Articles on Dialectics from Red Flag Newspaper:

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Dialectics: The Communist Philosophy of Struggle, I

Dialectics:The Communist Philosophy Struggle,

Dialectics and Struggle Against Revisionism

Revisionism and the Dialectics of Inner-Party Struggle

The Struggle for Revolutionary Dialectics

Communist vs. Socialist Dialectics

Quality and Quantity

Negation of the Negation

Revisionism and the Negation of the Negation

Communist Theory of Knowledge: Part I

Communist Theory of Knowledge: Part II

Communist Theory of Knowledge: Part III

Communist Theory of Knowledge: Part IV

Communist Materialism: Part I

Communist Materialism: Part II

Communist Materialism: A Workers' Discussion

Communist Materialism: Thinking Like a Worker

Communist Materialism: Part III

Communism, the Ideology of the Working Class

The Dialectics of Opposition and Contradiction

Dialectics and Transitions Into the Opposite

ICWPREDFLAG.ORG

Dialectics:  The Communist Philosophy of Struggle, I

Note: This is the first of three columns summarizing communist dialectics. It is based on an ICWP pamphlet available on the Internet at http:// ICWPRedFlag.org

By fighting for communism, the working class is making a huge change in society, a change we won‘t be able to make without understanding a lot about how change takes place. Dialectics is the philosophy of change and development, advanced by Marx and Engels and developed further in the Soviet and Chinese revolutions and by communists who have learned from them. It is our most important tool for understanding how the capitalist system works, what its fatal weaknesses are, and how to defeat it. This series of articles is an introduction to the basic ideas of dialectics, applied to some important topics, including economic crisis and inner-party struggle.

The Unity of Opposites: the Basis of Dialectics

The most important concept of dialectics is the unity and struggle of opposites. This means two things or processes which are connected, but which interfere with each other. This combination of unity and struggle is called a “dialectical contradiction.”

For us, the most important dialectical contradiction is the unity and conflict between the working class and the capitalist class in capitalist society, but there are much simpler examples. A basketball game is a contradiction between two teams that are united in a single game, with each side playing defense and trying to hold the other back.

Contradictions occur everywhere in nature, like the forces of attraction and repulsion inside the nucleus of an atom. Capitalist competition is a network of contradictions between capitalists who try to outdo each other in the market. The rivalries of capitalists of different imperialist countries, who are competing for control of resources and labor for maximum profits, are in contradiction with each other. In the working class movement, there are contradictions between reformist and revolutionary politics. Inside the party, there are contradictions between different political ideas and strategies.

Contradictions Cause Change

Contradictions are important because they make things change. The internal back and forth struggle of the two sides of the contradiction causes change, and point that change in a particular direction. As long as capitalism lasts, the contradiction between workers and capitalists pushes capitalist society toward crisis and revolution. The contradiction between two basketball teams drives both teams to play harder. Contradictions inside the nucleus of an atom can make it break up into smaller atoms. Contradictions inside a party can cause a split.

Marx wrote that  contradictions “create a form in which they can move themselves.” They direct the motion that they cause so that the clash of the opposite sides is minimized. The contradictions in a thing can also prevent forward movement, like someone with a rock in his shoe, or a political movement with intense internal disagreements.

Contradictions are Resolved

Contradictions cause change, but they don‘t last forever.  Eventually they get  resolved, that is, they stop being contradictions. When the buzzer sounds in the basketball game, the game ends and the contradiction is resolved until the next game. Most contradictions don‘t end this way, however. There is no referee to call time on class struggle under capitalism. The contradictions of capitalism are only ended when communist revolution destroys capitalism. In the process of eliminating capitalism, however, new contradictions will arise. When contradictions are resolved, new ones are always created.

Contradictions Develop

A critical question of dialectics is how contradictions behave over time. Pro-capitalists or revisionists (fake Leftists) often claim that the two sides of a contradiction can “peacefully coexist” for a long time. Union big shots discourage strikes and accept positions on corporate boards, promoting the illusion that workers don‘t have to fight the capitalists, but can “share governance.” As the current capitalist economic crisis deepens, celebrity politicians like Obama and Villaraigosa claim that “we are all in this together,” and should accept “shared sacrifices.”

