Liberal Dialectic: Machiavelli to Adam Smith

Terms - Dialectic In Question - Nordic Model 

2020 Revisions - Machiavelli to Smith 

 Marx to Krapotkin - Freud and Marcuse

Libertarian Centrism - Actual Policy

I still believe in the thesis I shared in 2017 - namely that centrism is a historical necessity stemming from a dialectic between the Left and the Right; and that centrism is intimately related to the spiritual-psychological-emotional growth of people and even God in the context of early modern to contemporary life.  

In the intervening years, I have reaffirmed my emphasis on Rousseau and the idea the synthesis of the liberal dialectic will occur in the the self and its development in conjunction with my rising consciousness thesis.  As I argued in 2017, it may take a great deal of time - possibly 100s of years.

__________

(Early) Modernity and Thesis

[M]odernity was associated with individual subjectivity, scientific explanation and rationalization, a decline in emphasis on religious worldviews, the emergence of bureaucracy, rapid urbanization, the rise of nation-states, and accelerated financial exchange and communication.  There is little consensus as to when modernity began.  Histories of Western Europe suggest that a modern era arrived at the end of colonial invasion and global expansion, which date to the 18th and early 19th centuries.  In general, modernity was exemplified by the period subsequent to the onset of modern warfare, typified by two world wars and succeeded by postmodernism.
        Encyclopedia Britannica

When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always 20 years behind the times.
        Mark Twain

The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it. . . . This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the liberty of the state of nature.
        Locke

__________

The rule of King John of England and the Magna Carta (1215) constitute my proposed thesis point with regard to the liberal dialectic.  The following early political scientists or political philosophers buttress these key events.  Machiavelli (1513) envisions a new modern state, which in so many ways at the time was an extension and complication of the monarchy.  The concept of civil society, as theorized most by Hobbes (1651) and Locke (1690), fleshes out the modern state with fundamentally new ideas.  (When I say civil society, I am referring to political innovation beyond the state of nature and not 'third sector' conception of the idea - though they are interrelated.)  Civil society, under my current formulation, is a false antithesis to the liberal dialectic.  It fails to consider the human folly, abusiveness, and corruption of the modern state.  Rousseau obviously points to these very issues.
__________

Modernity and Antithesis

Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent.  To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.

In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.

Man’s first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.
        Rousseau (three separate quotes), The Social Contract

__________

The work of Rousseau (1754) is my proposed antithesis of the liberal dialectic and perhaps the key theorist in 800 years between King John and contemporary life.  He complicates our understanding of civil society and affronts monarchial power as never before.  He is the first modern Western thinker to formally consider  the self as a sovereign.  Be assured: we are still fighting this fight today, as I discussed in part 2 - probably in both the physical realm and the metaphysical.*  As such, we have Locke as the father of liberalism and Rousseau the father of anti-liberalism.**  Once these two forces achieve synthesis, the liberal dialectic will complete itself.  As I have argued and will further refine, this synthesis will depend on the evolution of the self and the question of a rising consciousness.

__________

Double Movement 

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

        John Kenneth Galbraith

The social history of our time is the result of a double movement: The one is the principle of economic liberalism, aiming at the establishment of a self-regulating market; the other is the principle of social protection aiming at the conservation of man and nature as well as productive organization.
        Polanyi

__________

Enter political economy, which is a natural extension of early political philosophy.  Smith (1776) and Ricardo (1817) conceptualize the market.***  As with civil society, the market is another false antithesis to the liberal dialectic because again it fails to consider the human folly, abusiveness, and corruption of - in this case - the market.  Both the market and the state are corollaries to the monarch in that people can leverage the market and the state to become petty monarchs, which effectively constitute the oligarchic system we have today.  

In this sense, we see the birth of the progressive liberal and conservative liberal, as discussed in part 2.  One looks to the state for answers and fails to see corruption there.  The other does the opposite.  Both are needed, as argued in 2017, and prone to their own abuses.  Although Polanyi (1944) came much later, his analysis focused on the late 1700's and earlier 1800's.

Now matters get especially messy.
____________________ 

* In 2019, I further committed myself to greater intellectual freedom.  As an interdisciplinary researcher, I am no longer shying away from metaphysics and its implications on policy and visa-versa.

** I would not attribute the notion of an administrative or bureaucratic anti-liberal state to Rousseau.  The earliest notions of an administrative state come later with the Napoleonic code (1804), which is itself an early date to mark the administrative or bureaucratic state, which is a subject of importance later.

