On the Position of the Category of Transformation in Dialectics

Abstract

What position does the category of transformation hold in materialist dialectics? Arguments prevalent in the past ascribed it to the identity of contradiction, viewing it as an implication of identity. Comrades Rong Kaiming and Lai Chuanxiang published in the fourth issue of Philosophic Studies of 1983 an article entitled "Transformation Is a Relatively Independent Overall Category," which offers a different view. The article holds that the process of transformation itself is not an implication of the identity of contradiction but that the tendency and possibility of transformation has just such an implication. Furthermore, the article groups all categories of dialectics into three different levels and theorizes that the transformation, relation, and development of contradiction are an array of overall categories of materialist dialectics at the primary level; the various laws of dialectics and different pairs of categories are categories at the secondary level subordinate to the overall categories. Aside...