Communists understand that the contradictions don‘t work this way. They tend to develop and become more intense, bringing the conflict out in the  open and  making  the stakes higher. The “peaceful coexistence” idea is wrong because it emphasizes only the unity of the two sides of a contradiction, and ignores their struggle. Over the long haul, however, most contradictions tend to become more intense, and struggle becomes the more important aspect. This was Lenin's point in his famous statement that “The unity ... of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”

Next Issue: Contradictions of the Capitalist Economy

Dialectics: The Communist Philosophy of Struggle, II

Note: This is the second of three columns summarizing communist dialectics. It is based on an ICWP pamphlet available on the internet at http:// ICWPRedFlag.org

In the last issue, we learned that a dialectical contradiction is a unity and struggle of opposites things or processes which are connected, but which interfere with each other and cause change. We found that contradictions tend to become more intense, that is, the two opposite sides interfere with each other more. When contradictions reach a peak of intensity, they are resolved, like the worker capitalist contradiction, which is resolved by communist revolution. In this issue, we discuss some basic contradictions in the capitalist economy.

The Falling Rate of Profit

One of the reasons identified by Marx that the contradictions of capitalism tend to become sharper is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This means that the rate of profit on each dollar invested tends to get smaller over time. Because of competition, each capitalist must try to produce things more cheaply than the next one. Individual capitalists lower production costs by introducing more machinery into production, thereby reducing the number of workers. Other capitalists are then forced to automate in order to keep up. The result is a much larger amount of money sunk into technology.

More money spent on machinery means a lower rate of profit because of one key fact: Workers‘ labor is the source of all value. Profits are only made from workers labor, by capitalists making workers produce much more value than the workers get in wages. The value produced by the labor that capitalists don‘t pay for is called “surplus value,” and it is the ultimate source of profit, interest, and rent.

There are several ways that capitalists can try to counteract the fall in the rate of profit, like reducing the wages of workers. Capitalists can do this directly, or they can move production to areas that already have lower wages, like the southern U. S, Mexico, or Asia. The U.S. automakers, for example, have been making cars and car parts in Mexico and Brazil for a long time. This not only means that they can hire workers for less in those countries, but the threat of moving jobs away helps the auto bosses keep U. S. workers‘ wages down. Inside the U. S., capitalists are also reducing wages by making greater use of racism, super-exploiting a section of the working class, for example, by increased use of immigrant labor in basic industries. This is particularly true of the companies that outsource production to lower wage, non-union shops. The result of all these changes has been a significant decline in wages and cutbacks in benefits since the 1970s.

The intensifying contradiction between workers and capitalists can be seen in the current economic crisis. As capitalists try to cope with the weaknesses of their system, they are increasing their attacks on workers, laying them off, cutting back on their health care and education, foreclosing on their houses, and sending them off to wars like Iraq and Afghanistan for capitalists‘ profits and resources.

While we should join in and lead the resistance to cuts and layoffs that is now taking place against these attacks, reform movements will not prevent things from getting worse for workers and students. The weaker the U. S. capitalists get, the less room they have to make concessions to angry workers. The future of capitalism holds only more misery, war and further steps toward fascism until revolution destroys capitalism and resolves the worker-capitalist contradiction.

One Side of a Contradiction Is Dominant

In the conflict between the two sides of a contradiction, one side is almost always dominant. Situations where the two sides are “even” are rare and temporary. But the dominant side does not have to stay dominant. The side that is dominant needs to fight to stay on top. The other side fights to gain the upper hand.

Competition is a kind of contradiction, and capitalists in competition with each other have to do whatever it takes to keep up with their competitors. Even capitalists who are in a strong position for the moment know that they can lose. General Motors was riding high for decades, but has finally lost out to its competitors, especially to Toyota, and gone bankrupt.

Imperialist countries of the past, like Spain or Britain, who were dominant for a while, have ended up as minor powers. They lost out in the struggle and their imperial power was destroyed.   Now the U. S. empire is facing increasing challenges from Russia, China and Europe. While it remains the dominant power, that situation will not last indefinitely.

These intensifying contradictions in the world tend to intensify the contradictions in pro-capitalist thinking, and this represents an opportunity for the growth of the communist movement. More people are questioning the system and are open to a communist analysis of it. The same is true of the Obama administration‘s major escalation of the war in Afghanistan, as the contradictions of the economy drive the U. S. capitalists to greater efforts to control the world‘s main sources of oil and gas. All aspect of U. S. capitalism are gearing up for war, including the military, industry, education, and even health care. This process will intensify the contradiction between capitalism and the international working class, moving toward resolving it with revolution.

