Difference between revisions of "Dialectical materialism" - New World Encyclopedia

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'''Dialectical materialism''' is the philosophical expression of [[Marxism]] and [[Marxism-Leninism]]. The name refers to the notion that Marxism is a materialist worldview with a dialectical method. It was developed by [[Karl Marx]] and [[Frederick Engels]] in the mid-late eighteenth century and further elaborated by later Marxist theorists.
  
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'''Dialectical materialism''' is the philosophical basis of [[Marxism]]. The name, which was never used by Marx himself, refers to the notion that Marxism is a synthesis of philosophical '''[[dialectic]]s''' and '''[[materialism]]'''.  
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Dialectical materialism holds that the world, including human beings, is "matter in motion" and that progress occurs through struggle. It follows the [[Hegel]]ian principle of the [[philosophy of history]], namely the development of the [[thesis]] into its [[antithesis]], which is in turn superseded by a [[synthesis]] that conserves aspects of the thesis and the antithesis while at the same time abolishing them. While retaining Hegel's dialectical method, however, Marx and Engels reacted against Hegel's [[idealism]]. Thus, history is not the result of the progressive unfolding of the [[Spirit]], but of [[class struggle]] in society, in which [[economics]] is the determining factor. Moreover, while quantitative change may be gradual, qualitative change involves an abrupt, violent leap to a higher stage. In society, this means that only violent [[revolution]] can bring about the shift from private ownership to [[socialism]] and [[communism]] which Marx and Engels envisioned.
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Dialectical materialism was debated and criticized by various [[Marxist philosophy|Marxist philosophers]], which led to a number of political and philosophical struggles in the Marxist movement in general and in the [[Comintern]] in particular. After the success of the [[Russian Revolution]] in 1917, the proper interpretation of dialectical materialism became a subject of state policy. The official Soviet version of dialectical materialism, as codified by [[Josef Stalin]] was known as ''diamat''. It became the official philosophy of the Soviet state and had a major influence on Soviet intellectual tradition, which was required to adhere to its teachings as official dogma. Hundreds of millions of people were indoctrinated in the principles of dialectical materialism in the [[Soviet Union]] and [[China]] during the twentieth century.
  
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It is complemented with [[historical materialism]] (or the "materialist conception of history") which is the name given to Marx's methodology in the study of society, economics and history.
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==Marxist materialism ==
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Like other materialists of their day, [[Karl Marx|Marx]] and [[Engels]] asserted the primacy of the material world: in short, matter precedes thought. Thus, there is no [[God]] who conceived the world, but rather humans, who are essentially material beings, conceived God. In addition, there is no [[spiritual world]], [[heaven]], or [[hell]], beyond the material world.
  
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Dialectical materialism is often defined by reference to two claims by Marx: first that he "put [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]]'s dialectics back on its feet" and second, that "[t]he history of all hitherto existing society is the history of [[class struggles]]." (''[[The Communist Manifesto]]'', [[1848]]). Dialectical materialism is essentially characterized by the belief that [[history]] is the product of class struggle and obeys to the general Hegelian principle of [[philosophy of history]], that is the development of the [[thesis]] into its [[antithesis]] which is sublated by the "[[Aufhebung]]" (~ [[synthesis]], word that Hegel didn't like to use) — which conserves the thesis and the antithesis while at the same time abolishing it (''Aufheben'' — this contradiction explains the difficulties of Hegel's thought). Hegel's dialectics aims at explaining the growth and development of human history. He considered that [[truth]] was the product of history and passed through various moments, including the moment of error — error, or also negativity, is part of the development of truth — Marx's dialectical materialism considers, against Hegel's [[idealism]], that history is not the product of the Spirit ([[Geist]] or also [[Zeitgeist]] — the "Spirit of the Time") but the effect of material class struggle in society. Theory thus has its roots in the materiality of social existence. However, "dialectical materialism" also refers to ''diamat'' (an abbreviation for "''dia''lectical ''mat''erialism"), imposed by [[Stalin]] on the [[Comintern]] and on [[Communist states]].
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All phenomena in the universe consist of "matter in motion." All things are interconnected and develop in accordance with [[natural law]]. The physical world is an objective reality and exists independently of our perception of it. Perception is thus a reflection of the material world in the brain, and the world is truly knowable, when objectively perceived.
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<blockquote>The ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought (Karl Marx, ''[[Das Kapital]]'', Vol. 1). </blockquote>
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[[Image:Engels.jpg|thumb|left|130px|[[Friedrich Engels]]]]  
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Marx thus endorsed a materialist philosophy against Hegel's idealism. However, he also criticized classical [[materialism]] as type idealist philosophy. According to his and Engels' ''[[Theses on Feuerbach]]'' (1845), [[philosophy]] had to stop "interpreting" the world in endless metaphysical debates, in order to start "transforming" the world. The rising [[workers' movement]], observed by Engels in [[England]] and by [[Marx]] in [[France]] and [[Germany]], was engaging in precisely that transformational revolution.
  
