I realise speaking to many people brought up on a diet of "American Thinking" that they are very limited.
The classic debate in the US is between the Individual and the Collective. Obviously not a new debate. In Ancient Greece you had people like Democritus (460 – 370 BC) arguing that the universe was built from fundamental building blocks called atoms. And before him Parmenides (b515 BC) arguing that the world was a Whole that things belonged to.
I've discussed this antimony many times in this blog. When we pay people to build a wall we do not just look at the bricks, because there are the same number of bricks before the work and afterwards. Why waste money on a wall if we are only looking at the bricks. We want a "wall." And we start with where we want the wall, and how big it is going to be, and whether it will be straight or wavy like in the picture, before working out how many constituent bricks we will need. We start like Parmenides! Yet it is true that without bricks we will have no wall either! It is an antimony. We need both.
Now those familiar with static analysis in high school physics will be familiar with competing forces in equilibrium. The ladder against the wall is the classic such analysis. To the noob a ladder against a wall is a very boring thing because nothing is seemingly happening. But if you look into it there are a number of balanced forces that keep the ladder against the wall. Gravity is trying to pull the ladder flat (as people who position their ladders at too shallow or too steep an angle find out) and the ladder is trying to push the wall over. When neither wins you get a stable equilibrium.
But don't be fooled into thinking that "stationary" or "peace" means that nothing is going on. Apparently stable ladders can all of a sudden give way and either the ladder slips or topples and falls flat or the thing you are leaning against gives way. In Marxist social theory such sudden changes of state are called Revolutions.
Revolutions occur because an imbalance occurs within the forces that have have been balancing society. Wealthy aristocrats in Feudal France lived off rent extracted from the peasants, in return the peasants got a stable system controlled by military elites. In modern thinking the peasants accepted a ash equilibrium, where none was free, but they were all equally unfree, and benefitted from each others limited freedom as it meant that property and law were respected. A system that remains largely unchanged in Capitalism today. But they lived in luxury while the peasants lived in relative poverty. When bread shortages occurred Queen Marie Antoinette wife of King Louis 16th famously said well "why not eat cake?" When the feudal balance finally broke it was sudden and shocking. The ruling elite who had ruled for 1000s of years in balance with the peasants suddenly lost everything. The blood bath was sudden and total. The mob for instance forced Marie Antoinette to kiss the severed head of one of the princesses. Extreme brutal cruelty and revenge. Clearly at times of revolutionary change when the social forces breakdown like a ladder falling the result is calamitous and unpredictable. Unlike Thomas Hobbes who saw the violence of the English Civil War (one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history) as an expression of some primeval animal desire that was unleashed when the barriers were removed (and idea picked up by Freud) in Marxism such chaos is simply the process of transition to a new equilibrium. Humans have no fundamental primeval state, they are evolutionary or r-evolutionary beings who are changing and evolving at all levels.
Now in China the balance of forces was seen as essential. Confucius is the name most associated with this thinking. But the competing theory of Daoism while opposed to the rigid rules of Confucianism supposedly written into the Universe, also believes in harmony but through understanding the balance of competing forces. For Daoism while a ladder may fall down, come back in half and hour and it will have been put back up. There is no fixed position for a ladder. Up and down all day long. While some ladders like fire exits have a specific role, even buildings only last so long and will have to come down one day. Daoism would note that the ability to get people up and down a ladder, was integrally linked to its ability to come down and be moved! More famously a wheel can only turn because it has a hole in the middle where there is no wheel. It is this interaction of opposites that enables things to be what they are. Always worth looking out for the Dao all around and inside you!
So the Dao is not strictly the same as Hegelian or Marxist dialectics. In the latter there is an evolution. while in the Dao all things exist in Peace. Even in times of apparent Chaos like the French Revolution it is really just part of the natural cycle of stability and instability. Watching the world "revolve" like this is the essence of the Dao.
But see how different from "American Thinking" which is dualistic. You have people wearing "Collectivist" T-Shirt fighting with people wearing "Individualist" T-Shirts. Really these people are fighting over nothing. They are like the wall trying to push over the ladder, and the ladder trying to push over the wall. If either ever "won" it is a hollow victory because ladders need things to stand against, and things need ladders in order to be climbed.
