Lao Tzu’s Dialecticism: Comments on the Tao Te Ching

My poor effort at replicating the Chinese calligraphy of 道德經 (Dao Dé Jing)

“Know your enemy” is perennially good advice, and Marxists who aspire to be revolutionary intellectuals can learn much by studying the words of rival schools with a critical eye. For we must be ready to criticize and point out the flaws of our ideological foes, so that we may win over the People, and we cannot criticize them honestly and effectively unless we know their ideas well.

Now, the Tao Te Ching. It is a very interesting text, and one of the classics of ancient philosophy. Gnomic and open to interpretation, it is brief but bears lengthy study. Like anything, the Tao Te Ching has a dual character- it makes good and bad points, contains good and bad ideas. I think it can also be said that it contains two different kinds of philosophizing: some passages are on a subject I will call ontological theory, others are on the subject of advice for sages or advice for living (some of which verges into political counsel). The positive aspect of the work’s ideological work dwells largely in its ontology or cosmology, which makes some dramatic strides in correct directions considering its ancientness; the negative aspect dwells mainly in its advice for living, which encourages impartiality and detachment from the struggles of the material world- it was this that the Communist Party of China rightly criticized and censured during the Cultural Revolution in China.

Let us begin by looking at ontological theory.

Taoist Ontology

Often, when Europeans and Americans make a cursory study of Taoism, they mistake its talk of the antagonism between yin and yang, represented by the famous Taijitu symbol (☯/☯️), as a kind of cosmic dualism- a relationship of two absolute forces in nature, like that between Jehovah and Satan in Christianity (and it is probably by analogy to this that people from mostly Christian countries come to this understanding). Perhaps this is somewhat how the concept is understood by the metaphysics of the Taoist religion- 道教 (tao-jiao) in Chinese. But the Taoist philosophical tradition represented by the theory in the Tao Te Ching- this tradition being known by the different word 道家 (tao-jiā)- is a different thing, and this reading of it is not informed by what’s in the book itself.

The ontology of the Tao Te Ching is not dualistic, it is dialectical.

My contention is that, in spite of its dilution into a dualistic mysticism in the course of culture, both from its own country and from outsiders, the most “authentic” reading of the Tao Te Ching finds it representing a method of philosophizing which understands the world by locating the contradicting opposites in things and charting the manners in which their interactions define the shapes of things and the changes in them over time- this being a dialectical system of philosophizing, cousin to that of Heraclitus, that of Hegel, and indeed even that of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Gonzalo.

The structure of the Tao Te Ching (henceforth, for brevity, the TTC) is arranged in poetic verses which each occupy about a page in most translations and give some cryptic, gnomic philosophical comment about either the nature of the universe (ontology) or the manner of behaving oneself in it (advice for living). We shall consider first some ontologically-charged passages from the TTC.

TTC-1: “These two spring from the same source, but differ in name.”

• Commentary: Is it too much of a stretch to describe this as a primitive fumbling toward the principle of one-divides-into-two? Maybe so, and maybe not, and maybe both at once. Yet we certainly see in this an awareness of reality as consisting in opposites, in paired unities of opposites, arising from common sources and diverging in the divergent teleologies of their contradicted natures- this is a dialectical understanding of the shape of the universe and the nature of its evolution across time. It understands all things as composed of opposites in dialectical interaction, in contradiction and affirmation/negation.

TTC-2: “Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. / all can know good as good only because there is evil.”

• Commentary: Here again, a dialectical understanding of two opposites: precisely in its negatory relationship with its opposite quality is a quality of something shaped and defined as something definite which an objective perceiver can understand. It exists precisely in its relating-to its opposite, as this opposite defines the essence and form of its existence.

TTC-2: “Therefore having and not-having arise together.”

• And so we conclude a form of the Law of Contradiction or Law of Unity-of-Opposites: A and not-A, A and ¬A, cannot, indeed, be separated from one another ontologically. For A can only be recognized or interacted with in its being not ¬A; for ¬A can only be recognized or interacted with in its being not A. How do we know pain, and how does it exist? Insofar as it is not not-pain. And vice versa- the state of not being in pain exists in so far as it is not that of being in pain. Thus the relationship of the two is both of negation and of affirmation, sometimes moreso the one and sometimes moreso the other. The two exist in a unity-of-opposites, sometimes one dominant and sometimes the other, and new things develop out of the interaction of these contradicting aspects and the products it produces. All of this, of course, is the understanding of dialectics we have from Marx, Hegel, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Gonzalo- but we find the germ of it here, in Lao Tzu.

