What Can Dialectics Change in the System?

Abstract This article maps the differences in the application of systems method in Marxist dialectics, cybernetics, and poststructuralism. It studies the impact of algorithmic rationality on the speculative lexicons of philosophy—especially when philosophical dialectics is defined as nothing more than quasi-cybernetic recursivity. According to Yuk Hui, the decline of philosophy and dialectics can be contested only by second-order cybernetics as the proper successor of philosophical speculation. To dispute this bold assumption, the article embarks on a comparative inquiry into the systemic method in Marx’s political economy, cybernetics, and poststructuralism, respectively. Reference to the comparative analysis of systems method and Marxist dialectics by Igor Blauberg and Eric Yudin allows one to challenge the thesis according to which the preconditions of dialectics can be developed in the frame of cybernetic recursivity. It enables one to go farther in demonstrating the differences between the Marxist application of systems, which includes dialectical procedures and genesis, and cybernetic systematics, in which these procedures are redundant. Lev Vygotsky, Evald Ilyenkov, and Merab Mamardashvili are brought in as the exemplary methodists who elaborate Marxist methodology to encompass genesis and dialectical difference within systemic abstraction.