dialectical materialism

 

official philosophy of Communism, based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as elaborated by G. V. Plekhanov, V. I. Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. In theory dialectical materialism is meant to provide both a general world view and a specific method for the investigation of scientific problems. The basic tenets are that everything is material and that change takes place through “the struggle of opposites.” Because everything contains different elements that are in opposition, “self-movement” automatically occurs; the conflict of opposing forces leads to growth, change, and development, according to definite laws. Communist scientists were expected to fit their investigations into this pattern, and official approval of scientific theories in the USSR was determined to some extent by their conformity to dialectical materialism (see Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich). Use of these principles in history and sociology is sometimes called historical materialism. Under these doctrines the social, political, and intellectual life of society reflect only the economic structure, since human beings create the forms of social life solely in response to economic needs. Men are divided into classes by their relations to the means of production—land and capital. The class that controls the means of production inevitably exploits the other classes in society; it is this class struggle that produces the dynamic of history and is the source of progress toward a final uniformity. Historical materialism is deterministic; that is, it prescribes that history inevitably follows certain laws and that individuals have little or no influence on its development. Central to historical materialism is the belief that change takes place through the meeting of two opposing forces (thesis and antithesis); their opposition is resolved by combination produced by a higher force (synthesis). Historical materialism has had many advocates outside the Communist world.

Bibliography

See G. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism (1958, repr. 1973); A. Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism (1983); I. Yurkovets, Philosophy of Dialectical Materialism (1984).

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According to many followers of the theories of Karl Marx (or Marxists), 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 dialectics and materialism.

It is sometimes seen as the complement of 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.

Dialectical materialism is often defined by reference to two claims by Marx: first that he "put Hegel's dialectics back on its feet" and second, that "the 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 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, a 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). ^[1]

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 "dialectical materialism"), imposed by Stalin on the Comintern and on Communist states.

The term dialectical materialism was probably invented in 1887 by Joseph Dietzgen, a socialist tanner who corresponded with Marx. Casual mention of the term is also found in Kautsky's Frederick Engels, written in the same year, 1887. Georgi Plekhanov, the father of Russian socialism, later used it and it thus entered Marxist theory^[2]. Marx had talked about the "materialist conception of history", which was later shortened to "historical materialism" by Engels. Engels exposed the "materialist dialectic" — not "dialectical materialism" — in his Dialectics of Nature (1883). Diamat was debated and criticized by many Marxist philosophers, which led to various political and philosophical struggles in the Marxist movement in general and in the Comintern in particular.

A brief history of dialectical materialist thought

Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1908) and the 1917 October Revolution

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 "laws of evolution" in physics (Helmholtz), biology (Darwin) and in political economics (Marx). Lenin hence took position between a historicist Marxism (Labriola) and a determinist Marxism, close to "social Darwinism" (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:

'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.

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." (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.

Following the 1917 October Revolution, Soviet philosophy divided itself between "dialecticians" (Deborin) and "mechanists" (Bukharin).

Georg Lukács' History and Class Consciousness (1921-23) and the Vth Comintern Congress (1924)

Georg Lukács, who had been minister of Culture in Béla Kun's short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919), published 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, "What is Orthodox Marxism?", Lukács defined orthodoxy as the fidelity to the "Marxist method", and not to the "dogmas":

"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)

Lukács criticized revisionist attempts by calling for the return to this Marxist method. In much the same way that Althusser would latter define Marxism and psychoanalysis as "conflictual sciences",^[3] 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:

"For this reason the task of orthodox Marxism, its victory over Revisionism and 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)

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, which founds itself on the voluntary and conscious subject. Against this ideology, he asserts the primacy of social relations. Existence — and thus the world — 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 entail 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.

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.

Stalin's codification of diamat

In 1931, Stalin decided the issue of the debate between dialecticians and mechanists by publishing a decree which identified dialectical materialism as pertaining solely to Marxism-Leninism. He then codified it in Dialectical and Historical Materialism (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 was imposed on most Communist parties affiliated to the Third International.

Marxist criticisms of dialectical materialism

However, the doctrine of dialectical materialism has been criticized by many Marxist theorists, including Marxist philosophers 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 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 For Marx (1965). Althusser attempted to nuance the Marxist concept of "contradiction" by borrowing the concept of "overdetermination" from psychoanalysis. He criticized the 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.

Materialism in dialectical materialism

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.

"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.

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 spiritualist Idealism (such as Kant or Hegel's philosophies) which are, in fact, only ideologies, that is the material product of social existence. Marx's materialism thus later opened up the way for Frankfurt School's critical theory, which combined philosophy with the social sciences in an attempt to diagnose the ailments of society. Dialectical materialism itself would however be reduced to the diamat orthodox theory.

Dialectics in dialectical materialism

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'.

Dialectics is the science of the general and abstract laws of the development of nature, society, and thought. Its principal features 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) Nature - the natural world or cosmos - is in a state of constant motion:

"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.

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.

