The Fallacy of Truth
By: F. Anton Drozdov
Tags: Marxism, Socialism, Communism, Dialectics, Truth

Introduction

Truth and fact, two terms that are notoriously, and unfortunately, commonly interchanged, carry with them the greatest of differences. In this essay I aim to further observe the glaring differences between the two terms, the weight they hold, and how society has intentionally blurred the distinctions between the two.

In writing this, I must admit I had begun off of a hypothetical groundwork. My earliest thought of this notion of fact vs. truth had been through conversation in working with a mutual aid network, in which communists and liberals were participating. My varying discussions with different members had led me to find that within each context there were different truths we had found, depending on the parties present. With the liberals, I found the framework of analysis to be greater lacking in analytical methods, mirroring the bourgeois academia of capitalist nations. As such, their truths were simply incomparable to the communists, with whom I had further conversed with about Marxism and its implications on the human truth.

And yet, my disagreement with the liberal self-truth was a truth of my own. And perhaps my own truth, while historically closer to the absolute plane of fact, was not universal, but the closest thing to it.

I had had these conversations in passing, and never gave thought to the implications of varying truths, and their relation to fact; this was something that I had begun to observe later on, at which point I wanted to qualify each term for itself, and I obtained the following denotations, as defined by my observations and further analysis¹:

Fact

A fact refers to a phenomenon that, if repeatedly carried out, shall reap the same results. Take the simplest example of the theory of gravity. If I were to jump from a 2 meter distance in the vertical direction, I shall inevitably fall to the ground, 2 meters below. If I repeat this process, now with a 5 meter drop, I shall still fall to the ground, now 5 meters below. This repeatability then can be designated as fact. Gravity acting on a mass is a fact.

A fact, in the context of an event, shall refer to an indisputable occurrence, like perhaps someone falling. A witnessed event cannot be disputed at face value, only afterwards can the intent and reasoning of the fact be disputed.

Truth

A truth refers to a phenomenon that, if repeatedly carried out, shall reap different results. Let us qualify the fact above. Such fact only holds true for an object on a mass large enough to develop a gravitational field, like the Earth. But if I were to jump off the same 2 meter ledge in the middle of a vacuum (i.e. space), then I would in fact not fall.

A truth cannot be considered a single event, but a subjective conclusion that can be subject to change, given its subjective nature.

However, even fact itself, if non-universal, can be subjected to alteration, and so the relationship between fact and truth can be simplified to the following statement:

A fact is a truth whose constraints are explicitly qualified, whose bases and conditions are maintained to ensure repeatability.

Truth, as Interpreted by Society

To better determine what the truth represents, it is essential that we observe it through the lens of value in society. Similarly to how value is placed on goods and services that otherwise lend themselves to no inherent purpose, simply for being collectively determined as having value by the structured society, the same can be said about the conception of truth.

Truth is, in itself, inconsistent, and found through the present parties. However, there lies above the truth, the subjective plane, the fact, within the absolutist plane. While we may subject ourselves to the truth through contextual compromise, such compromise is still subservient to the hierarchical superior of fact. Of course to say that truth is then false is in itself subject to this hierarchy as well.

Capitalist society has deemed the truth to be fact. Through the grotesque being of bourgeois academia, the analytical methods of obtaining the truth and fact have been dismantled, the lines blurred between the two. Thus, this academia then forces upon the people a method devoid of critical analysis, of analyzation through dialectics, rather treating the truth as something fed to the student through the means of text. In fact, what is read to us as accepted fact is peddled as truth, and thus the lines further disappear.

So then, truth must be at the center of revolutionary academia. The critical methods of determining the truth, and placing said truth into the context of the greater hierarchy, beneath fact, must become the new learning. The self-indulgence of authority teachings must be rejected, as must the benign force-feeding of fact, the lack of distinction between the scientific fact and the philosophical truth.

It is of course no accident that capitalist bourgeois academia shies from involving the students with the world. The greatest theoreticians are those who interact with the world, for they alone can properly determine the truth. How then can the capitalists live, knowing they have bred the greatest thinkers to overthrow the dictatorship of capital? With such information at our disposal, the education of the masses through community involvement then becomes paramount. Rejecting stationary reactionism must be at the forefront of revolutionary education; instead, we must replace it with the action, the praxis, of the apprentice. Only through material interaction with the world can we become privy to the greatest of educations.

Only then can we begin to determine the humane truth.

Dialectics and the Truth

Through the method of verbal argumentation, the truth, as subjective inferior to fact, can be determined in the specific context of present parties. As previously mentioned, the truth may vary, depending on the individuals calculating it. Take a truth in group A, and present it to group B; it may be completely unfathomable to the second group, and thus immediate conflict of ideas is the only determinant of truth. To better understand this, let us observe the following hypothetical.