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Marx, however, never used the term of "dialectical materialism" itself, which was probably invented in [[1887]] by [[Joseph Dietzgen]], a socialist tanner who corresponded with Marx. [[Georgi Plekhanov]], the father of Russian socialism, later used it and it thus entered Marxist theory. Marx had talked about the "materialist conception of history", which was later shortened to "historical materialism" by Engels. Engels exposed the "materialist dialectic" &mdash; not "dialectical materialism" &mdash; in his ''[[Dialectics of Nature]]'' ([[1883]]). ''Diamat'' was debated and criticized by many [[Marxist philosophy|Marxist philosophers]], which led to various political and philosophical struggles in the Marxist movement in general and in the Comintern in particular.
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[[Historical materialism]]—the application of dialectical materialism to the analysis of history—thus affords primacy to [[class struggle]] over philosophy ''per se''. Philosophy, in fact, is not an objective science but a partisan political act. In this sense, classical materialism—which tended to justify the social ''status quo''—was no better than the outright [[Idealism]] of [[Kant]] or [[Hegel]]'s philosophies. "True" philosophy must take the correct position in the class struggle, and the function of Marxist philosophy is to do exact that.  
  
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== A brief history of dialectical materialist thought ==
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The materialism of Marx and Engels later opened up the way for the [[Frankfurt School]]'s [[Critical theory (Frankfurt School)|critical theory]], which combined philosophy with the [[social science]]s in an attempt to diagnose the ailments of society. In the later Marxist movement centering on the [[Soviet Union]], however, dialectical materialism would be reduced to the orthodox Marxist theory known as ''diamat''.
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=== Lenin's ''Materialism and Empiriocriticism'' (1908) and the 1917 October Revolution ===
 
  
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Dialectical materialism was first elaborated by [[Lenin]] in ''Materialism and Empiriocriticism'' ([[1908]]) around three axes: the "materialist inversion" of Hegelian dialectics, the historicity of ethical principles ordered to [[class struggle]] and the convergence of "[[evolutionism|laws of evolution]]" in physics ([[Hemlholtz]]), biology ([[Charles Darwin|Darwin]]) and in political economics (Marx). Lenin hence took position between a historicist Marxism ([[Antonio Labriola|Labriola]]) and a [[determinism|determinist]] Marxism, close to "[[social darwinism]]" ([[Karl Kautsky|Kautsky]]). New discoveries in physics (including [[x-rays]], [[electrons]], and the beginnings of [[quantum mechanics]]) challenged previous conceptions of matter and materialism. Matter seemed to be disappearing. Lenin disagreed:
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==Marxist dialectics==
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[[Engels]] observed three laws of dialectics. They are:
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<blockquote>'Matter disappears' means that the limit within which we have hitherto known matter disappears and that our knowledge is penetrating deeper; properties of matter are disappearing that formerly seemed absolute, immutable and primary, and which are now revealed to be relative and characteristic only of certain states of matter. For the ''sole'' 'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of ''being an objective reality'', of existing outside of the mind. </blockquote>
 
  
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Lenin was following on from the work of [[Friedrich Engels]], who had noted that "with each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science, [[materialism]] has to change its form." (''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch02.htm  Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.]'') One of Lenin's challenges was distancing materialism as a viable philosophical outlook from what he referred to as the "vulgar materialism" expressed in statements like "the brain secretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile" (attributed to 18th century physician Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, 1757-1808); "metaphysical materialism" (matter is composed of immutable, unchanging particles); and 19th-century "mechanical materialism" (matter was like little molecular billiard balls interacting according to simple laws of mechanics). Lenin's (and Engels') solution to this challenge was "dialectical materialism", where matter was understood in the broader sense of "objective reality" and consistent with new developments in science.
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* The law of the unity and conflict of opposites
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* The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes
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* The law of the negation of the negation
  
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Following the [[1917]] [[October Revolution]], [[Philosophy in the Soviet Union|Soviet philosophy]] divided itself between "dialecticians" ([[Deborin]]) and "mechanists" ([[Nikolai Bukharin|Bukharin]]).
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The first of these laws was also seen by both [[Hegel]] and [[Lenin]] as the central feature of a dialectical understanding of things. It has been traced to the ancient Greek philosopher [[Heraclitus]]. The second is taken by Hegel from [[Aristotle]], and may be traced to the ancient Ionian philosophers (particularly [[Anaximenes]]), from whom Aristotle inherited the concept. The third, the negation of the negation, is Hegel's distinct expression. It refers to the idea a ''thesis'' generating its ''antithesis'' or negation, which is in turn negated by a ''synthesis''.
  
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=== Georg Lukács' ''History and Class Consciousness'' (1921-23) and the Vth Comintern Congress (1924) ===
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The principal features of Marxist dialectics are:
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[[Georg Lukács]], who had been minister of Culture in [[Béla Kun]]'s short-lived [[Hungarian Soviet Republic]] (1919), published ''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/index.htm History and Class Consciousness]'' in 1923, in which he defined dialectical materialism as the knowledge of society as a whole, knowledge which in itself was immediately the [[class consciousness]] of the proletariat. In the first chapter, "[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/orthodox.htm What is Orthodox Marxism?]", Lukács defined orthodoxy as the fidelity to the "Marxist method", and not to the "dogmas":
 
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<blockquote> "Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx’s investigations. It is not the ‘belief’ in this or that thesis, nor the [[exegesis]] of a ‘sacred’ book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders." (§1) </blockquote>
 
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[[Image:Joseph Dietzgen.jpg|right|thumb|100px|[[Joseph Dietzgen]], the inventor of the term "dialectical materialism".]]
 
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Lukács criticized [[revisionism|revisionist]] attempts by calling to the return to this Marxist method. In much the same way that [[Louis Althusser|Althusser]] would latter define Marxism and [[psychoanalysis]] as "conflictual sciences" <ref> [[Louis Althusser]], "Marx and Freud", in ''Writings on Psychoanalysis'', Stock/IMEC, 1993 (French edition) </ref>, Lukács conceives "revisionism" and political splits as inherent to Marxist theory and praxis, insofar as dialectical materialism is, according to him, the product of class struggle:  
 
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<blockquote> "For this reason the task of orthodox Marxism, its victory over Revisionism and [[utopian socialism|utopianism]] can never mean the defeat, once and for all, of false tendencies. It is an ever-renewed struggle against the insidious effects of bourgeois ideology on the thought of the proletariat. Marxist orthodoxy is no guardian of traditions, it is the eternally vigilant prophet proclaiming the relation between the tasks of the immediate present and the totality of the historical process." (end of §5) </blockquote>
 
  
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Furthermore, he stated that "The premise of dialectical materialism is, we recall: 'It is not men’s consciousness that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness.'... Only when the core of existence stands revealed as a social process can existence be seen as the product, albeit the hitherto unconscious product, of human activity." (§5) In line with Marx's thought, he thus criticized the [[individualist]] [[bourgeois]] philosophy of the [[subject (philosophy)|subject]], which founds itself on the voluntary and [[consciousness|conscious subject]]. Against this [[ideology]], he asserts the primacy of social relations. Existence &mdash; and thus the world &mdash; is the product of human activity; but this can be seen only if the primacy of social process on individual consciousness, which is but the effect of ideological mystification, is accepted. This doesn't entails that Lukács restrains human [[liberty]] on behalf of some kind of sociological [[determinism]]: to the contrary, this production of existence is the possibility of ''[[praxis]]''.  
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#The universe is not a disconnected mix of things isolated from each other, but an integral whole, with the result that things are interdependent.
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#The natural world, from its smallest to its largest component, is in a state of constant motion.
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#All things contain within themselves internal contradictions, which are the primary cause of motion, change, and development in the world.
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#Development is a process whereby insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes lead to fundamental, qualitative changes. Qualitative changes, however, do not change gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, in the form of a leap from one state to another.
  
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This heterodox definition, however, which he maintained by asserting that "orthodox Marxism" is fidelity to the Marxist "method", and not to "dogmas", was condemned, along with [[Karl Korsch]]'s work, in July [[1924]], during the Vth [[Comintern]] Congress, by [[Grigory Zinoviev]].
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==Historical materialism==
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Being concerned primarily with history and society rather than philosophy ''per se,'' Marx and Engels were particularly concerned with the application of their philosophy to historical and political reality. The result came to be known as [[historical materialism]].
  
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=== Stalin's codification of ''diamat'' ===
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According to this theory, the [[primitive communism]] of tribal societies represented the original "thesis" of human development. This generated the ''antithesis'' of [[private ownership]] and class society. The ''synthesis''—emerging after various stages of historical development such as [[slavery]], [[feudalism]], [[mercantilism]], and [[capitalism]]—will be advanced [[communism]], in which the workers own the means of production in an advanced industrialized society. However, just as a chick must break out of the shell which both protects and encases it, the working class must break free from the institutions of repression which capitalist society has created in order to perpetuate itself. Because such qualitative changes are always sudden and violent, this necessitates a violent [[revolution]] and the establishment of a [[dictatorship of the proletariat]] as a first step to achieving first [[socialism]], and then the gradual withering away of the state into advanced communism.
  
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In [[1931]], [[Stalin]] decided of the issue of the debate between dialecticians and mechanists by publishing a [[decree]] which identified dialectical materialism to [[Marxism-Leninism]]. He then codified it in ''[http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm]'' ([[1938]]) by enumerating the "laws of dialectics", which are the grounds of particular disciplines and in particular of the science of history, and which guarantees their conformity to the "[[proletarian]] conception of the world". Thus, ''diamat'' imposed itself on most Communist parties.
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According to the Marxist principle of the "partisanship of philosophy," the avowed purpose of this intellectual exercise for Marx and Engels was to create an ideology as a catalyst toward developing revolutionary class consciousness. Indeed, Marx and Engels saw themselves not so much as philosophers but as the voices of a historical inevitability:
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<blockquote>
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It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness (Karl Marx, ''Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'').</blockquote>
  
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== Marxist criticisms of dialectical materialism ==
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== Soviet dialectical materialism==
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=== Lenin's contributions===
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[[Image:Lenin 1920.jpg|thumb|150px|[[Lenin]] in 1920]]
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[[Lenin]] first formally addressed dialectical materialism in ''[[Materialism and Empiriocriticism]]'' (1908) around three axes:
  
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However, the doctrine of dialectical materialism has been criticized by many Marxist theorists, including [[Marxist philosopher]]s such as [[Antonio Gramsci]], who proposed a Marxist "philosophy of [[praxis]]" in its stead, or [[Louis Althusser]]. Other thinkers in [[Marxist philosophy]] have had recourse to the original texts of Marx and Engels and have created other Marxist philosophical projects and concepts which present alternatives to dialectical materialism. As early as [[1937]], [[Mao Zedong]] proposed another interpretation, in his essay ''[http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm On Contradiction]'', in which he rejected the "laws of dialectics" and insisted on the complexity of the [[contradiction]]. Mao's text inspired Althusser's work on the contradiction, which was a driving theme in his well-known essay ''[http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/FM65NB.html For Marx]'' ([[1965]]). Althusser attempted to nuance the Marxist concept of "[[contradiction]]" by borrowing the concept of "[[overdetermination]]"from [[psychoanalysis]]. He criticized the [[teleology|teleological]] reading of Marx as a return to Hegel's idealism. Althusser developed the concept of "random materialism" (''matérialisme aléatoire'') in contrast to dialectical materialism, a move which grew out of Althusser's project of 'anti-humanism,' or the "philosophy of the subject." Another school of thought, led by Italian philosopher [[Ludovico Geymonat]], constructed a historical [[epistemology]] from dialectical materialism.
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*The "materialist inversion" of Hegelian dialectics
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*Ethical principles ordered to [[class struggle]]  
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*The convergence of the "[[evolutionism|laws of evolution]]" in physics ([[Helmholtz]]), biology ([[Charles Darwin|Darwin]]), and in political economics (Marx)
  
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==Materialism in dialectical materialism ==
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Lenin based his work on that of [[Friedrich Engels|Engels]], and also addressed the writings of more recent philosophers, often in biting and satirical form. He took on the task of distancing Marxist materialism from several other forms of materialist philosophy:
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*"Vulgar materialism" expressed in statements like "the brain secretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile" (attributed to eighteenth century physician [[Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis]], 1757-1808)
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*"Metaphysical materialism" (matter is composed of immutable, unchanging particles)
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*Nineteenth century "mechanical materialism" (matter was like little molecular billiard balls interacting according to simple laws of mechanics)
  
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Marx's thesis concerned [[Epicurus]] and [[Democritus]]' [[atomism]], considered as the founder, along with [[stoicism]], of [[materialist]] philosophy. He was thus familiar with [[Lucretius]]' theory of [[clinamen]], etc. Materialism asserts the primacy of the material world: in short, matter precedes thought. Additionally, materialism holds that the world is material; that all phenomena in the universe consist of "matter in motion", wherein all things are interdependent and interconnected and develop in accordance with natural law; that the world exists outside us and independently of our perception of it; that thought is a reflection of the material world in the brain, and that the world is ''in principle'' knowable.
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He also took on several Marxist thinkers whom he deemed to have improperly understood the implications of dialectical and historical materialism, resulting in their adopting an insufficient revolutionary outlook based on gradual change and "bourgeois-democratic" [[socialism]]. Lenin insisted that gradualism could never achieve qualitative change in the economic base of society.  
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<blockquote>"The ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought." --Karl Marx, ''[[Das Kapital]]'', Vol. 1. </blockquote>
 
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Marx thus endorsed a materialist philosophy against Hegel's idealism; he "turned Hegel's dialectics upside down". However, Marx's materialist position is not to be confused with simple materialism: in fact, he criticized classic materialism as another idealist philosophy. According to the famous ''[[Theses on Feuerbach]]'' (1845), philosophy had to stop "interpreting" the world in endless metaphysical debates, in order to start "transforming" the world. Which the rising [[workers' movement]], observed by Engels in England ([[Chartist]] movement) and by Marx in France and Germany, was precisely doing. Historical materialism is therefore the primacy accorded to [[class struggle]]. The ultimate sense of Marx's materialism philosophy is that philosophy itself must take position in the class struggle, if it is not to be reduced to [[spiritualism|spiritualist]] [[Idealism]] (such as [[Kant]] or [[Hegel]]'s philosophies) which are, in fact, only [[ideology|ideologies]], that is the material product of social existence. Marx's materialism thus latter opened up the way for [[Frankfurt School]]'s [[Critical theory (Frankfurt School)|critical theory]], which combined philosophy with the [[social science]]s in an attempt to diagnosticize the ailments of society. Dialectical materialism itself would however be reduced to the ''diamat'' orthodox theory.
 