Now in US propaganda Capitalism is often pitched as the Individual society, and Communism as the Collective society. Hopefully the absurdity of that can be seen now. Both Capitalism and Communism are theories that handle the "interaction of people". They are neither "individual" nor "collective" but are what happens when you put these together. Exactly like when you stand a ladder against a wall. When a painter is standing on a ladder arguments don't often break out about whether he is a "supportive" kind of painter who thinks the wall is holding him up, or a "friction" kind of painter who thinks the floor is holding him up. They work together!
There are many aspects to this "working together" thing. On a much more profound level consider this Hui Neng Zen Story.
Two monks are looking at a flag blowing in the wind. One is arguing that only because the flag is moving are they able to deduce that the wind is blowing. The other monk is saying yes but if the wind was not blowing then the flag would not be moving. The point is "which is the first mover." Agreed both monks are looking at a moving flag. But the argument is about whether the moving wind causes the flag to move, or the moving flag is telling them about the moving wind. Anyway Hui Neng overhearing this debate points out that neither the flag nor the wind are moving: only their minds are moving! It redirects attention from the lower level of opposing elements to the bigger picture of what is really going on to enable such a conflict at all. The monks are like soldiers on opposing sides of a battle, while Hui Neng is like an onlooker watching the whole battle unfold. Dialectics and Dao are like this. We can chose to fight for a side, but we never forget the whole battle and the way it arises from opposing sides. Almost all the stress that people feel during conflict is because they forget that a ladder needs a wall to push against, and the wall needs a ladder to be climbed. If there were not people on opposing sides then a war would never happen. And its no good one side saying of the other that they are idiots and wrong and why are they fighting when all your side is doing is fighting! Conflict naturally arises from sides, the solution is just not to take sides but few people see this, so conflicts will always happen.
On an aside the usual problem that happens in a debate is that one side does not understand the other. How says Richard Dawkins can people be so stupid as to believe in Creationism. And vice versa the fundamentalist Christian community think that Dawkins is in league with the devil trying to collapse their faith. Well its worth both sides being a little open here. For some Christians the Bible is the Word of God, and is literally true. How can God lie? Meanwhile Dawkins represents evidence based stories. Now because these two ways of thinking disagree Dawkins concluded that God does not exist. Naturally he started a fight, cos plenty of people who don't even agree with Creationism think God exists. So the battle spilled over and got into complicated territory. But you can see all this as just yet another example of conflict breaking out between sides that refuse to look at the other. Is there any harm in people believing life started with the breath of God, or life started at some hydrothermal vent. For the purposes of our actual "life" they are arbitrary. Life is NOW, not 1000 years ago. That would be one way to escape this "dialect" for people stuck in the battle. Like the person watching the sides battle you can chose to take part, or which side or not!
You see by seeing the "working together" of competing forces, when we see the nature of dualistic arguments like Collective vs Individual then we gain the added benefit of seeing the Truth behind all things. It is not itself divided and composed of competing parts, it is the foundation that enables things to be divided and composed of competing parts! Indeed it is by observing things being composed of competing parts that we are able to see the foundation from which this is possible. This has many names. I have mentioned Dao. For the Greeks it was Logos and this become used in Christianity to translate the "Word of God".
There is a fundamental "unity" to the world but not a normal unity of things being together. It is a unity that arises from opposites. The West and Confucius are terrified of revolutions. Wealthy people lose a lot, and the world is sent into chaos. But seen in the wider perspective peace and chaos belong together. When forces are balanced we get peace, and when those exact same forces are out of balance we get chaos. But its the same underlying processes.
Seeing this deeper level gives us something else though: Peace with a capital P. This is not the peace that seeks to overcome chaos and produce harmony, but the Peace that comes from seeing the cycle of peace and chaos. You can be Peaceful in chaos!
Now Communism is like this. It is not a simple desire to collectivise resources and rob from the rich to feed the poor. that would be "communism" with small "c" like the Kibbutz system in Israel. Communism with big "C" understands the forces that lead to the conflicts between wealthy and poor, that lead to revolutions and periods of stability. Communism with a big C is "dialectical" and does not strive for Individual success, nor collective sharing! It understands that between these on going opposing forces lies a greater truth that the world has yet to see.
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