Next issue: Dialectics and the fight against revisionism in the communist movement.

Dialectics and the Struggle Against Revisionism

Part One: The constant struggle against capitalist ideas

The idea of communism has existed in various forms for most of human history, but communism only became a science about 150 years ago. Marx and Engels, and later communist revolutionaries developed scientific communism, based on the experience of the working class struggle for communism. As they learned from revolutionary successes and failures, communists needed to revise their ideas. ICWP has learned, for example, that socialism and its wage system leads back to capitalism, not communism.

Inside the communist movement, however, there must be a constant struggle against capitalist ideas and practices that contradict communism. Intense capitalist propaganda for patriotism and reformism, as well as fear of defeat and of capitalist repression, influence people to give up on communism or look for an easy way to get there. This is the origin of revisionism, that is, capitalist ideas and practices that prevent the victory of communism.

Before World War I, revisionism turned the socialist parties in most countries into supporters of imperialist war. In the 1950s in Russia and the 1970s in China, the victory of revisionism turned socialism back into capitalism. Revisionist tendencies are always found in the communist movement, and fighting them is absolutely essential to move forward and to prevent past victories from being reversed.

One kind of revisionism says that direct struggle for communist revolution isn‘t necessary. It claims that reforms  lead  eventually  to  revolution,  that  some “lesser evil” capitalists are allies of the working class, that elections can advance the communist movement, or that imperialism does not have to lead to war.

An opposite revisionist view does not recognize the opportunity that the sharpening internal contradictions of 21st century capitalism give for revolution, claiming that revolution is impossible or that capitalism will be too strong to defeat for generations. These opposite views have in common that they lead to compromising with capitalism, either because it can‘t be beaten or because it isn‘t that bad.

Although there were big struggles against revisionism by the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a mass movement against revisionism by millions of workers and students, and in the Progressive Labor Party in the past, revisionism eventually won in all these movements.

One of ICWP‘s most important tasks, as it builds up the communist movement, is to carry out the struggle against revisionism, both inside and outside the party.

Internal Contradictions are Primary

The importance of the struggle against revisionism is an example of a general principle of dialectics. This principle says that how something changes and what it becomes are due primarily to its internal contradictions

Although external conditions  make  a difference, it is mainly the contradictions inside a process or system that determines how it will change. The history of class society, for example, is the "history of class struggle," as the Communist Manifesto said. The conflict of the social groups inside society that have opposite relationships to production determines how society develops. This means that social change does not come about primarily by factors outside society, like climate or natural environment, although these things certainly make a difference. Instead, the effect that external factors have on society is mainly determined by factors internal to it.

The internal is also primary in determining the growth of the party. Internal factors such as its line, its composition, its leadership and its size mainly determine how it grows. Probably the most important thing to understand about internal contradictions for our work is that our weaknesses hold us back more than external conditions.

This means that we can only win by making a determined struggle to overcome internal weaknesses, including tendencies toward revisionism. But you can‘t struggle against weaknesses you don‘t know about or don‘t face up to, so the struggle against them requires being honest and self-critical with our comrades, our friends, and the masses we are trying to win.

Next issue of the Red Flag — The dialectics of inner-party struggle

Revisionism and the Dialectics of Inner-Party Struggle

As we learned in a previous column, a dialectical contradiction is a unity of opposites, two sides that are connected with each other but also interfere with each other. Over time, dialectical contradictions tend to “heat up” and become more intense. That is, the two sides come to interfere with each other more and more. Intensification eventually leads to resolution of the contradiction. As Marx put it, resolution happens when the two sides “fight to a decision,” until one wins, for example, the working class overthrows the capitalists.

This general principle, that contradictions are only resolved by becoming more intense, applies to the internal contradictions of the working class and of the party. Contradictions inside the party are normal and unavoidable as we struggle to learn from the experience of class struggle. As we intensify the contradictions between correct and incorrect ideas and actions to resolve our internal contradictions, we must fight for the most advanced line we can work out, not the line that most people readily agree with. Both inside the party and in the mass movement, we should fight for a “higher unity,” that is, agreement with critical communist ideas that are necessary to move forward, not just popular viewpoints.