*** In the hindsight of Polanyi (1944), we will now see the market and the state intimately co-develop with the state via his 'double movement' idea. 

Liberal Dialectic: 2020 Revisions

Terms - Dialectic In Question - Nordic Model 

2020 Revisions - Machiavelli to Smith 

 Marx to Krapotkin - Freud and Marcuse

Libertarian Centrism - Actual Policy

It's 2020.  I have not posted in 2 and half years.  The primary reason I revisited this blog series is that I began to conceptualize a podcast interview series on history, the liberal dialectic, and centrism.  In preparation for those interviews, I wanted further to articulate my formulation with all its strengths and weaknesses.  Below are some small but important refinements and observations to my 2017 formulation.  The casual reader may want to advance to part 5 where I un-package my formulation of the liberal dialectic yet more clearly.  

__________

The Primacy of the Individual

To Friedman, a free society is a more moral society, because it respects the moral primacy of the individual.  It is only through their own free choices that people express their values, and therefore their individuality and their humanity.  Without that freedom, we count no more than sheep.  To be truly human, we must be free, and responsible for our own actions.  The majority may not approve of what we choose, or may think they know what is best for us; but that gives them no right to dictate what we may drink or inject, nor to force us into military service, nor to steal our property and income for their own purposes.

        Eamonn Butler

__________

One major failure in my 2017 statement of the liberal dialectic is that I did not sufficiently regard the primacy of the individual.  When I wrote the words "the primary issue that distinguishes a liberal conservative from a liberal progressive is their disposition towards state intervention and intrusion in the economy" I should have said "...state intervention and intrusion in the economy and the freedom of the individual."

The liberal progressive often risks the primacy of the individual for the greater good.  Meanwhile, I still find many Republicans and contemporary liberal conservatives to exhibit deep fraudulence and insincerity in their policy views.  They will claim they are defending the primacy of the individual when they are really simply defending the financial benefits of friends and business partners - who often already enjoy profound private and social benefits in life as it is.  However, as a good liberal conservative which I am to some extent, I should have focused on this question of the individual.  So I correct it now.
__________

Social Conservatism, Tradition, and Authority

Social conservatism is the belief that society is built upon a fragile network of relationships which need to be upheld through duty, traditional values and established institutions... Social conservatism is generally sceptical of social change, and believes in maintaining the status quo concerning social issues such as family life, sexual relations, and patriotism.
        Wikipedia

Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.
        Eckhart Tolle
__________

I approach the question of liberalism with a somewhat one-dimensional view: how much should the state intrude in the life of the economy and the individual.  Under this guise, the progressive liberal supports more aggressive intrusion, the liberal conservative less.  However, my one-dimensional view fails to consider the nuance of social conservatism in that the social conservative is actually willing to intrude and to intervene aggressively in the life the individual.  This issue complicates my model and concept of liberalism.

In 2017, I did note the liberal conservatives "more closely represent an older order where kings and queens prevented people from making choices and taking risks independently."  I didn't, however, address this matter in direct discussion with social conservatism.

Some conservatives cling so strongly to the past that we cannot really call them liberal conservatives.  They don't really want to see the classical liberal order evolve.  These people believe the institutions of monarchial rule - however sublimated into contemporary terms - and church influence deserve profound continued roles in policymaking.  They are flatly wrong.  They have a right to be wrong.  They can contribute bad ideas in a democratic society.  They can help elect people who are behind the times.  But we also have the right to ignore them and vote them out.  

I already went into great detail on the need to eliminate the English monarchy from this planet in part 2.  To take the question further, I personally believe people will continue to turn away from dogmatic religious institutions and further search for real spiritual answers and true spiritual healing thru many practices such a meditation, mindfulness, intentional communities, indigenous ceremony, and more.
__________

Inner Dialectic Dialectics, False Antitheses, and Isms

This was a sometimes attractive and sometimes frustrating wrinkle of the dialectic, she’d found: everything turned out to be the superstructure of some other thing.
        Garth Risk Hallberg
__________

I am not expert in Hegel, Marx, Fichte, or dialectics.  But I strong believer in the basic notion of dialectic thinking, as further evidenced by Gurdjieff's similar model.  You likely don't know George Gurdjieff.  But if you read my work across time, you certainly will.  I only note this question here to make a few observations.  

Dialectics are obviously ordered hierarchically.  Isms, movements, and philosophical periods almost certainly always react to the past or extend the past.  I also want to offer the notion of a false antithesis and a false synthesis for that matter.  I imagine I am not the first to offer these notions.  I will rely on these minor points moving forward.

Liberal Dialectic: Nordic Model

Terms - Dialectic In Question - Nordic Model 

2020 Revisions - Machiavelli to Smith 

 Marx to Krapotkin - Freud and Marcuse

Libertarian Centrism - Actual Policy

So where is the liberal dialectic today?  The Nordic model is where the liberal dialectic will sit for the time being.  That is my opinion.  Herein I have for the first time since beginning option3 in 2012 begun to reveal how I see good governance in the modern Western context.  Some will argue that the Nordic states are socialistic.  I believe that is a deeply simplistic view.  Nordic states are mixed-economy states.  In other words, they practice centrist policy-making.

__________

Intrusions in the Economy

The Nordic countries are probably the best-governed in the world.

        The Economist, 2013

America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself.
        Hegel
__________

Emily Tamkin titled a 2014 Slate article 'Will Everyone Shut Up Already About How the Nordic Countries Top Every Global Ranking?'  As such, I will not list all those lists.  It suffices to say they rank well in several meaningful indices; those lists are also easy to find.  

Perhaps the key idea I wish to convey in this entire blog series is in this paragraph.  Nordic states represent a set of nations where government has attempted - and in many ways succeeded - to balance individual autonomy and compassion for peoples' welfare.  Herein we see a balance of the values of liberal progressivism and liberal conservatism discussed in part 2.  In the context of the liberal dialectic, Nordic states represent modern Western governance as a function of historical necessity.  Neither socialism nor some laisse faire system enjoys such a favorable position in history.

If you read The Economist article linked above, you'll learn that the Nordics are a work in progress.  The Nordic model is also not a panacea either.  Nordics possess small homogenous populations, unlike many countries where most people live.  

But the Nordics do demonstrate that state intrusions and interventions into the economy 1) do not necessarily create economic and social chaos, 2) need not lead into strict socialism, and 3) can leverage compassion as a benefical social force without risking a healthy concern for moral hazard.  Yes, the slippery slope of government deserves enormous suspicion.  And, yes, one day the need for government as we know it may dissolve.  But that day is not today.

I forecast the US slowly improving upon this model over the next several decades - with one caveat: AI or an environmental crisis could supersede events in the liberal dialectic.  I address the latter next.
__________

The Liberal Dialectic and The Environment

But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.
        Rachel Carson

We know that extinction is a natural phenomenon but the rate of extinction is now between 100 and 1,000 times higher than the background rate.  It is an unprecedented loss.
        Dr. Anne Larigauderie, 2006

We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible.  Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of 250 degrees, and raining sulphuric acid.  Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it's one we can prevent if we act now.  By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children.
        Stephen Hawking
__________

The end of the liberal dialectic may have nothing to do with ideology, policy, history, or historiography, however.  The environment may just do us in before it matters.

I generally avoid climate change as an issue.  I used to work professionally as a climate change and sustainability research advocate.  And if I was to bet money, I would say climate change is real.  But I sometimes get the sense that climate change, as an issue, has been coopted; I could say more but I will wait.  The truth you don't need climate change to motivate yourself to take environmentalism extremely seriously.

I have often considered biological diversity an issue that better demonstrates what is at stake; I addressed the subject a bit in a 2015 blog.  However, recently I have comes across an even better framework to understand global environmentalism.

In 2009, a group of academics led by Johan Rockström developed the concept of 'planetary boundaries'.  The boundaries include nine global and interacting phenomena that have global system limits.  The phenomena include the climate, biodiversity, the nitrogen cycle, the flow of phosphorus, ocean acidity, land use, freshwater system, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosols, and chemical pollution.  To reiterate, the phenomena all interact.  And they all have interactions with humanity.  Due to human activity since the First Industrial Revolution, we are pushing the 'planetary boundaries' that constitute the global system to their limits. 

My point is simple; we are fucking up our planet.  And if we are to develop real solutions, government will play a role.  And further, we need to put our fear of state interventions into the economy aside in order to develop centrist policies that take action on several environmental issues such as those outlined as 'planetary boundaries'.  If the liberal dialectic is a process of political-psychological growth, as argued in part 2, we need to grow up soon.
__________

Beyond The Liberal Dialectic

Communism... is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as the solution.

         Marx

Have we in fact reached the end of history?  Are there, in other words, any fundamental "contradictions" in human life that cannot be resolved in the context of modern liberalism, that would be resolvable by an alternative political economic structure?
        Fukuyama, The End of History

There's an alternative.  There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways.  It's a different way.
          David Carradine
__________

Both Marx and Fukuyama believed history was heading towards a long run equilibrium; even if events continue the end of history was inevitable in political economic terms.  I'm not the first to note this point.  Both believed that their own ideological block - communism and liberal democracy respectively - would win history.  They forgot that in the short-run history never ends; it simply keeps going - evolving, as we as individuals evolve psychologically and spiritually.  (Fukuyama may have conceded this point in some sense.  My point remains: liberal democracy is not an inevitable equilibrium outcome.)  We have almost no idea how we are going to evolve over time.  

The liberal dialectic is simply a period in history and a political-economic-historical process.  It will resolve itself.  The Nordic policy model is simply the best articulation of where that process lies.  Something will replace the Nordic model after the liberal dialect has resolved the tensions and contradictions held in the last approximate eight centuries.

If I was to forecast further, I'd say that as post-modernism moves forward, we will exit liberalism and the liberal dialect.*  We will see humanity learn to build kingship within the self.  In other words, as a dialectic process dictates, we do not totally reject monarchism because kingship will come to live in each and every one of us; and we learn to rule over ourselves with greater care.  That is to say, we reach a higher consciousness and do not need government as we know it.**
____________________

* Once the liberal dialectic reaches an equilibrium, the dialectic will either 1) open a similarly-sized chapter of history to resolve another similarly-sized contradiction or 2) open a yet bigger chapter of history - reaching both further into the past and/or further into the future.  In this sense, the dialectic is hierarchical; history is, in the short run, unending.  The 'great' past and future help to demonstrate that, as historians, we do not always know the size of the period of history we are addressing.  If I were to conjecture openly, I'd say that all of time is perhaps a dialectic between higher and lower consciousness.

** I have begun to consider higher consciousness and policy idea in part 2 of The Future is Now blog series.

Liberal Dialectic: Dialectic In Question

Terms - Dialectic In Question - Nordic Model 

2020 Revisions - Machiavelli to Smith 

 Marx to Krapotkin - Freud and Marcuse

Libertarian Centrism - Actual Policy

What is so important about a so-called liberal dialectic?  The importance is simple: history is heading somewhere; the tension between liberal progressives and liberal conservatives will impact the future of history - that is to say our future.  Progress is dead without this tension.  Any effort to revolutionize society on simply conservative or progressive terms alone is at odds with the forces of history.  That is why revolutions fail and history prevails.  The dialectic in question, to reiterate, covers the history of (political) modernity from about the 12th to 15th century to about the present day.*
__________

Two Necessary Sides of Liberalism

Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong.
        Dwight D. Eisenhower
__________

Liberal progressives represent compassion and permissiveness.  They also more closely represent the vanguard or frontier of liberalism and Western history.  Even in the collective psychological level, liberal progressives invites us to make new and different choices for better or worse.  Liberal conservatives represent discipline, self-reliance, and the avoidance of moral hazard.  They also more closely represent an older order where kings and queens prevented people from making choices and taking risks independently.  In short, liberal progressive invite us to move forward.  Liberal conservatives caution us not to move too quickly.

Together we, as liberal progressives or liberal conservatives, have begun to balance the values of compassion, which allows people to make mistakes, and discipline, which demands people live up to the high standards of self-restraint and self-reliance.  Both sides of the tension have a role to play in our political-psychological growth.  Partisanship distorts progress.  Herein we find the liberal dialectic.  Without discipline and self-restraint, new choices and new ideas will fail to take hold.  Without new choices and new ideas, we have no progress.  People who can't see the necessity of both progressive and conservative ideas will not move forward with history.  If enough such people exist, history itself will not move forward.  I will elaborate on this point in part 3.

That seems obvious but the implications aren't. 
__________

The Liberal Dialectic

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
        Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5, 19-28

Each stage of world-history is a necessary moment in the Idea of the World Mind.
        Hegel, System of Ethical Life (emphasis added)

History is a conscious, self-meditating process — Spirit emptied out into Time.
        Hegel
__________

The extreme and painful events of politics themselves need not occur as long as the psychological and spiritual growth of people does.  Through our dysfunctions, we create a peculiar social dross or precipitate in the form of politics, power struggles, and inequity, which often become what we call history.   In others words, if we were healthier and wiser, we could experience history as a psychological and spiritual journey and nothing more.   The contradictions of history simply constitute the accumulation of emotional, psychological, or spiritual contradictions within us as individuals. 

History does not drive us.  We drive history.  Our inner condition determines our outer state.  In this sense, one can argue that so much of what occurs in politics and media is meaningless - full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.  Indeed, I have long felt that a major Freudian subtext of politics involves wearing nice clothing, career building, and getting laid - not the public good.

I am not discounting the progress that has occurred since the Magna Carta, since the Declaration of Independence, since the Bills of Rights, since the Nineteenth Amendment, and since the Voting Act of 1965.  I'm simply saying that we are much further behind in political innovation than we think.  Why else do we say that the more things change, the more they stay the same?  Why else do we still have regressive tax policies?  Why do we not fund education and art aggressively?  Why still do we have so much police brutality?  Why do husbands beat their wives in such great numbers?  Why do we still fight the War on Drugs?  Why hasn't medical marijuana taken hold in more states?  Why do we not divest from oil and invest in clean, renewable energy?  Why is unadulterated food such a novelty? 

Below is a final example of our backwardness.
__________

The Great Anachronism

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
        Denis Diderot**
__________

Consider one final sub-point.  I will call it the great anachronism - namely the English monarchy.  Perhaps I can think of not one single institution that better illustrates our continued madness and disdain for human dignity than the English monarchy.  Although Americans don't technically pay homage to the queen, we certainly pay attention and devote enormous emotional and mental energy to her and her family.  Furthermore, for better or worse, we owe a great deal of our political lineage to the English.

Let me be clear.  Liberalism is all about shit-canning the monarchs of the world.  It is about other things but in terms of confronting the past, Liberalism has no business supporting monarchs.  In a sense, we can mark the origins of liberalism with the Magna Carta.  It was a physical document that codified and attributed rights to people outside the English monarchy.  It began to put a check on kings and queens.  And today she still sits on her chair.  And while we are no longer English subjects, we live in a highly oligarchical country in the United States.  It has even become increasingly oligarchical. As you probably heard, a 2014 Princeton study suggested that our political system has become an oligarchy - powered by "political elites".

While I can conjure up no single real and meaningful purpose for having a queen or royal family in England, the cost of her presence is very real.  I am not going to go into the details of the income and wealth of the royal family mostly because other people have given this question plenty of attention.  For me personally, their obvious purposelessness is a sufficient argument for cutting them off economically.  They can all come compete in the job market in which we compete.  End of discussion.

____________________

* Keep in mind, I do not think these dates are exact.  They become clear over time.  And over time, their exactness has less meaning.  I also doubt that modernity ended with the Cold War.  In fact, the whole thrust of my argument is that the anti-liberal tradition, which aligns with socialism, is still impacting history.

** I am not calling for violence in any way, shape, or form.  It is simply an illustrative quote.

Liberal Dialectic: Terms

Terms - Dialectic In Question - Nordic Model 

2020 Revisions - Machiavelli to Smith 

 Marx to Krapotkin - Freud and Marcuse

Libertarian Centrism - Actual Policy

Liberalism is a big subject.  It may seem like an abstract subject especially with all that is going on recently - particularly this week.  But this blog is especially important to me.  It has been on my mind for a while and serves as a part of the intellectual infrastructure of option3.  Not only is Liberalism a big subject, it is a poorly understood one.  I hope to change that a bit.  Ironically today when many people use the term liberal, they are almost always referring the anti-liberal tradition of Rousseau, Marx, and Engels.  They are wrong.  Let's see why.
__________

Liberal

Open to new behavior or opinions and are willing to discard traditional values.
        google.com
__________

Liberal, as a political term, arises in the English language between the 15th and 17th century.  I mark the 15th century as the end of the medieval period (or the Dark Ages) and the start of political modernity* which is the political age in which we both live and out of which we have begun to mature.  I also note feudalism as roughly a component of the medieval period.**  As such, I consider liberalism as both (1) the chief political economic force of history today in the modern Western (and Westernized) world and (2) a rejection of the monarchism and elitism of the medieval period - if not going back further.  