  
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==Dialectics in dialectical materialism ==
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=== Stalin's codification of ''diamat'' ===
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[[Image:Stalin.jpg|thumb|130px|[[Stalin]]]]
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Following the 1917 [[October Revolution]], the [[Philosophy in the Soviet Union|Soviet philosophy]] divided itself between "dialecticians" ([[Deborin]]) and "mechanists" ([[Nikolai Bukharin|Bukharin]]).[[Stalin]] ultimately decided the outcome of the debate by publishing a [[decree]] which identified dialectical materialism as pertaining solely to [[Marxism-Leninism]] rather than any other form of materialism. Stalin would also use ''diamat'' as a justification for the establishment of the totalitarian state. In June 1930, he told the Soviet party congress:
  
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For formal approaches, the main predication of 'dialectical opposition or contradiction' must be understood as 'some sense' opposition between the objects involved in a directly associated context. 'Dialectical contradiction' is not reducible to simple 'opposites' or 'negation'.    
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<blockquote>We stand for the withering away of the state. At the same time we stand for the… strongest state power that has ever existed… Is this “contradictory”? Yes, it is contradictory. But this contradiction… fully reflects Marx’s dialectics.</blockquote>
  
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Dialectics is the science of the general and abstract laws of the development of nature, society, and thought. Its principal features are:
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Stalin then established the official Soviet version of dialectical materialism in his work, ''Dialectical and Historical Materialism'' (1938).<ref>Josef Stalin, [http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm Dialectical and Historical Materialism.] Retrieved November 5, 2008.</ref> Here, he enumerated the "laws of dialectics," which are to serve as the grounds of particular scientific disciplines, especially [[sociology]] and the "science" of history, thus guaranteeing their conformity with what he called the "[[proletarian]] conception of the world." Thus, the official Soviet philosophy of ''diamat'' was imposed on most Communist parties affiliated to the [[Third International]]. Under the Stalinist regime and its successors, academic discussion in Soviet intellectual institutions and journals would be constrained to stay within the line of Stalinist philosophical orthodoxy.
  
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1) The universe is not a disconnected mix of things isolated from each other, but an integral whole, with the result that things are interdependent.
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== Marxist criticisms of dialectical materialism ==
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Nevertheless, the doctrine of dialectical materialism, especially the official Soviet version of ''diamat'', has been criticized by numerous Marxist thinkers. [[Marxist philosopher]] [[Antonio Gramsci]], for example, proposed a "philosophy of [[praxis]]" in its stead. Other thinkers in [[Marxist philosophy]] have pointed to the original texts of Marx and Engels, pointing out that traditional dialectical materialism was much more a product of Engels than of Marx. This has resulted in various "Marxist" philosophical projects which present alternatives to traditional dialectical materialism.
  
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2) Nature - the natural world or cosmos - is in a state of constant motion:
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As early as 1937, [[Mao Zedong]] proposed yet another interpretation, in his essay ''On Contradiction'', in which he rejected Engels' "laws of dialectics" as oversimplified and insisted on the complexity of the [[contradiction]]. Mao's text inspired [[Louis Althusser]]'s work on contradiction, which was a driving theme in his well-known essay ''For Marx'' (1965). Althusser attempted to nuance the Marxist concept of contradiction by borrowing the concept of "[[overdetermination]]" from [[psychoanalysis]]. He criticized the Stalinist "[[teleology|teleological]]" reading of Marx as a return to Hegel's [[idealism]] in which philosophy supersedes reality. Another school of thought, led by Italian philosopher [[Ludovico Geymonat]], constructed a "historical [[epistemology]]" from dialectical materialism.
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:"All nature, from the smallest thing to the biggest, from a grain of sand to the sun, from the protista to man, is in a constant state of coming into being and going out of being, in a constant flux, in a ceaseless state of movement and change." —Friedrich Engels, ''Dialectics of Nature''.
 
  
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3) Development is a process whereby insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes lead to fundamental, qualitative changes. The latter occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, in the form of a leap from one state to another. A simple example from the physical world might be the heating of water: a one degree increase in temperature is a quantitive change, but at 100 degrees there is a qualitative change - water to steam.
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==Legacy==
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:"Merely quantitative differences, beyond a certain point, pass into qualitative changes." —Karl Marx, ''Capital'', Vol. 1.
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For more than 70 years in the [[Soviet Union]] and its satellite countries, dialectical materialism was the official guiding [[philosophy]] of state. It attempted to deal with all questions of existence, from [[atom]]s to [[history]] and [[economics]]. It became them most important atheistic ideology of the twentieth century, absolutely denying even the possibility of [[God]]'s existence and affirming the need for violent revolution that would do away with [[religion]], which it insisted was merely the "opiate" of the masses.
  
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4) All things contain within themselves internal dialectical contradictions, which are the primary cause of motion, change, and development in the world.  
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More than a billion young people in the former [[Soviet Union]], [[China]], and many other countries were indoctrinated into the worldview of dialectical materialism in schools from kindergarten through college. In the context of the [[totalitarianism|totalitarian societies]] which it spawned, dialectical materialism stifled the creative spirit of two entire generations who grew up under Soviet-style rule. The former Communist world even today is still struggling to recover from dialectical materialism's tragic legacy, a philosophy designed to liberate the workers of the world but which itself ended up in the dust bin of history.
  
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===Laws of dialectics===
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==See also==
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The three laws of dialectics are:
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* [[Friedrich Engels]]
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* The law of the unity and conflict of opposites;
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* [[Karl Marx]]
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* The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes;
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* [[Marxism]]
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* The law of the negation of the negation
 
  
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The application of the dialectic to history is covered more in [[Historical materialism]].
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==Notes==
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<references/>
  
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==Quotations==
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==References==
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:"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a ''practical'' question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-worldliness of his thinking in practice." —Karl Marx, ''[[Theses on Feuerbach]]''
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* Ollman, Bertell, and Tony Smith. ''Dialectics for the New Century''. Basingstoke:: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ISBN 978-0230535312
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* Rigby, S. H. ''Engels and the Formation of Marxism: History, Dialectics and Revolution''. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0719077746
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* Yi, Sang-hŏn. ''Communism; a Critique & Counterproposal''. Washington: Freedom Leadership Foundation, 1973. {{OCLC|741232}}
  
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== Endnotes ==
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==External links==
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<references/>
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All links retrieved January 29, 2024.
  
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==Selected readings on dialectical materialism==
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*Friedrich Engels. ''[http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/index.htm Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy]''
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*''[http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/index.htm Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy]'', Friedrich Engels
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*Friedrich Engels. ''[http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm Anti-Dühring]''
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*''[http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm Anti-Dühring]'', Friedrich Engels
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*Friedrich Engels. ''[http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm Dialectics of Nature]''
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*''[http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm Dialectics of Nature]'', Friedrich Engels
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*V.I. Lenin. ''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/index.htm Materialism and Empirio-Criticism]''  
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*''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/index.htm Materialism and Empirio-Criticism]'', [[V.I. Lenin]]
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*Georg Lukacs. ''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/index.htm History and Class Consciousness]''
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*''[http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/QD15.html On the Question of Dialectics]'', V.I. Lenin
 
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*''[http://ptb.sunhost.be/marx2mao/Stalin/DHM38.html Dialectical and Historical Materialism]'', [[Joseph Stalin]]
 
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*''[http://ptb.sunhost.be/marx2mao/Mao/OC37.html On Contradiction]'', [[Mao Tse-tung]]
 
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*''[http://ptb.sunhost.be/marx2mao/Other/FM65ii.html#s6 On the Materialist Dialectic]'', [[Louis Althusser]]
 
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*''Dialectical Materialism'', V.G. Afanasyev
 
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*''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/materialism/index.htm Materialism And Historical Materialism]'', [[Anton Pannekoek]]
 
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*''[http://www.marxist.com/rircontents.asp Reason in Revolt, Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science]'', Ted Grant and Alan Woods
 
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*''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/index.htm History and Class Consciousness]'', [[Georg Lukacs]]
 
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* Ioan, Petru "Logic and Dialectics" A.I. Cuza University Press, Iaşi 1998.
 
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* [http://www.mises.org/th/chapter7.asp "Dialectical Materialism"], ''Theory and History'', [[Ludwig von Mises]]
 
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*''[http://marxmyths.org/jordan/index.shtml The Origins of Dialectical Materialism]'', Z.A. Jordan
 
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*''[http://www.dialectics4kids.com Dialectics For Kids]''
 
  
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==See also==
 
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'''People'''
 
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* [[Joseph Dietzgen]]
 
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* [[Friedrich Engels]]
 
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* [[Ludovico Geymonat]]
 
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* [[Karl Marx]]
 
  
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'''Concepts'''
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{{Philosophy navigation}}
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* [[dialectical monism]]
 
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* [[historical materialism]]
 
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* [[Marxism]]
 
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* [[Marxist philosophy of nature]]
 
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* [[Methodological naturalism]]
 
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* [[Classical Marxism]]
 
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* [[Orthodox Marxism]]
 
  
 
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Latest revision as of 10:24, 29 January 2024

Karl Marx

Dialectical materialism is the philosophical expression of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism. The name refers to the notion that Marxism is a materialist worldview with a dialectical method. It was developed by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the mid-late eighteenth century and further elaborated by later Marxist theorists.

Dialectical materialism holds that the world, including human beings, is "matter in motion" and that progress occurs through struggle. It follows the Hegelian principle of the philosophy of history, namely the development of the thesis into its antithesis, which is in turn superseded by a synthesis that conserves aspects of the thesis and the antithesis while at the same time abolishing them. While retaining Hegel's dialectical method, however, Marx and Engels reacted against Hegel's idealism. Thus, history is not the result of the progressive unfolding of the Spirit, but of class struggle in society, in which economics is the determining factor. Moreover, while quantitative change may be gradual, qualitative change involves an abrupt, violent leap to a higher stage. In society, this means that only violent revolution can bring about the shift from private ownership to socialism and communism which Marx and Engels envisioned.

Dialectical materialism was debated and criticized by various Marxist philosophers, which led to a number of political and philosophical struggles in the Marxist movement in general and in the Comintern in particular. After the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the proper interpretation of dialectical materialism became a subject of state policy. The official Soviet version of dialectical materialism, as codified by Josef Stalin was known as diamat. It became the official philosophy of the Soviet state and had a major influence on Soviet intellectual tradition, which was required to adhere to its teachings as official dogma. Hundreds of millions of people were indoctrinated in the principles of dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union and China during the twentieth century.

Marxist materialism

Like other materialists of their day, Marx and Engels asserted the primacy of the material world: in short, matter precedes thought. Thus, there is no God who conceived the world, but rather humans, who are essentially material beings, conceived God. In addition, there is no spiritual world, heaven, or hell, beyond the material world.

All phenomena in the universe consist of "matter in motion." All things are interconnected and develop in accordance with natural law. The physical world is an objective reality and exists independently of our perception of it. Perception is thus a reflection of the material world in the brain, and the world is truly knowable, when objectively perceived.

The ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought (Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. 1).

Friedrich Engels

Marx thus endorsed a materialist philosophy against Hegel's idealism. However, he also criticized classical materialism as type idealist philosophy. According to his and Engels' Theses on Feuerbach (1845), philosophy had to stop "interpreting" the world in endless metaphysical debates, in order to start "transforming" the world. The rising workers' movement, observed by Engels in England and by Marx in France and Germany, was engaging in precisely that transformational revolution.

Historical materialism—the application of dialectical materialism to the analysis of history—thus affords primacy to class struggle over philosophy per se. Philosophy, in fact, is not an objective science but a partisan political act. In this sense, classical materialism—which tended to justify the social status quo—was no better than the outright Idealism of Kant or Hegel's philosophies. "True" philosophy must take the correct position in the class struggle, and the function of Marxist philosophy is to do exact that.

The materialism of Marx and Engels later opened up the way for the Frankfurt School's critical theory, which combined philosophy with the social sciences in an attempt to diagnose the ailments of society. In the later Marxist movement centering on the Soviet Union, however, dialectical materialism would be reduced to the orthodox Marxist theory known as diamat.

Marxist dialectics

Engels observed three laws of dialectics. They are:

  • The law of the unity and conflict of opposites
  • The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes
  • The law of the negation of the negation

The first of these laws was also seen by both Hegel and Lenin as the central feature of a dialectical understanding of things. It has been traced to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. The second is taken by Hegel from Aristotle, and may be traced to the ancient Ionian philosophers (particularly Anaximenes), from whom Aristotle inherited the concept. The third, the negation of the negation, is Hegel's distinct expression. It refers to the idea a thesis generating its antithesis or negation, which is in turn negated by a synthesis.

The principal features of Marxist dialectics are:

  1. The universe is not a disconnected mix of things isolated from each other, but an integral whole, with the result that things are interdependent.
  2. The natural world, from its smallest to its largest component, is in a state of constant motion.
  3. All things contain within themselves internal contradictions, which are the primary cause of motion, change, and development in the world.
  4. Development is a process whereby insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes lead to fundamental, qualitative changes. Qualitative changes, however, do not change gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, in the form of a leap from one state to another.

Historical materialism

Being concerned primarily with history and society rather than philosophy per se, Marx and Engels were particularly concerned with the application of their philosophy to historical and political reality. The result came to be known as historical materialism.

According to this theory, the primitive communism of tribal societies represented the original "thesis" of human development. This generated the antithesis of private ownership and class society. The synthesis—emerging after various stages of historical development such as slavery, feudalism, mercantilism, and capitalism—will be advanced communism, in which the workers own the means of production in an advanced industrialized society. However, just as a chick must break out of the shell which both protects and encases it, the working class must break free from the institutions of repression which capitalist society has created in order to perpetuate itself. Because such qualitative changes are always sudden and violent, this necessitates a violent revolution and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as a first step to achieving first socialism, and then the gradual withering away of the state into advanced communism.

According to the Marxist principle of the "partisanship of philosophy," the avowed purpose of this intellectual exercise for Marx and Engels was to create an ideology as a catalyst toward developing revolutionary class consciousness. Indeed, Marx and Engels saw themselves not so much as philosophers but as the voices of a historical inevitability:

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness (Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy).

