Dialectical materialism

[JasonR]

yes, what is this? I know it is a Marxist philosophy something to do with atheism I believe. I would like to learn it, does anyone have a good, simple explanation? All the ones I've found in the internet are just ridicolously hard to comprehend.

[anjali]

The most simple that comes in my mind right now is that Dialectical Materialism (first written about by Hengels and not MArx) is exactly the opposite of Determinism very Shperically!

[Kez]

Basics of Dialectical Materialism (http://www.marxist.com/Theory/JPickard.html)

see if this helps

[redstar2000]

On Dialectics--The Heresy Posts (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/theory/show_news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1052322305&archive=1054467213&cnshow=news&ucat=>&start_from=)

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[Mike Fakelastname]

I'll sum it up very briefly for you:

It has to do with belief that we as a society are in a constant state of progression, and nothing will stop this progression. Here's an illustration I got out of a Karl Marx biography:

Thesis A-------------Anti-thesis A
----------------|
------------Result A-----Thesis B---------Anti-thesis B
-----------------------------------------|
-------------------------------------Result B---and so on...

Each result is a higher and more advanced stage of whatever you happen to be talking about. The two thesises are conflicting and eventually will lead to a result which has progressed through neccesary change.

It's complicated...

[The Feral Underclass]

Dialectics is not complicated. it only seems complicated. once you have mastered it you will think what all the fuss was about.

Che-Lives Dictionary (http://www.che-lives.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=8&t=21255) has various links, excruciatingly basic and advanced.

Don't be afraid of it. It looks harder than it is.

[iloveatomickitten]

Why no antithesis of communism?

[Misodoctakleidist]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2004, 05:32 PM
Why no antithesis of communism?
it's the 'top of the spiral'

[iloveatomickitten]

Thats no answer! Why is it the top!

[Misodoctakleidist]

becuase the history of society is a constant class struggle eventualy resulting the complete dissolution of class at which point the struggle is over.

[Mike Fakelastname]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2004, 01:22 PM
becuase the history of society is a constant class struggle eventualy resulting the complete dissolution of class at which point the struggle is over.
'zactly. Communism is the "end" of the chain of society. It is the most advanced and "correct" stage of society.

[iloveatomickitten]

It's fine to say that class strugle has persisted throughout history but that is not all that has happened to humanity.

To say it is the end is naive and foolish you assume that communism will become ageless is inviting its downfall through complacency.

[Misodoctakleidist]

So what are these other things that "have happened to humanity" which are going to being about the downfall of communism?

[redstar2000]

Why no antithesis of communism?

The pertinent question!


because the history of society is a constant class struggle eventually resulting the complete dissolution of class at which point the struggle is over


It is the most advanced and "correct" stage of society.

If you didn't know anything about "dialectics", answers like those would suggest at once that "something's wrong".

After 150,000 years, "all of a sudden" human history "stops"? That can't possibly be right.

Yes, there will no longer be economic classes as they were known under capitalism.

But communism is not "Heaven" and humans do not become "angels".

There will undoubtedly be new conflicts and struggles...over matters which we cannot, perhaps, even imagine, taking forms that no one has yet thought of.

Human history does not "end" until the last human being in the universe dies.

But this is what comes of "dialectics"...it always seems to end up with stuff that makes no sense.

As I once noted in another thread, the development of communist theory would have proceeded far more smoothly if Marx and Engels had been educated in France and England instead of the Grand Dungeon of Prussia and its philosophical warden Hegel.

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[Andrei Kuznetsov]

Will history cease to move forward and contradiction within society cease to exist? Will everything just "settle down"? To quote Mao, "I don't believe it!"

Communism will advance even further- possibly into something far more advanced. Like RedStar2000 said, Human history does not "end" until the last human being in the universe dies. And I think dialectical materialism points quite clearly that society will be constantly transforming and changing, advancing and developing into something new more and more. Under communism, new ideas, advances, will still be struggled over, although they will not require a state or any form of violent conflict. In turn, the ideas will grow old and be replaced by new ones, and so forth until the sun dies on us.

Dialectical materialism shows that communism is not the end, it is only the beginning...

[RosaRL]

You would think, reading RS2000, that Marxists who uphold Materialist Dialects only see one contradiction within all of society, indeed - within all the universe! But that is far from the truth.

Contradiction is the key to the existence itself. Every phenomena in the universe is driven forward by its own internal set of contradictions, however this is not obvious on the surface.

Opposing forces within the atom hold it together and at the same time produce its ceaseless motion. If that contradiction where to end, so would the atom. The same can be said for the sun, the solar system, the universe itself.