TTC-7: “Heaven and Earth last forever / Why do Heaven and Earth last forever? / They are unborn / So ever living.”

• Another example of a unity-of-opposites, defined around ontologically essential contradiction. Being is defined by not-being; not-being is defined by being. If one were ever to overcome the other, then it would be totally transformed in the process, and a new unity-of-opposites would emerge. In just the same way the proletariat and bourgeoisie define one another in the unity of capitalist society, and when the proletariat triumphs over the bourgeoisie it transforms itself into the socialist proletariat, the democratic majority ruling-class of a socialist economy and D. of the P. state order, and transforms society from capitalism into socialism, the lower stage in developing capitalism.

TTC-28: “Know the strength of man / But keep a woman’s care! / Know the white / But keep the black!”

• We should be critical of the sex essentialism and differencism on display here- which shows the influence of vulgar spiritual dualism over true dialectical thinking. This passage can be read as an expression of either.

TTC-26: “The heavy is the root of the light / The still is the master of unrest.”

• Once again, an affirmation of the principle of universality of contradiction in the nature of existent things. The existence of mass is both negated and confirmed by that of lack-of-mass, that of A by ¬A.

TTC-40: “Being is born of not-being.”

• See above. But furthermore, this passage acknowledging a dialectic of being-ness and nothing-ness is interesting and valuable in a broad context, beyond just this examination of a particular text. I was once asked, by a Christian incensed at my philosophical atheism, “So God didn’t create the world? How can you say something came from nothing?!” First of all, I said, I did not say that. Secondly, how can something come from anything but nothing- and how can nothing come from anything other than something?! The two must exist together, and must come into being together, for neither exists in any meaningful sense if it does not interact with the other dialectically- just as the proletariat under capitalism must be defined as the class the bourgeoisie exploits and the bourgeoisie as the class that exploits the proletariat. The two negate each other, yet also affirm and confirm and define each other’s existence- and if one were to be destroyed, the other would be totally transformed into something else, as the proletariat is by socialist revolution. Nothing can not mean anything but not-something; something can not mean anything but not-nothing. Each must negate, affirm, create the other. Furthermore, at the risk of sounding completely insane, I said, I must tell you there is an aspect of thing-ness in nothing, and an aspect of not-thing-ness in something. For you are speaking of nothing, and if you speak of something there must be a something of which you speak- if nothing exists enough to speak of, and it does, for you do, then it has been thing-ed into being! And this is precisely its aspect of being interpenetrated and mutually shaped by its opposite in a dialectical relationship, a unity-of-opposites of ontological being- a reality depicted eloquently in the classical figure of the Taijitu:

The Taijitu, shown here in the coat of arms of scientist and philosopher Niels Bohr. Note also the motto: “Opposites are complementary.”

TTC-1: “The Tao [‘way’] that can be told is not the eternal Tao / The name that can be named is not the eternal name / The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth / The named is the mother of ten thousand things.”

• The reader must find it strange that I’ve yet to mention the titular Tao (or Dao, or just 道) of it all. We come to it now. At least within the Tao Te Ching, the concept is nebulous. The most usual translation of 道 is “way”- this, of course, is vague: The way/shape-ordering of the universe? The way-of-life for one individual to live by? The unity of both, of course- this returns us to the two aspects I described above, which will continue to be the shaping scheme of this analysis. Here, though, we are in the ontological aspect of the theory of 道: the Dao, as principle of the nature of being and the universe, as a sort of primitive form of the Law of Contradiction: the Way of things arising from, simultaneously negating and affirming, changing, and ultimately transforming into their opposites, the way of relations described dialectically, “un-nameable” because it negates and seems impossible to vulgar, imperfect logic and rigid thinking (of the kind Confucius/孔子 is as guilty of as Plato or Aristotle or Russell), because it is- as Marx so eloquently described in passing in Value, Price, and Profit¹- a truth which appears, when not understood deeply and fully, to be paradoxical. So this- a primitive and flawed understanding of the Law of Contradiction- is one aspect of the theory of “道”; we will come to the other later.

TTC-66: “Why is the sea king of 100 streams? / Because it lies beneath them.”