In most circumstances the best attitude toward people who make mistakes is to try to “cure the disease to save the patient,” that is, to defeat wrong ideas but continue to unite with the people who have had them. In the struggle against revisionism, however, situations arise in which this outlook is not correct. In the last dialectics column we saw that revisionism, the capitalist ideas and practices inside the communist movement, not only prevents the victory of communism, but reverses gains already won. The struggle against revisionism is the struggle against the enemy‘s outlook inside the communist movement. People who are committed to this outlook cannot necessarily be won away from it, any more than bosses can be won over to communism. Such people have to be defeated, not merely their ideas.

People sometimes believe that comrades who have contributed to the communist movement at one time can‘t turn into revisionists. But this is perfectly possible, and the examples of people like Plekhanov and Mao Zedong prove it. Their transformation illustrates an important idea of dialectics, that in the certain circumstances, a thing can turn into its opposite.

We apply this principle when we try to turn an economic crisis or imperialist war into an advance for the communist movement. Likewise, someone who lacks confidence in the working class or fears defeat or repression can be transformed from a communist into a revisionist.

Dialectics also teaches us, as Lenin put it, that the unity of two opposites is “temporary and conditional,” but their struggle is absolute. Communism and revisionism are opposites. If one side is not defeated inside the party, the struggle of these opposites sharpens, and overcomes any previous unity. Sometimes the result is a split in the party.

A split in a communist party represents a significant setback, since it means that part of what was created by the struggles of many comrades is no longer advancing the movement for communism but is holding it back. However, splits can be a necessary part of the advance of the communist movement in the struggle against revisionism.

A split in the movement led to the formation of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, originally called the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks). It was the Bolsheviks who led the great victory of the October Revolution in  1917. That victory would not have been possible if the Bolsheviks had remained united to the revisionist Mensheviks, who actually fought an armed struggle against the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917.

After the victory of revisionism in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, many new parties, including the Progressive Labor Party, were formed by splitting from revisionist-led, pro-Soviet parties. This is also the process by which ICWP was formed by  splitting from PLP.

Our task in the ICWP is to turn the setback of the victory of revisionism in the PLP into its opposite, into a new step forward in the march toward communism. Dialectics tells us that the struggle does not move forward in a straight line, but advances by twists and turns. Join us and move forward with us in humanity‘s most important struggle, the fight for communism.

Note: ICWP is committed to make the study of dialectics   a   mass   activity,  not   limited   to   a   few “experts.” We invite you to send in examples of dialectics from your own experience or political work, as well as questions you would like to see answered in Red Flag.

Revolutionary Dialectics: The 1960s Struggle in China

As we saw in earlier columns, a dialectical contradiction is a combination of opposite tendencies, processes or forces. Dialectical contradictions are important because they cause change, like the contradictions between the US and other imperialists that are leading to wider wars.

The biggest issue in the philosophy of dialectics is how contradictions get resolved, that is, stop being contradictions. Marx said that resolution happens when the two sides “fight to a decision,” and one defeats the other, like the working class overthrowing the capitalists. Revisionists have a different line on resolution. They say that contradictions can be resolved by merging the two contradictory sides or even that the two sides can peacefully exist indefinitely without resolution.

Part of the struggle against revisionism in China in the 1960s was a big debate about this issue that involved many thousands of people. Mao Zedong, then the leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), proposed the slogan "one divides into two" to express the idea that contradictions are everywhere and what appears unified has opposite aspects.

Yang Xianzhen, head of the CPC‘s philosophy school, defended the slogan "two combine into one." This meant that the two sides of a contradiction don‘t have to fight until one wins, but could merge into a so-called "synthesis." Many US union leaders have this approach. They claim that workers can have a kind of synthesis with the bosses "for the common good."

Yang described Chinese society as having a "synthesized economic base," which combined capitalist and communist social relations. He said the capitalist side didn‘t need to be smashed, but would disappear gradually and peacefully. The actual result, however, was that capitalism won in China.

Yang's defenders claimed that "two combine into one" was a law of dialectics. To support this idea, they gave various examples of things that actually do combine, such as atoms that combine into molecules. They left out the fact that many atoms cannot combine and others do so only after a complex struggle.