Soviet dialectical materialism

Lenin's contributions

Lenin in 1920

Lenin first formally addressed dialectical materialism in Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1908) around three axes:

  • The "materialist inversion" of Hegelian dialectics
  • Ethical principles ordered to class struggle
  • The convergence of the "laws of evolution" in physics (Helmholtz), biology (Darwin), and in political economics (Marx)

Lenin based his work on that of Engels, and also addressed the writings of more recent philosophers, often in biting and satirical form. He took on the task of distancing Marxist materialism from several other forms of materialist philosophy:

  • "Vulgar materialism" expressed in statements like "the brain secretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile" (attributed to eighteenth century physician Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, 1757-1808)
  • "Metaphysical materialism" (matter is composed of immutable, unchanging particles)
  • Nineteenth century "mechanical materialism" (matter was like little molecular billiard balls interacting according to simple laws of mechanics)

He also took on several Marxist thinkers whom he deemed to have improperly understood the implications of dialectical and historical materialism, resulting in their adopting an insufficient revolutionary outlook based on gradual change and "bourgeois-democratic" socialism. Lenin insisted that gradualism could never achieve qualitative change in the economic base of society.

Stalin's codification of diamat

Stalin

Following the 1917 October Revolution, the Soviet philosophy divided itself between "dialecticians" (Deborin) and "mechanists" (Bukharin).Stalin ultimately decided the outcome of the debate by publishing a decree which identified dialectical materialism as pertaining solely to Marxism-Leninism rather than any other form of materialism. Stalin would also use diamat as a justification for the establishment of the totalitarian state. In June 1930, he told the Soviet party congress:

We stand for the withering away of the state. At the same time we stand for the… strongest state power that has ever existed… Is this “contradictory”? Yes, it is contradictory. But this contradiction… fully reflects Marx’s dialectics.

Stalin then established the official Soviet version of dialectical materialism in his work, Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938).[1] Here, he enumerated the "laws of dialectics," which are to serve as the grounds of particular scientific disciplines, especially sociology and the "science" of history, thus guaranteeing their conformity with what he called the "proletarian conception of the world." Thus, the official Soviet philosophy of diamat was imposed on most Communist parties affiliated to the Third International. Under the Stalinist regime and its successors, academic discussion in Soviet intellectual institutions and journals would be constrained to stay within the line of Stalinist philosophical orthodoxy.

Marxist criticisms of dialectical materialism

Nevertheless, the doctrine of dialectical materialism, especially the official Soviet version of diamat, has been criticized by numerous Marxist thinkers. Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, for example, proposed a "philosophy of praxis" in its stead. Other thinkers in Marxist philosophy have pointed to the original texts of Marx and Engels, pointing out that traditional dialectical materialism was much more a product of Engels than of Marx. This has resulted in various "Marxist" philosophical projects which present alternatives to traditional dialectical materialism.

As early as 1937, Mao Zedong proposed yet another interpretation, in his essay On Contradiction, in which he rejected Engels' "laws of dialectics" as oversimplified and insisted on the complexity of the contradiction. Mao's text inspired Louis Althusser's work on contradiction, which was a driving theme in his well-known essay For Marx (1965). Althusser attempted to nuance the Marxist concept of contradiction by borrowing the concept of "overdetermination" from psychoanalysis. He criticized the Stalinist "teleological" reading of Marx as a return to Hegel's idealism in which philosophy supersedes reality. Another school of thought, led by Italian philosopher Ludovico Geymonat, constructed a "historical epistemology" from dialectical materialism.

Legacy

For more than 70 years in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, dialectical materialism was the official guiding philosophy of state. It attempted to deal with all questions of existence, from atoms to history and economics. It became them most important atheistic ideology of the twentieth century, absolutely denying even the possibility of God's existence and affirming the need for violent revolution that would do away with religion, which it insisted was merely the "opiate" of the masses.

More than a billion young people in the former Soviet Union, China, and many other countries were indoctrinated into the worldview of dialectical materialism in schools from kindergarten through college. In the context of the totalitarian societies which it spawned, dialectical materialism stifled the creative spirit of two entire generations who grew up under Soviet-style rule. The former Communist world even today is still struggling to recover from dialectical materialism's tragic legacy, a philosophy designed to liberate the workers of the world but which itself ended up in the dust bin of history.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Josef Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Retrieved November 5, 2008.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Ollman, Bertell, and Tony Smith. Dialectics for the New Century. Basingstoke:: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ISBN 978-0230535312
  • Rigby, S. H. Engels and the Formation of Marxism: History, Dialectics and Revolution. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0719077746
  • Yi, Sang-hŏn. Communism; a Critique & Counterproposal. Washington: Freedom Leadership Foundation, 1973. OCLC 741232

External links

All links retrieved January 29, 2024.


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