• A dialectic is here pictured between high and low. One aspect of this is correct application of dialectical philosophy as an accurate picture of the dialectical ontologic nature of the universe and its components (material stuff); another aspect, though, is apparent here, which we will find in the next section characterizes the reactionary aspect of Taoist philosophy: a refusal to take sides. Rather than recognizing the dialectical relationship of high↔️low as containing a dominant and a subordinate and subversive aspect, both are upheld equally in the name of “balance”- thus, when this version of dialectical thinking is applied to society, there is not the correct siding with the progressive interest of one aspect against the reactionary interest of the other, but rather a worthless, impotent, and meaningless plea for “balance.”

TTC-32: “Once the whole is divided / The parts need names / There are already enough names- / One must know when to stop.”

• And this, then, embodies the negative aspect in the Taoist ontology, although the ontological half of that philosophical tradition contains the bulk of its positive aspect: again, this idiotic plea for “balance.” The idea here is that dialectical analysis, understanding a thing in its division into contradicting aspects moving into and against one another, goes only so far, and true wisdom is found in ascending “above” the dialectic to “balance.” Here the TTC throws out all the truth it has earlier uncovered! What good is it to uncover the true nature of the Real material universe, as a monadal whole consisting of contradictorally inter-relating parts developing through their inter-relation, if we then seek “wisdom” in forgetting this dialectical world-picture and the necessity of one aspect’s negation by another, and choose, instead of siding with the correct and the good in each struggle, to sit above the struggles of the world and refuse judgement or understanding, like a Buddha upon a cloud! Such philosophy is interesting as a historic precedent for dialectical thinking, but ultimately useless as a concrete philosophical framework for scientific understanding of the world or as a guide to action- functions useful philosophy, i.e. a progressive ideology, must serve.

Taoist Advice for Living

In the above section’s concluding bits, we have moved from the positive aspect of Taoist philosophy to the negative- and from its ontological content to its advice for living, for, as stated, it is here that the bulk of the negative aspect dwells. What is the Taoist philosophical system’s notion of that perennial concern of philosophers, The Good Life? Is it compatible with the communists’ conception?

Once again, we will learn by commentary on some passages from the TTC.

TTC-3: “Not seeing desirable things prevents confusion of the heart… If nothing is done, then all will be well.”

• Commentary: here, the reactionary character of the Taoist ideology as advice for living is crystal clear. Encouraging inaction, stagnation, and passivity, we see here the same fallacious notion propagated by many other backward ideological trends of the ancient past (Buddhism, Stoicism, etc.) that suffering is not a concrete feature of material reality but a psychic abstraction, and therefore not a product of people’s situation but of their own reaction to the situation. We must refute this. It must be understood that people suffer not because they desire their needs of survival and the full freedom to control their own lives, social spheres, and labour-power, but because a contradictory society denies them these things, which they are quite right to desire! It must be understood that the solution to suffering is not to stop desiring these things, but to give the cause of winning them the concrete form of a scientific emancipatory ideology, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and guided by this ideology to wage revolution and build a new society wherein these things are won for all people!

TTC-5: The wise are impartial;/ they see the people as straw dogs… Hold fast to the center.”

• Once again, pure reaction. Impartiality in philosophy is always a myth. Only those who take the side of the dominant and backward ruling classes can believe that their ideological position is “impartial,” for they have so instilled it throughout the culture of the society that they rule that it seems “common sense” (Comrade Gramsci wrote extensively on this subject in the first half of the 20th century). It is those on the revolutionary and progressive side of the subordinated class that must raise itself, and thereby liberate humanity, who see that this “common sense” is not objective truth but is the false doctrine of a reactionary old rulership, and it is they who must consciously be not impartial but instead be partisans of the truth of the new, rising rulership of the majority working class. The reactionary doctrine of the backward can call itself “impartial”; the progressive doctrine of the advanced must, in negating the reactionary, reveal this to be a lie. Note: “straw dogs” as a phrase originates in a reference to the religious ritual practices of China in the time of Lao Tzu; it denotes objects which one views as incidental and toward which one is impartial, valuing them one moment and discarding them the next.

TTC-6: “The valley spirit never dies.”

