Mao’s example does make things clear. And yeah, it’s kind of sad that Politzer makes this mistake when his exposition on Idealism and Materialism is so good. No one is perfect, I suppose.

Thanks for the write-up!

Cowbee, by autodynamism you mean this part?

We see then that dialectical motion contains within itself processes or autodynamism, which is its essential feature. For not every motion or change is dialectical. […] Hence, [the act of crushing a flea] is not dialectical, but mechanical.

As far as I understand, Politzer’s mistake was claiming that “dialectics implies not only motion but also autodynamism”. However, as Mao said motion (even mechanical motion) necessarily needs contradictions to exist:

As a matter of fact, even mechanical motion under external force occurs through the internal contradictoriness of things. Simple growth in plants and animals, their quantitative development, is likewise chiefly the result of their internal contradictions.

Is this correct? Also thank you for your work comrade!

It’s a bit funny that the most mysterious force on physics (it’s gravity lmao) doesn’t happen to have an opposite force. Maybe that’s why it’s so mysterious.

“A manuscript from The German Ideology with Marx’s handwriting and Engels’ doodles, c. 1845-1846.”

from Wikipedia