towards what aims and in whose interests. Neil
Smith rejected the pessimistic argument that humanity will always exploit the
environment. He argued for a socialism based on control by ordinary people
of the production of nature. If we see dialectics as existing only in society we
risk reinforcing the view that nature is a separate realm entirely, the kind of
dualism that Neil Smith, John Bellamy Foster and others have argued against.
Perhaps this dualism is why people such as Gramsci have questioned Lukcss
tendency to try to separate nature and society. However, if Lukcs was wrong
about nature this is not to say that his ideas are useless for progressive environmental politics. Recent thinkers, particularly geographers, have applied the
ideas of Marxist thinkers such as Lukcs, Gramsci and the French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre to questions about the natural world.55
The debates over Dialectics of Nature have a wider significance for
Marxist theory than the relationship between Marx and Engels or even the
important question of our approach to nature. It gets to the root of questions about what kind of philosophy Marxism is and what that philosophy
is supposed to be used for. It seems like Engels was trying to understand
something fundamental about the way the world works. He saw dialectics
as describing real material processes. When he says quantitative change leads
to qualitative change it doesnt just mean that it is useful as a method to treat
the world as if this happens or to think about the world in this way. He
means that it really does act in this way. Not all philosophers even agree that
the world does exist outside of the mind of the person doing the thinking.
And trying to understand something about how that world works is not a
universally accepted role for philosophy.56 For many thinkers it is far too
ambitious to try to argue that there are underlying laws or processes governing reality and that we can understand these laws.
However, this materialist approach to philosophy is in line with
Marxs approach to social questions. Marx agreed, in his Theses on Feuerbach,
that the dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated
from practice is a purely scholastic question.57 If we are aiming to change
55: See for example Loftus, 2012.
56: Molyneux, 2012.
57: Marx, 1947.

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the world it stands to reason that we should agree that the world exists. And
we have to take seriously the project of trying to understand that world.
Marxism is, of course, about intervening in the world, not just interpreting
it. But the two are, for Marx, inseparable. We interpret the world through
intervening in it and intervene based on our interpretation.
Why arent there more dialectical scientists?
But if there are real dialectical processes at work in the natural world this raises
the question of why only a few scientists studying nature openly acknowledge this. Why arent there more dialectical scientists? It could be countered
that there are many arguments, not just in science, where Marxists feel that
their ideas are correct but where the majority of people disagree. Why arent
there more economists who accept the tendency of the rate of profit to fall?
We often assume that science is neutral. In other words, we tend to
think that when scientists observe the natural world their methods of enquiry
allow them to gain an objective understanding of the world that the rest of us
cannot. However, scientists do not live outside of society. Their theories, as
well as the types of questions that are considered worthy of research, reflect
the type of society that they live and work in. So scientists could be said to
be observing the real world but through a social prism which distorts their
view.58 Capitalism, as Lukcs recognised, needs to turn aspects of the natural
world into commodities for exchange on the market. Researchers working
on increasing rates of photosynthesis in plants have focused on one enzyme in
a plant leaf called rubisco. They are trying to make that enzyme work more
efficiently so that ultimately they can engineer a plant that will produce more
crops for farmers than existing varieties.59 It is possible to see how such a
system might encourage science to see the world in a reductionist rather than
a dialectical way. Phil Gasper argues that the tendency towards reductionism
in capitalist science reflects the dominance of individualism is capitalist society.60 It is not particularly helpful for these scientists to see the enzyme they
are trying to improve as a complex of processes or to view it as being in a historically developing relationship with its environment. They are much more
able to work on that one enzyme if they can deal with it as if it is separate
from the rest of the plant.
John Parrington makes a similar point. He argues that reductionism,
the belief that a system is best understood by dissecting it into component
58: Parrington, 2013.
59: Mackenzie, 2010.
60: Gasper, 1998.

