Empiricism vs Dialectical Materialist Method of 'Trial & Error' with Gabriel Rockhill

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Well, empiricism uh as understood within the dialectical historical materialist tradition consists in claiming, in short, that there is a truth that resides in the external world and that we can more or less successfully identify those truths externally.

[00:00:23]And the materialist position isn't empiricist. The materialist position always recognizes that any truths that we presume to reside in the external world are always necessarily framed and understood by subjects, by human beings, and that our agency in being thinking beings has an impact on the way in which that empirical data is is, [clears throat] you know, developed, understood, etc. And so, trial and error isn't the same thing as empiricism, it's instead rooted in a materialist understanding that frames our understanding as subjects within a broader material world. And one of the most important things to recognize, as I said, but I touched on this very quickly earlier, is that Lenin's excellent on this, as is Mao and many other figures within this tradition. They recognize that as an individual subject, you're situated in a time and place that is quite particular.

[00:01:30]And you also are not all-knowing, you know, you have limits to your own knowledge, the languages you know, and everything else. The broader objective world is infinitely complex. Like the empirical world is infinite in its complexity. And so, you can't map all of it, and you can't apprehend all of it.

[00:01:46]So, you're faced with a contradictory epistemological situation, if you will.

[00:01:51]Epistemological just meaning that the conditions of your knowledge are structured by a contradiction, which is that the world is infinitely complex and you have finite basis for your knowledge. Therefore, the most coherent materialist analysis is not to assume that a finite subject could grasp this infinite complexity. That would be idealist and and reductivist in various ways, but instead what good materialists do is they always take into account their own subjective limitations in apprehending the complexity of the material world.

[00:02:30]And in doing so, they situate themselves as subjects within their analysis of the objective world. So, you're no longer in an epistemological framework where there's the world out there and me as a subject over here who's thinking that world. Instead, it's oh, I'm part of this world and my understanding is shaped by this world and the things I think I understand about this world also often have an impact on how that world is evolving and changing. That's a much more organic, holistic, and dialectical understanding of how subjects relate to the objective world. So, the process of trial and error is integral to, in my opinion, dialectical analysis because if you situate the subject within that broader objective world, the only way that you can really know if you understand something is by trying it out in the practical world and then being very open to a feedback loop so that you assess what the consequences of what you've tried out is.

[00:03:26]And that I'm just talking about an individual subject, but if you're talking about a party leader like Lenin, you know, he had the advantage of subjecting what he thought he knew to the Central Committee, to the Communist Party, to all the Bolsheviks, and to, you know, the Soviet enterprise as well as, you know, to the world. And so, one subjective decision can have world historical consequences if you're in a position like Lenin was. And so, trial and error isn't empiricist, it's this material and dialectical assessment of what you subjectively try to intercede into the world and how you read in its feedback loop what the consequences of that are and then making adjustments along the way. One of the great examples of this would be the NEP that that Lenin introduced where he recognized we have to develop the productive forces, otherwise we'll be left back behind in capitalist in in relationship to imperialist development and what this means is over time they'll crush us.

[00:04:21]It's just inevitable. Just chart it out over time. It's the same thing that the Chinese have done with the reform and opening up. It's the same thing that the Vietnamese have done. And uh that recognition that you need to develop means that well, how can you develop if you need capitalist investment to develop? Well, you have to modify what were really understood by some as foundational principles for Marxism. It's a very powerful intervention that Lenin took in that regard, but what he recognized is that in doing that, they were able to develop the productive forces while still maintaining state power and controlling the kind of towering heights of the economy. And so that was a very significant innovation, which of course then the Chinese and Vietnamese and others learned a lot from. And so trial and error isn't, you know, I guess the last thing that I'd say is it's not just like, "Hey guys, let's try some out, you know, and we'll see what happens." It is a very informed analysis of all of these forces while recognizing that any of our subjective decisions have to always be mediated by their world effects so that we can continue to try to develop our tools so that they cohere better to the objective world while never ever presuming that we're all knowing, we can predict the future, anything like this. All of these bogeyman versions of Marxism are are absurd to the to an extent that is boggles the imagination. Like no Marxist would ever say like a real one in my opinion, I can predict the future. I know everything. Like on the contrary, they're all saying the opposite that we have to remain humble, curious, and open to this constant practical feedback loop. And that's what is integral to this kind of trial and error aspect of a materialist and dialectical analysis.

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