Even life exist and can only exist through the process of internal contradiction. Every living organism exists and develops through breaking down (or 'dividing into two') certain entities (food, air, carbon dioxide, water, etc), expelling the waste and transforming the rest into new constituents of a new and qualitatively different form. Motion and relative rest, flushing out the dead and reconstituting the new, rapid growth and periods of relative stability - these are all contradictory processes that make the life of any plant or animal.

Societies also advance through the struggle of opposites.

"The history of all hitherto existing (class) society is the history of class struggles," Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto.

"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian; lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, the oppressor and the oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-construction of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."

Knowledge also proceeds through contradiction - through struggle - not through a gradual accumulation of facts alone.

Einstein's theory, for example, first overthrew and then subsumed the accepted view of the universe developed by Isaac Newton. The clash between opposite ideas and the struggle to resolve these contradictions is the lifeblood of knowledge.

So, materialist dialectics isn't at all about one contradiction - about some 'dialectic' - (as rs2000 said it was in another thread http://www.che-lives.com/forum/index.php?a...6&t=20839&st=60 (http://www.che-lives.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=6&t=20839&st=60) )

And, although class contradiction would come to an end, contradiction would continue to arise in society - even communist society will be propelled forward by struggle.

[redstar2000]

You would think, reading RS2000, that Marxists who uphold Materialist Dialects only see one contradiction within all of society, indeed - within all the universe! But that is far from the truth.

Contradiction is the key to the existence itself. Every phenomena in the universe is driven forward by its own internal set of contradictions, however this is not obvious on the surface.

If you want to assert that "Every phenomena in the universe is driven forward by its own internal set of contradictions", fine. But until you specify the details, you haven't said anything useful.

But more importantly, once you do specify the details, you don't need the dialectic.

That is, an accurate description of any natural or social phenomenon will include by definition its "laws of motion", "tendencies to change and in what directions under what conditions", etc. To drag in "dialectics" is to impose a "meta-description" that is superfluous.

To say that "contradictions" hold the atom together is no significant improvement on the hypothesis of Democritus.

To specify (mathematically) the four forces that affect atomic structure and change tells us something useful about atoms and how they actually "work". To verify those forces by experiment really "nails it down".

To say that human history develops "because" of "contradictions" is, again, a useless statement.

To empirically demonstrate that it is characterized by class struggle that ultimately derives from changes in material conditions and human technology...now we're beginning to learn something useful.

The more we can learn about how those factors interact with each other to produce social change, the more assuredly we can take political action with the hope of getting the anticipated results.

You can, of course, take any natural or social phenomenon and "make it fit" into "dialectics"...but why? If you really understand the phenomenon, you don't need "dialectics". And if you don't really understand the phenomenon, sprinkling your remarks with "dialectical terminology" may or may not serve to successfully disguise your real ignorance...but your practice will be crap! You won't "have any idea of what you're really doing".

Consider the embarrassment of Frederick Engels--The Dialectics of Nature--which hardly anyone bothers to read any more...for good reason.

It is packed with illustrations of the "power" of "dialectical analysis"...however, since it was based on 19th century science, it's almost all wrong! Of course, every 19th century science text is almost "all wrong"--Engels made use of the best science available at the time.

His error was to assume that "dialectics" was a "guarantee against error".

It's not...in fact, it doesn't help a bit.

I use the phrase "dialectical mysticism" to describe all such foolery...regardless of whether it's overtly idealistic (Hegel) or nominally materialist (Marx, etc.). It is an arbitrary "special logic" that is disconnected from real world phenomena. It can, as I indicated, be used to "prove" anything.

Mysticism can always be used to "prove anything".

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[antieverything]

If contradictions are the key to the system's workings, analyze the contradictions using common sense. You don't need to attach a universal mysticism to EVERYTHING. Remember Soviet dialectical physics? Stalin didn't protest when scientists working on the nuclear bomb contradicted the text-book "dialectical" version of physics...he just said, "we can always execute them later."

Basically, I'm with Redstar on this one...take a picture kids because this isn't something you'll see every day!

[antieverything]

I really like Max Weber's common sense style of unidirectional multi-causal reasoning. Taking Sociological Theory has really helped me to understand how my sister (a sociology grad student at Harvard) can go around saying she's a "Marxist-Weberist"...Marx's theories on class are indespensible as is Weber's rejection of a world view in exchange for empericism and reason.