Assume two individuals are debating what the best sport is. The first individual claims it is football, and the second individual firmly believes it to be baseball. They compromise, determining that as they both enjoy basketball, that shall be the best sport within the context of their presence. Imagine this truth is now presented to a second group with two individuals, who have decided the best sport in their context is volleyball. The groups’ truths are in direct conflict, and thus the groups can be merged to now determine the truth amongst the collective four individuals.

Let us further complicate this, for the sake of hypothesis. Perhaps the first group is comprised of two individuals from the United States, and the best sport for them is still basketball. Now imagine the individuals from the second group are from South America, a region where futbol is extremely popular. The context of geographical location and culture have now further warped these truths, and thus presented a greater factor, culture, and its inevitable impact on truth.

This scenario can of course be expanded. Groups can continually be added to the context, and thus get us closer to a better understanding the process of truth determination in the population of the collective humanity, in which the varying cultures act as overarching groups, and within them, the subcultures, the smaller groups.

Now perhaps we shift the first hypothetical. Within the first group we change the circumstances, and reject the second group; rather than shifting the truth from one group to another, we alter the first group after it has determined its truth, thus changing the process. Observe the scenario below.

Assume the same two individuals are now in the process of deciding what the best color is. The first individual claims the best color is red, whilst the second individual sharply disagrees, insisting that it is in fact blue that is the greatest. Through argumentation and the approach to compromise, they must then determine a feasible common ground, a color in which both parties can agree is the best, for both individuals. They decide the best color is green, as they both view it favorably.

Now, a third individual has approached the other two. This third party insists that green, the color of compromise, is not truly a good color, and thus the process of argumentation must reset itself, and a new compromise must be found. This process, much like the first hypothetical, can continually be amplified, adding individuals as necessary, until we approach humanity as a whole. The entirety of humanity becomes the overarching case study of dialectical resolution, as it must take up the daunting task of finding its universal truth.

While the dialectic of the idealists takes heavily the form of argumentative, and thus more subjective, truth determination, the dialectic of the materialists (e.g. the Marxists) takes the form of a more objective truth, the truth of humanity, and the pursuit of said truth. The materialist argument lies in the basis that the human truth is to achieve liberation and freedom, from individual rule and the rule of capital. Through historical conflicts and their resolutions, humanity takes one step towards this truth with each societal overturn. The resolution of such conflict is often left to the end goals of struggle, and thus through individual power, a more objective truth is obtained, one which closely approaches the absolute plane of fact.

Those who stand in the way of this progression of history simply stand on the tracks of the train that cannot be stopped. Thus, whilst the societal progression towards the universal truth shall become objectively collective in struggle, the individual may then place themselves into the context of this larger objective, and determine the subjective truths within their smaller parties.

And so, the ideologies of liberation are then born.

Truth and Morality

Truth, as a subjective being, then also takes the form of morality, and moral decision. The universality of morality is too inconsistent to maintain, and thus we might conclude that as a relative, it is more easily justifiable as a facet of human life.

To say, for example, that murder is a moral wrong rejects the dialectical process of the approach to the murder itself. What led to this occurring? What parties were involved. The lack of observation of the path leading to the synthesis of the murder itself is inconsistent, and stands in the way of the fact, that being the occurrence of the murder itself. The truth in this context would refer to perhaps the disagreement, the sequence of events that justified the event taking place.

Using the determined denotations of fact and truth (see introduction), we may conclude that the event having taken place is fact, while the path leading up to the event can be disputed as varying truths, which shall inevitably vary between witnesses and those absent. Of course an array of factors shall impact one’s ability to determine the truth in a moral sense. The clouding of one’s judgement, for example through conflict of interest or proximity to those involved in an event, may have an impact on the determination of the truth in the context of those present.

So, in the context of moral arbitering, it is justified to have unbiased parties determine the truth, as their own personal judgements cannot heavily factor into the pursuit of the truth². Herein lies the process of determining the truth and its effect on the the relativism of moral decisions.

The Pursuit of Societal Truth Through Struggle — The Materialist Dialectic

The human truth of liberation is no simple endpoint to achieve. History has clearly mapped a path ridden with misery and violence, bloodshed and revolution. But to avoid this inevitability is to stand in the face of human truth, to disrespect the endless struggle of the oppressed.

Let us observe the fact. Violence has historically been unavoidable, and through it society has been overturned, a new order of power implemented. This cannot be debated through any means of argumentation, as its occurrence is unchallenged, documented and historically accepted. Using this fact, we can determine the current subjective truth.

Violence amongst the masses is simply reaction, a blowback of the systematic violence of the slavery to capital, the widespread exploitation of the global proletariat. It is the subjective truth of the toiling masses that they must respond to their oppression through any means necessary. The pacifists may hold different truths, of course, and must then observe said truths in perspective to history, the observation of struggles of the past, and how such struggles have been overcome.

An inconvenient fact leads us to the conclusion that violent struggle has historically, and repeatedly, liberated the oppressed. Again, as this process has repeatedly reaped the same end result, it can be more confidently accepted as fact, and so those who shy from physical conflict only deny the truth, given their incomplete framework of pacifism and personal life lacking of conflict.