For the purposes of this blog series, the dialectic in question covers the history from about the 12th to 15th century to a date yet unknown.  That date may have passed or remains in the future.  We must now introduce the term anti-liberalism.  Anti-liberalism is the response to classical liberal thinking.  Rousseau is the father of anti-liberalism.  Some have crudely interpreted modern anti-liberalism as collectivism and (administrative) communism.  They overlook anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, and still other nascent movements.  

Some use the terms 'classical liberalism' against 'social liberalism'.  I think the terms liberalism and anti-liberalism have their place.  But, for me, the single term 'liberal dialectic' best describes the entire process; in that process, I use the terms 'liberal progressives' and 'liberal conservatives'.  As such, liberalism and the liberal dialectic are, in a sense, synonyms that represent a period in history.  They also point to a politic-economic-historical process.***

I digress.

We are all liberals in America.  Many people - especially on the Right - incorrectly conflate classical liberalism and progressivism.  A better approach involves putting liberal conservatives on the Right and liberal progressives on the Left.  The primary issue that distinguishes a liberal conservative from a liberal progressive is their disposition towards state involvement in the economy.  Conservatives desire less intrusion.  Progressives advocate more.**** 

State involvement in the economy is not the only question.  State involvement in the reproductive lives of women or gun ownership, for example, suggests politics is not always strictly economic - even though both those examples definitely have economic interpretations.  Regardless, some questions of history are indeed complex, primal, cultural, and/or more.*****  

However.  To reiterate, the primary issue that distinguishes a liberal conservative from a liberal progressive is their disposition towards state intervention and intrusion in the economy.  (I may one day regret advocating this view so strongly.)  
__________

Dialectic

A method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth.

Any systematic reasoning, exposition, or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict.
        Merriam-Webster.com

Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.
        Hegel

__________

A great deal has been said about the term dialectic.  In the context of modern philosophical and historiographical ideas, people think of Hegel.  But, from my reading, German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte first helped to develop the notion that a dialectic is a three-part process: thesis-antithesis-synthesis.  An antithesis opposes a given thesis.  Out of that tension and opposition arises a synthesis that resolves the conflicts that sit between thesis and antithesis.  At face value, it's not that complicated but dialetics may permeate all of human life everything.******

(Among conspiratorial thinkers and researchers, another notion of a dialectic exists: problem-reaction-solution.  This notion has a more nefarious interpretation.  Conspirators create a problem.  The public reacts.  The conspirators provide a solution, which they consciously fashioned in advance in order to augment or to control events.*******  IMO this conspiratorial understanding of the dialectic is not the whole story.  Conspiratorial thinkers have, in some cases, failed to see the more simple view of the dialectic, as described above.) 

____________________

Update (March, 2020): In 2020, I made some additions to this blog series - including general revisions in part 4 and more details on theory in part 5. 

* Political modernity is post-Machiavellian thought that led into classical liberal thinkers such as Hobbes and Locke.

** I freely admit I am not a trained historian.

*** These terms create further problems because, in a sense, I am saying that anti-liberalism is a part of liberalism.  For the time being we simply have to move forward.  Puns intended.  Also, yes, I am saying that history, at least, (political) modern history is economic in nature.  But that could change with time.  And it may not have always been true.

**** I once learned the following model of intrusion ranging from 1) laissez-faire to 2) contract / property legal system to 3) a system that manages allocative efficiency to 4) a system that allows redistributive justice to 5) a full control system (ie socialism).  Liberalism ranges from about stage 2 to 4.

***** In the short run and within the period of time needed to resolve the liberal dialectic, elections can be about personalities, parties, communication strategies, slogans, or a changing cultural and moral landscape.   In the long run and within the period of time needed to resolve the liberal dialectic, policy and politics revolve around money - economic transactions.  The core question for both liberal conservatives and liberal progressives is always: how to build a free and equal society.  And that question always ends up involving money.  (The reason I emphasize this point so much is that people spend a lot of time talking about liberalism and really don't know what the fuck they are talking about.)

****** We can find others who discuss ideas similar to thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure.  George Gurdjieff, for instance, spoke of the arising-negating-reconciling structure.

******* For the purposes of providing an example, some argue 911 was just such an example of a problem-reaction-solution conspiracy.  The attack was not from terrorists (or it was a hybrid-let-it-happen scenario), which enabled The War on Terror.  I'm not arguing this idea at this time.