Dialectical Materialism

[Non-Aligned]

What are some good sources to better understand this idea? I had a pamphlet from Workers International League/Socialist Appeal at one time, but cant find it. I could do that again, but I would like to see how others learned about this properly.

[Q]

The work of the IMT you might be referring to is Reason in revolt (http://www.marxist.com/rircontents.htm), which has some serious problems. Like getting highschool physics wrong... Science, Marxism and the Big Bang (http://www.marxist.net/sciphil/reasoninrevolt/index.html), published by the CWI* does a reasonable job of pointing out the main issues with it.

* Mind you that the Committee for a Workers' International and the International Marxist Tendency have a history together. The IMT split from the CWI in the early 1990's and so these factional disputes do play a part in publishing such a critique. That said, Reason in revolt is really ... revolting...

As for your question: I couldn't give a fair answer myself. Dialectics, as used by Marx, came from Hegel and although he changed its outlook by "putting Hegel on his feet", Marx never actually wrote on it as a method, we mainly know about it through his (perceived) use of it in Capital and other places, where he uses it as a way of presentation. It is therefore disputable whether it is actually essential to Marxism. I don't think it is, although it can be a useful methodology in analysing subjects.

[TheSocialistMetalhead]

It is indeed not essential in political terms. It can be useful for interpreting history though and I would argue that materialism is a very important part of marxism.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't really know what to recommend. What can be surprisingly useful is checking the sources used by the person who wrote the article about dialectical materialism on wikipedia. Some of those sources are usually scientific works or original works by the people involved in the subject matter of the article.