Strangly enough, last time I went to class the prof asked us if anyone had found it easier to read Weber than to read Marx or Durkheim and I was the only one who raised my hand...he was shocked. I didn't get it! For me, Marx and Durkheim had been difficult to understand because they were more interested in philosophy than actual social understanding. Weber was incredibly easy to understand because his thought processes were similar to mine. He didn't try to fit anything around his world view, instead opting to look at society and then look for things that could explain them in previous societies and in the relations between class, status groups, and parties (which are, of course, mostly based on market relations but Weber doesn't like simplification) then using the comparative method to substantiate his claims. Read "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (the essay, not the entire book) if you want to know what I'm talking about. In "Class, Status, and Party," Weber points out the essential fact that classes are not unitary, community groups: they have different positions in markets. Thus, it will take more than "class conciousness" of the proletariat to overthrow capitalism; it will take a united vision of a better society. Socialist revolution must be constructive, not destructive.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2004, 11:39 PM
The most simple that comes in my mind right now is that Dialectical Materialism (first written about by Hengels and not MArx) is exactly the opposite of Determinism very Shperically!
I thought the idea of dialectics was around with Socrates. Although obviously it couldn't have been written before Plato. Coming from the idea of questioning, elenchus. I may be wrong but I was sure I had read it.

[SonofRage]

Socrates dialectic is a bit different. This article gives a good overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic

[BOZG]

Communism is the "end" of the chain of society. It is the most advanced and "correct" stage of society.

That is an incredibly anti-dialectical approach to the evolution of society. Dialectics "teaches" the idea that everything is in a constant state of change, that nothing is the same from one moment to the next and that change will always exist.

[BOZG]

Dialectics is not complicated. it only seems complicated. once you have mastered it you will think what all the fuss was about

You are the only person I've ever heard make this statement. Dialectics is something which cannot be mastered, not even understood. To master dialectics is to declare that the mind can only ever understand something to a certain extent.


Actually, to say that dialectics is not complicated is to equate that the study of life is easy.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2004, 08:41 PM
Socrates dialectic is a bit different. This article gives a good overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectich
Thanks, but I couldn't get the article to work, could you send me another link, or peraps post something, thanks. I was aware there were differences but I thoutght it was basically a system of cotinual knowledge and nowledged being furthered in comparison to that which preceded it.

[SonofRage]

I added an extra letter to that link by mistake, it should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic

Here:




Dialectic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Broadly speaking, a dialectic is an exchange of propositions and counter-propositions resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions or at least a qualitative transformation of the direction of the dialogue.

In Philosophy

When using the word "dialectic" philosophers usually refer to either the Socratic dialectical method of cross-examination, or to Hegel's dialectical model of history.

Socratic Dialectic

In Plato's dialogues, Socrates typically "argues" by means of cross-examining someone else's assertions in order to draw out the inherent contradictions within the other's position. For example, in the Euthyphro, Socrates asks Euthyphro to provide a definition of piety. Euthyphro replies that the pious is that which is loved by the gods. But, Socrates points out, the gods are quarrelsome and their quarrels, like human quarrels, concern objects of love or hatred. Euthyphro consents that this is the case. Therefore, Socrates reasons, at least one thing exists which certain gods love but other gods hate. Again, Euthyphro consents. Socrates concludes that if Euthyphro's definition of piety is true, then there must exist at least one thing which is both pious and impious (as it is both loved and hated by the gods) -- which, Euthyphro admits, is absurd.

Hegelian Dialectic

Although Hegel never used such a classification himself, Hegel's dialectic is often described as consisting of three stages: a thesis, an antithesis which contradicts or negates the thesis, and a synthesis embodying what is essential to each. In the Logic, for instance, Hegel describes a dialectic of existence: first, existence must be posited as pure Being (thesis); but pure Being, upon examination, is found to be indistinguishable from Nothing (antithesis); yet both Being and Nothing are united as Becoming (synthesis), when it is realized that what is coming into being is, at the same time, also returning to nothing (consider life: old organisms die as new organisms are created or born). Like Socratic dialectic, Hegel's dialectic proceeds by making implicit contradictions explicit: each stage of the process is the product of contradictions inherent or implicit in the preceding stage. For Hegel, the whole of western history is one tremendous dialectic, the largest moments of which chart a progression from self-alienation as slavery to self-unification and realization as the rational, constitutional state of free and equal citizens.

Marxist Dialectic

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels saw Hegel as "standing on his head", and put him back on his feet, ridding Hegel's logic of its idealist orientation, and conceiving what is now known as materialist or Marxist dialectics. The dialectical approach to the study of history then gave rise to historical materialism, the school of thought exemplified by the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. Under Stalinism, Marxist dialectics developed into what was called "diamat" (short for dialectical materialism), a system of thought which became increasingly dogmatic and thus intellectually bankrupt due to the overpowering influence of its attendant political ideology. Some Soviet academics, most notably Evald Ilyenkov, did continue with philosophical studies of the marxist dialectic free from ideological bias, as did a number of thinkers in the West.

[Hegemonicretribution]

I think it was Hegel's that I was refering to and wondering if Socratic was similar. Am I right therefore by saying that the cross examination of an issue (at least in the example) resulted in a thesis and antithesis, and was therefore deemed absurd. Whereas in Hegel's there is a thesis and antithesis which result in a synthesis?

Thanks for that by the way, it has cleared that up :)