In August, 1964, Mao got into the debate. Instead of rejecting synthesis outright, he said that what synthesis really means is the stronger side "eating up" the weaker one. When the Chinese revolution overthrew the capitalists, he said,

"The synthesis took place like this: their armies came, and we devoured them, we ate them bite by bite. It was not a case of two combining into one as expounded by Yang Xianzhen, it was not the synthesis of two peacefully coexisting opposites. They didn‘t want to coexist peacefully, they wanted to devour you." [1]

Here are a few of the other important points made in the debate:

I. Opposite sides of things or processes are usually formed by dividing up, and not by combining two already existing things. Capitalism, for example, did not come about by sticking workers and capitalists together. Instead, the class differences between workers and bosses emerged and became more sharply defined, a process driven by the internal contradictions of capitalism.

II.             When opposites do combine, their conflict continues and can intensify. European capitalists have fought a long struggle to create the EU but big cracks are now showing in it, with big financial crises in Greece, Spain, Ireland and Hungary.

III.           When you create unity, you must actually resolve the contradictions that stand in the way. Unity of the international working class can‘t be achieved by ignoring differences or making unprincipled compromises. Instead the Party must lead a massive ideological struggle for unity around the most advanced line that can be figured out.

In contemporary China, the philosophical gains of the 1960s have been reversed. Philosophy textbooks now claim that the sides of a contradiction can merge together, or that they can co-exist without destroying each other. One text predicts that “although there is significant competition among the economies of different countries, the present economic process of globalization should jointly develop on the basis of equality, in a mutually beneficial way.”[2] In other words, China can create an empire without challenging other empires--a myth that serves the interests of China‘s new bosses.

Rejecting this nonsense, our communist movement can learn from and spread widely the true dialectics that China‘s past revolutionaries helped  develop and fought for.

[1] S. Schram, Mao Tse-Tung Unrehearsed, London, 1974, pp. 224.

[2] Marxist Philosophy, edited by Zhu Guoding,

Socialist vs. Communist Dialectics

In his study of dialectics, V. I. Lenin, leader of the Russian communist movement until he died in 1924, came to the profound conclusion that unity is not the main aspect of a contradiction:

“The unity … of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”

This means that the struggle inside a contradiction does not tend to die out, but eventually becomes more intense. Beginning about 1930, the Russian communists developed a different view of dialectics. They started to use the term “non-antagonistic contradiction” and its political counterpart, the concept of a “non-antagonistic class relationship.” Basically this amounted to a seriously wrong idea about socialism, that despite the fact that socialism had a wage system, inequality, classes and class conflict, its internal contradictions tended to die out rather than become more intense. This theory undermined the struggle for communism in the USSR and China by claiming the inequalities and conflicts of socialism aren‘t destructive, don‘t need to be struggled against, but would die out by themselves.

Russian communist philosophers made a number of attempts to define what an antagonistic contradiction was supposed to be. Proposed definitions claimed that antagonistic contradictions were resolved by becoming more intense, or by violence, or by the two sides becoming independent of each other. Non-antagonistic contradictions were claimed to be capable of being resolved gradually, without using violence or becoming more intense.

Leaders of the communist movement in China borrowed the concept of non-antagonistic contradiction and added to it the concepts of “contradictions among the people” that were said to be non-antagonistic. The convenience of this terminology

was that “the people” could be shifted whenever the Chinese communist leaders wanted to make an opportunistic alliance. “The people” then became whoever agreed to cooperate with the communist movement, including capitalists and landlords.

Scientific study of the various theories that have been put forward about how contradictions are to be resolved, including the analysis of the evidence available from a variety of sources, including the practice of class struggle, war, and natural science, etc., lead to the following conclusion: Contradictions are only resolved or moved toward resolution by intensifying the struggle of their opposite sides, by increasing their negative relationship to each other.

Thus the main political task the working class has is to intensify the contradiction between itself and the capitalist class, in order to move that contradiction toward resolution by revolution. On its side, the capitalist class is also intensifying the worker capitalist contradiction by increasing police terror, lowering wages, wiping out civil liberties, spreading fascist ideology and racist propaganda, and promoting patriotism and loyalty to the “homeland.” This intensifying contradiction can only be resolved by revolution, but revolution or violence is not always involved in making social contradictions more intense.

