Historical materialism/dialectical materialism

[flaming bolshevik]

Could someone explain the difference between the two? I honestly suck at understanding philosophy.

[Hit The North]

In brief, historical materialism is the empirical study of history, where the empirical data is organised and analysed according to a number of precepts outlined by Marx and Engels. