Dialectical theory and the HIV/AIDS epidemic

Major epidemics shape human history and are shaped by the era in which they emerge and by human responses to them. HIV/AIDS is not merely historical but also dialectical. Since HIV began to spread, the dialectical processes of human history have clearly shaped it. On the microsocial level, drug users in New York may have been the first to recognize a new plague; their responses slowed its spread before medicine recognized its existence. Well-known organized responses by gays and lesbians created another element to this dialectic. Macrosocial dialectics also shaped the epidemic: structures of exploitation and oppression conditioned viral spread (e.g., in the USA, concentrating it among Blacks; globally, concentrating it in the poorest continent); and human struggles opened pathways for further spread through some (but not all) wars and revolutions. Thus, all the normal dialectics of consciousness, class, the development of capitalist accumulation and the State, and struggles over axes of oppression have shaped this epidemic.

We are exploring whether “dialectics of nature” is a useful concept for understanding the interaction of rapid HIV mutation and human responses. Does HIV's rapid evolution to survive antiretroviral therapies mimic the action of a strategic intelligence? Does its use of the spread of injection drug use to spread to countries that had avoided sexually-transmitted HIV epidemics do so?

Thus, the study of epidemics may help us to develop new understandings of human dialectics and of possible forms of dialectics of nature; and dialectical analysis may help us to understand epidemics better.