The way a contradiction is made more intense depends on the particular things or processes within it. Resolution by violence does not describe some special type of contradiction, but only  one  particular way in which a contradiction can become more intense. Resolving a contradiction within an individual person or inside the party also happens by making it more intense, but the means for doing this are discussion, criticism and practical changes in behavior rather than violence. Contradictions within  people and collectives are not resolved by waiting for them to die out or “managing” them. Unresolved contradictions continue to act and cause change whether they are ignored or not. Frank and honest discussion in which contradictory viewpoints, practices, and tendencies, confront each other intensifies these contradictions, but just for that reason, it moves them toward resolution.

Hoping that conflicts will go away by themselves, or making a pact that “I won‘t criticize you if you don‘t criticize me,” does not resolve contradictions among friends and comrades, any more than it resolves the contradictions of capitalism. True, communist dialectics recognizes that contradictions don‘t die out, but are resolved by struggle and intensification.

Dialectical Materialist Philosophy:

Quality and Quantity

Dialectical contradiction is the central concept of dialectical philosophy. Contradictions cause change, become more intense and are eventually resolved and replaced by new contradictions. Dialectics also has other laws that help explain what happens in processes that are driven forward by contradictions.

Two important concepts for describing things and processes are quantity and quality. A quantity is a property that can be measured in numbers, like temperature, age, hourly wage, rate of profit, number of Red Flags sold, etc. One feature of quantities is that when they change, they usually go through intermediate stages. If the temperature falls from 90o at noon to 50o at midnight, it goes through the temperatures between 90o and 50o. A large change of quantity doesn't usually happen in an instant, even if it happens fast.

A quality is a property that cannot be measured in numbers. Qualities include being square, beautiful, green, unemployed, at war, etc. Change of quality can often happen quickly, without going through intermediate stages. When you heat water, its temperature (a quantity) gradually increases. At a certain temperature bubbles suddenly appear and boiling starts. The change from not-boiling to boiling is a qualitative change in the water.

It is a law of dialectics that change of quantity (an increase or a decrease) eventually leads to a qualitative change if it goes far enough. If you add enough heat to ice, intensifying its internal contradictions, liquid water will result: a change of quality from solid to liquid. If you continue adding heat, the liquid water will eventually turn into steam, a second qualitative change.

Each quality has quantitative limits, and when it goes beyond them, the quality changes into another quality. Although people live to different ages, increasing age eventually leads to death, a qualitative change from life. Life eventually reaches a limit, and death results. While humans are alive, the quality of being healthy has quantitative limits. Consistently overeating makes a person fat and can eventually lead to death; consistently eating too little results in malnutrition and eventually death.

Many scientists recently combined their data on Alzheimer‘s patients into one huge database. This made it possible to find biological markers for the disease that no research group could have found alone. When the number of Party members increases enough, some old forms of organization and leadership will not work any longer, and new ones must be developed.

When one quality of a thing or process changes into an opposite quality, some other qualities change along with it and some do not. Qualitative change preserves some qualities and changes others. Water that boils is still water. A worker who gets laid off is still a member of the working class, despite the change of quality from employed to unemployed.

The development of the contradictions inside the capitalist system produces qualitative change, as some aspects of the system change from minor features to major ones, and vice-versa. As intensifying rivalry among capitalist empires--the US, Russia, China, Europe, etc.--produces larger wars, the US capitalists need to make a qualitative change into fascism within the US itself, lowering the living standard of US   workers, increasing   repression,   and   calling   this “patriotic” and “sacrifice for the common good.”

The idea that quantity eventually changes into quality helps us understand how the communist movement grows. Consistent political work, especially distributing the Party press and recruiting members in key sectors like industry and the military, eventually changes the quality of the movement from merely opposing the capitalist class to defeating it and taking state power.

Before the revolution, however, our movement will go through many qualitative changes. If a shop goes from one or two Red Flag readers to, say, 10% readers, it will mean a qualitative change in the political understanding of the workers in that shop. It would probably mean the party becoming the actual leader of the workers in that shop, another qualitative change. When this happens in enough shops, schools and military units, the result will be a qualitatively new stage at which mass recruitment to the party is possible, and communist revolution is closer.