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parts and studying these individually, has provided a powerful tool in his
own research into the molecular biology of human fertility.61 However,
reductionism reaches the limits of its usefulness when trying to make sense
of how its insights fit into a wider picture. It is particularly problematic when
used to try to interpret the social implications of biological researchwhen
it goes from being a method to an ideology.
The dialectical biologistsLevins and Lewontin and a few others
such as Steven Rosecould all be accused of following a soft version of
dialectics. They dont explicitly take into account the infamous three laws
of dialectics. Chris Harman argued that if we do not recognise the evidence
for these Hegelian laws in nature, particularly the negation of the negation,
we are missing something central.62 Harman argued that organisms dont
just relate to their environments but are negated by those environments.
The way they react back on those environments should be considered as
an example of the negation of the negation. For Harman, the ability to act
on the environment is common to many types of living organism. But,
unlike Levins and Lewontin, he argued that only those that have developed
consciousnessie humanscan be considered to go from being objects to
being subjects. Only humans are able to control the world around us rather
than just reacting to our environment with a blind response.63
Christof Niehrs, a German embryologist, explicitly noted the formal
similarities between processes in biology and Hegels laws in a recent scientific
paper.64 Niehrs looks at the way animal embryos develop in the very early
stages, long before they have gone from being a ball of cells to a recognisable
foetus. Chemicals called morphogens are released by cells at one side of the
embryo. This side starts developing into what, in vertebrates, will become the
side where the spinal cord is (the dorsal side). These then trigger the release of
different chemicals at the opposite end that act against the production of the
first group of morphogens (negate it). These are in turn negated at the dorsal
side. This is one of the most important stages in animal development. It kicks
off the process that will eventually lead to the formation of an animal with a
head end and a tail end rather than a homogenous mass of cells. And it could
hardly be more similar to the negation of the negation.
However, noting interesting examples of Hegels laws in nature
does not give much clue as to how, if at all, scientists can use these laws. If
61:
62:
63:
64:

Parrington, 2013, p104.

Harman, 2007.
Harman, 1988.
Niehrs, 2011.

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scientists are expected to start from the idea that they go out and look for
examples of the laws in their work (which Chris Harman did not suggest),
it risks turning dialectics into a scholastic exercise. All of the biologists
mentioned state that what they do when they go into a lab is the same science
using the same methods as anyone else. Dialectics is for them a way to interpret the results of their experiments rather than an excuse not to do those
experiments. Knowing the laws of dialectics is no substitute for a scientific
understanding based on knowledge of specific material phenomena.
Conclusion
We often explain dialectics using examples from science and naturebut the
notion that dialectics is relevant in these areas is not universally accepted.
Many Marxists would completely reject the idea of a dialectics of nature. But
there is also a tradition of Marxist approaches that see the separation of nature
from society as part of capitalist ideology. If we question the divide between
society and nature and agree that dialectics shows us something about society,
can we then consistently argue that it has nothing to say about nature?
The dialectics of Marx and Engels is a materialist philosophy. It treats
the world as if it is changing because it does change, and as contradictory
because it is contradictory. The natural world really is changing. Recently
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per
million for the first time since measurements began in 1958. The levels of the
gas in the atmosphere fluctuate but it is possible that they will soon reach levels
where they will cause irreversible changes. If the Siberian permafrost starts to
melt, scientists speculate that this could lead to the release of methane held
within the frost. Methane is also a greenhouse gas and is much more potent
than carbon dioxide, so it could lead to much more warminglikely to feed
back and melt more of the frost. It not as though the earth has never been this
warm beforeit is not unnaturalbut it will have devastating consequences
for the people who have to live with the effects. Humans are causing these
changes to our environment and they cannot be understood in any sensible
way without reference to our societies.
Dialectics is a tool for understanding the reality of the world that we
live in. As Engels argued, it is about matter in motion. If we try to treat the
world as if it can be divided up into separate elements and as if everything in
it stays the same we risk letting something important slip from our grasp. But
Marxists dont just interpret the world; we also change that reality. Dialectical
approaches see our current problematic rift with nature as an aspect of class
societyand, like all things, as something that can be changed.

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