"Merely quantitative differences, beyond a certain point, pass into qualitative changes." --Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1.

4) All things contain within themselves internal dialectical contradictions, which are the primary cause of motion, change, and development in the world.

Engels' laws of dialectics

Engels determines three laws of dialectics from his reading of Hegel's Science of Logic^[4]. 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 Engel's laws or expressions was seen by both Hegel and Lenin as the central feature of a dialectical understanding of things^{[5] [6]} and originates with the ancient Ionian philosopher Heraclitus. ^[7]

The second is taken by Hegel from Aristotle, and is equated with what scientists call "phase transitions". It may be traced to the ancient Ionian philosophers (particularly Anaximenes), from whom Aristotle inherited the concept, as well as by Hegel and Engels, and in each case the phase transitions of water is one of the main expositions of quantity into quality and vice versa.

The third, the negation of the negation, is Hegel's distinct expression. It was the expression through which (amongst other things) Hegel's dialectic became fashionable during his life-time.

Engels presupposes, in drawing up these laws, a holistic approach outlined in point 1) above, and point 1) of Lenin's three elements of dialectic below, and emphasises elsewhere point 2) above, that all things are in motion. ^[8]

Lenin's elements of dialectics

Lenin made some brief notes outlining three "elements" of logic after reading Hegel's Science of Logic in 1914.[1] They are:

“	1) The determination of the concept out of itself [the thing itself must be considered in its relations and in its development]; 2) the contradictory nature of the thing itself (the other of itself), the contradictory forces and tendencies in each phenomenon; 3) the union of analysis and synthesis. Such apparently are the elements of dialectics.	”
	— Lenin, Summary of dialectics[9]

Lenin develops these in a further series of notes, and appears to argue that "the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa" is an example of the unity and opposition of opposites expressed tentatively as "not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]."

The application of the dialectic to history is covered more in Historical materialism.

Quotations

"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

Endnotes

1. ^ In particular, see Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, chapter II, first observation, where he uses this formulation. We should note here that Hegelians tend to attribute this formula to Marx's teacher - "a certain Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus" - a Kantian who misrepresented Hegel, conflating Hegel's dialectic with the Fichtean triad thesis, antithesis, synthesis. It is suggested that subsequent to Marx's use of the phrase, Hegel has always been associated with the triad, which he rejected (cf hegel.net). However, one might cite Marx's explanation of the development of the dialectic in the cited passage of The Poverty of Philosophy: "This new [synthesis] unfolds itself again into two contradictory thoughts" which appears to be reaching beyond the limits of this misleading external triad to an inner inherent unfolding, more along the Hegelian lines.
2. ^ For instance, Plekhanov, The development of the monist view of history, (1895)
3. ^ Louis Althusser, "Marx and Freud", in Writings on Psychoanalysis, Stock/IMEC, 1993 (French edition)
4. ^ Engels, Dialectics of nature
5. ^ "It is in this dialectic as it is here understood, that is, in the grasping of oppositions in their unity, or of the positive in the negative, that speculative thought consists. It is the most important aspect of dialectic." Hegel, Science of Logic, § 69, (p 56 in the Miller edition)
6. ^ "The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts is the essence (one of the "essentials", one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics. That is precisely how Hegel, too, puts the matter." Lenin's Collected Works VOLUME 38, p359: On the question of dialectics.
7. ^ cf, for instance. 'The Doctrine of Flux and the Unity of Opposites' in the 'Heraclitus' entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
8. ^ The discovery that heat was actually the movement of atoms or molecules was the very latest science of the period in which Engels was writing in his late period, in which what today we would express in terms of "energy" was just beginning to be grasped.
9. ^ Lenin's Collected Works Vol. 38 pp 221 - 222, written while reading Book III, Section 3, Chapter 3 of The Science of Logic — “The Absolute Idea”

Selected readings on dialectical materialism

• Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels
• Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels
• Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels
• Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, V.I. Lenin
• On the Question of Dialectics, V.I. Lenin
• Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Joseph Stalin
• On Contradiction, Mao Tse-tung
• On the Materialist Dialectic, Louis Althusser
• Dialectical Materialism, V.G. Afanasyev
• Materialism And Historical Materialism, Anton Pannekoek
• Reason in Revolt, Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science, Ted Grant and Alan Woods
• History and Class Consciousness, Georg Lukacs
• Ioan, Petru "Logic and Dialectics" A.I. Cuza University Press, Iaşi 1998.
• "Dialectical Materialism", Theory and History, Ludwig von Mises
• The Origins of Dialectical Materialism, Z.A. Jordan
• Dialectics For Kids

See also

People

• Joseph Dietzgen
• Friedrich Engels
• Ludovico Geymonat
• Karl Marx

Concepts

• Parametric determinism
• dialectical monism
• historical materialism
• Marxism
• Marxist philosophy of nature
• Methodological naturalism
• Classical Marxism
• Orthodox Marxism
• Philosophy in the Soviet Union

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