• The “valley spirit” is a concept we must explore. Of course, in the Daoist ouvre exact definitions will not stand- recall after all that that which can be named is not eternal. But this concept denotes, in part, a concept we can understand as based in dialectical reasoning: the nothing-which-is-something. A valley is the space, an empty space, between mountains- as such, it is a lack of an object, and yet its negatory relationship with these objects affirms it to also exist as an object, and it as an object affirms the existence of them as objects. In this conception of contradiction as essential in things’ existence, we again see Lao Tzu’s dialectical ontology at work. What he means in referring to a valley spirit, though, amounts to Lao Tzu’s prescription for the correct attitude of a philosopher: embodying this contradiction of at once being and not-being, the philosopher is to achieve greatest wisdom and greatest proactivity by knowing and doing nothing, by pure impartiality and pure allegiance to the 道 in its other aspect: a law of non-decisiveness and non-teleology, a law of the universe which is precisely the negation of any law, not an ordered progress toward or from anything but only a perpetual “flow” in which one must float and bend like a willow branch, or else be broken by it. This “valley spirit” notion of a sage’s impartiality and both-sidedness in the contradictions of the universe is related to the concept of Wu Wei (無為), or essentially “doing-notdoing”: exerting the best influence on the universe by doing the least, by bending with the Dao impartially. We see in this of course the same error of demanding the impossible- “impartiality.” Lao Tzu understands correctly that the world consists of dialectical interrelations of opposites, but misunderstands how the philosopher should relate to these dialectics. He preaches total impartiality in the contradictions and struggles over them that define society, which as we have said is an impossibility and a farcical notion of the priveleged. The philosopher cannot be impartial; they are on either one or the other side of a social struggle, and it behooves them not to be impartial but to be ever on the progressive side and never the reactionary. This is the highest and best function of philosophy: as guiding ideology for the historic progress, through struggle, of civilization.

TTC-15: Observers of the 道 do not seek fulfillment/ Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by desire for change.

• Once again the concept of “valley spirit” and 無為. It is just such folly that prompts the monstrous notion that one should not seek fulfillment or change. We recognize in this the same reactionary tendencies we do, again, in Buddhism or Stoicism. The insistence, wholly at odds with material reality, that suffering can be avoided simply by refusal of the mind to suffer, rather than by actual material struggle and practice to change the causes of suffering (which is, in fact, shunned), can do nothing but stultify the mind and prevent the real concrete practices that can advance humanity- scientific inquiry, struggle for production, class struggle (see Mao, Where do True Ideas Come From?)- i.e., real effort to change material reality to resolve the contradictions in our existence and alleviate the causes of suffering.

The Unity and Opposition of the Two

We cannot, of course, separate cleanly our understanding of these two aspects of Lao Tzu’s ideological teaching. The two exist in unity, they interrelate, interpenetrate, inter-heave- each affirms and negates the other, confirming it and transforming it, and together they form a unity.

It is obvious that there is a contradiction between the two aspects, for the first is a form of dialectical thought and the evolution of dialectical thought leads one inevitably to the negation and surpassing of metaphysical idealism for active and productive philosophy, yet the second promotes precisely the sort of quietism (i.e., thought misdirecting philosophy away from proactive practice and toward inaction) and ideologized stagnancy one expects from the metaphysical idealism of spiritualism. The second aspect, though, dominates over the first: it negates and overrides the true aspects of this dialectical thought, transforming and defining it as a wrongheaded incorrect and idealist form of dialectics compatible with this quietist and spiritualist ideological view. Under the influence of the second aspect of the ideology (quietist “advice for living”), the first (dialectical ontology) is misdirected, leading to the prescription for the Taoist sage of an impossible position: to be neutral, to be “impartial,” to be “above” all the conflicts of society, instead of taking either the progressive or the reactionary side in a social dialectic.

This, of course, is an impossible prescription- it can lead only to stagnation of the potentially progressive and the victory of the reactionary. Thus, whatever may be progressive or true in the dialectical thinking of Taoism is drowned and sublated and transformed into something impotent by its backward teaching, a philosophic thought-system of backward idealist dialectics rather than scientific materialist dialectics. Thus, the reactionary aspect of this philosophical system or ideology and of the ideological teaching of the Tao Te Ching dominates over the progressive; this is a reactionary ideology and a text that teaches reaction.