The oppressed peoples of the world, through their material interaction with the world in the most negative of ways, have a further complete framework through which to determine the truth of their struggle. As such, pacifism is often absent in the circles of the oppressed. The notion of non-violence is to them a bourgeois farce meant to placate them into the acceptance of their destitute and harsh conditions.

We might then conclude that the greatest determiners of the truth are those who have adequately interacted with the material world through varying degrees of praxis, as they have attempted, and perhaps succeeded at, materially altering the world around them to reap specific results (in the case of struggle, liberation).

As such, the greatest philosophical minds are perhaps simply of those whose work is influenced by their results of the scientific method applied in a societal and analytical manner. The self-pleasuring of dejected western thinkers, who take pleasure in the mere analysis of a world in which they have seldom participated, must be replaced by the thinkers whose works are direct results of their actions. The closest we might approach to the truth is through the insight of the analysis of the social scientists, building off of the framework they provide, and further approaching humanity to an accurate and pseudo-factual truth, almost fully reaching this absolute.

What the Truth Looks Like: The Endpoint of Human History

Though human history is in progress, using the analytical methods of the materialist dialectic, we may forge the path ahead, to allow humanity to finally calculate its truth of universal liberation from the tyrants of capital.

History itself may only take any semblance of form through its change. If such movement is absent, then history itself is a fallacy. Its movement then is fact, and within such fact there have been the shifts in truth, pushing humanity closer and closer towards a universal truth, rather than a qualified one. If the truth of liberation applies to select members of society, to a ruling class (in the case of capitalism, a bourgeois class), then the universal truth has not been achieved.

Utilizing a Marxist analysis, it is then concluded that whilst the truth forges ahead through conflict and resolution, it cannot be found until the conflicts to the existing truths are then resolved. As such, Marx’s proposal of the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, then provide humanity with the means to take action, to dissolve the conflicts that exist, that stand in the way of achieving the final human truth.

Once the categorical conflicts of capitalism are abolished, humanity then has its final contradiction standing in the way of its liberation: the state. Utilizing a scientific descriptor of the state, as provided by Lenin and Engels, having done away with the systematic contradictions of class and private property then render the final contradiction itself obsolete, as the state itself is simply the violent expression of class conflict, of a tyranny of the minority. Such a tyranny has no purpose so long as the barriers to the truth are absent.

Thus, the state withers away, leaving humanity with its final truth of liberation. Thus, history reaches its endpoint. Motion is no longer viable, and the world can finally be stable.

Conclusion

While it can be considered documented event or phenomenon, the societal misconstruing of fact with truth can only do harm to the analytical methods applied to history and the future.

It seems my criticism of stationary western philosophers may be seen as somewhat ironic, considering my documenting of this personal analysis. And perhaps it might be, though I myself shall at least consider it reaction to observations of argumentation and historical study.

Fact itself is often only seen as static, eventual. Reality shows us that it can be used as a descriptor of phenomenon, and more often is so. In this sense, the progression of human history is riddled with the conflicts of truths, with the victory of more widespread truths over the minority. In fact, the periods in human history in which the truth of the minority attempts to overpower the truth of the majority are riddled with violence, barbarism and fascism.

Truth itself operates on its own hierarchy, and those who claim their truth to be more universal, even in the face of minority determination, are subject to the will of human truth, of collective decision making. The overall relevance of truth is an essential factor to its sustainability. Those who artificially elevate their unpopular truths shall inevitably be crushed under the ever-moving cogs of human history. Only in a society with no history can truth become systematically obsolete, leaving only the truths of human liberation and individual pursuit.

In writing this I myself am making an effort to further understand truth, and how its relativist nature affects human society and the direction in which it moves. My many hours pondering this question has led to me to conclude that nothing is false, only varying degrees of true. Simply due to the existence of a plane of idealism and materialism, we can claim that every existing phrase and event is true, but incomplete. The true platonic ideal of truth is fact, and humanity must strive to achieve as close to such an ideal as we might possibly be able to. To achieve as close to universal liberation as is humanly feasible.

With no curiosity, there is no new world waiting for us. With no pursuit of the universal truth, there is no liberation. And so, we must fight, not just with the truths that oppose our own, but with those that oppose the collective truths of humanity.

Let us find the truth, together. History can only move forward, we the arbiters of truth.

¹Important to note is the the definitions I have provided for fact and truth are based off of my own baseline assumption that, rather than concrete statement, fact and truth refer to event, or non-stationary statements, which are subject to fluidity, variation and growth/regression.

²Take note that I have intentionally referred to this as truth, rather than fact, as a “jury of one’s peers” can never truly determine the entire truth, an unfortunate reality that must be considered in the process of obtaining a complete image. However, an unbiased decision is the closest one may approach to the fact of the path leading up to the event.