Attila József 1930
Source: Originally written in Hungarian in a note marked PIM JA 1087/47.
Translated by: László Molnárfi, 2026.
The purpose of this article is to identify the relationship between logic and the dialectic, namely to show that the dialectic of Das Kapital is not in contradiction to the basic logical principles espoused by Aristotle. In other words, that the (materialist) dialectic encompasses formal logic, and in this way makes it dialectic, whilst the (idealist) dialectic, encompassing formal logic, becomes logical and through this, essentially becomes anti-logical logic, or logical anti-logic.
What is (pure) logic? (Pure) logic is that (branch) of science, which concerns itself with uncovering those formal laws, which arise from taking thoughts in abstraction - so without regard to the thinking being and the actual world - that is to say, they find their roots in the act of thinking itself, and the aspects of such thinking.
What is (objective) idealism? The framework, according to which thoughts possess actual existence, absolute actuality by themselves, that is to say (disregarding psychological objects), logical objects make up the entirety of the real world.
What is the dialectic? The historical movement of the actual world, through internal contradictions, from one state to the other.
According to this, the idealist dialectic is the logical movement of thinking from one concept to the other, through the logical suspension of contradictions. The idealistic dialectic, therefore, is logic, insofar as its object is the object of logic, and anti-logical, insofar as it suspends the validity of basic logical principles (namely, e.g. the principium contradictions); from another angle, the idealistic dialectic is anti-logic, insofar as it conceives of its object as as an object with actual existence, and does not discuss it in a logical manner, and is logical, insofar as, in line with the validity of the basic principles of logic (namely e.g. the principium identitas), it does not stray from identifying its object with its object, its object which has a logical existence, with an object which has actual existence. The idealistic dialectic is therefore not dialectic, but on the one hand anti-logical logic, on the other hand, logical anti-logic.