Its study is historically interesting and philosophically edifying, but the positions it promotes must be supplanted and surpassed by their negation through struggle and by the further development of a synthesis of the positions of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Conclusions

The history of dialectics as a theory (or set of theories) of the ontological and epistemological nature of reality does not begin with Marx and Engels, progenitors of Dialectical Materialism. Neither did it begin with the idealist dialectician Hegel, or his predecessor Fichte (the philosopher most associated with the famous thesis-antithesis-synthesis framework for describing a dialectic). The history of dialectical pictures of reality in philosophy goes back, as Marx and Engels acknowledged, as far as the now largely lost ideas of the ancient Ephesan philosopher Heraclitus; an independent second root of dialectical world-pictures can be found in the Tao Te Ching. It is useful, informative, and constructive for Marxist students of philosophy to study these roots.

And yet, the negative aspect of Taoist philosophy undoubtedly is principal in its dialectical nature, and thus it is not a positive revolutionary philosophical system. Dialectical Materialism constitutes, compared to what has come before, a qualitative revolutionization of philosophy, a total restructuring of how both the reality of the material world and the reality of its dialectical shape and processes are conceived, a scientific worldview that is capable- as no other is- of informing the philosophical foundations of Marxism. Since its founding as the philosophical tradition of proletarian liberation by Marx and Engels, with Dia. Mat. philosophy as an integral component part, through its advancement in struggle under leadership of Lenin and Stalin into Marxism-Leninism, through its advancement in struggle under leadership of Mao and Gonzalo into Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Marxism has been the only truly successful revolutionary scientific ideology of the working class and the revolutionary class struggle. It alone has given us an accurate dialectical and material view of the progression of history in struggles of contradicting classes. It alone can guide us in People’s War in every country to establish, by whatever means a country’s particular conditions necessitate, the conditions of socialism- via building up a Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a state and social order of political-economic and sociocultural rule by the working majority, on a foundation of sovietist worker democracy, mass line Party leadership, and the “three weapons” of the revolutionary movement. Dialectical materialism, the philosophical system of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, alone can be our guide in revolutionary action and analysis in service to that action. The old dialecticians were hapless, idealist dreamers; only the scientific materialist philosophic theory of dialectics founded by Marx and Engels (on the foundations Lenin described in his Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism) could guide the scientific materialist study of history (see Critique of the German Ideology and Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels; On Historical Materialism and Socialism: Utopian vs Scientific, Engels; etc) that would chart the past through political-economic dialectical development and map the trends that can lead to the future scientific development of socialism, and ultimately the negation and abolition of class society, the transformation of human society into something altogether new- this is the road we communists are still on, in our philosophy and in our active militant waging of historical class struggle up to present day.

Even so, it is in some sense interesting and important that dialectics as the best and most dynamic kind of world-picturing method for philosophy has emerged independently in numerous contexts: the slave society of Heraclitus’s ancient Mediterranean, the capitalist bourgeois society and emergent socialist-communist movement of its negation in 18th-19th century Germany, and furthermore the feudal society of Lao Tzu’s Zhou China². What is common to all these viewpoints is an affirmation of the basic truth of the Law of Unity of Opposites, a philosophical refutation of the supposed impossibility of (A^¬A) (for the significance of these logical symbols see On Material(ist) Dialectics and Imperialism), an understanding of the nature of things in the real universe as made up of contradicting parts in interaction, and of the causes of change in the real universe as lying not with external metaphysical causes but with the internal interactions of contradicting aspects in real things. This positive aspect is, in spite of the numerous negatives that negated and contradicted it in these early forms of dialectical thinking, a clear precursor to the modern scientific dialectical materialist theory that understands the nature of the knowable material universe in interacting contradicting parts, existing as processes of affirmation and negation across time toward the resolution of their contradictions, contradictions which occur universally in all things- be they contradictions between natural forces and subatomic particles, or contradictions of exploitation between classes or of oppression or injustice in society.

One must conclude that there has existed, developing dialectically through the human history of class struggle, a long current of varying dialectical philosophy across the whole world, which in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and scientific dialectical materialism has now reached its highest, truest, universal form.

TRANSFORM PHILOSOPHY INTO A CONCRETE WEAPON OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE!

LET US LEARN BY A MATERIALIST STUDY OF DIALECTICS & A DIALECTICAL STUDY OF MATERIALISM!

— FOOTNOTES —

1. “Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things.”-Karl Marx
2. It is possible that a dialectical world-concept also emerged independently among the Andean peoples- I have heard this suggested around the Aymara and Quechua concept of Ch’ixi, but do not myself know enough of that concept to characterize it as such or not.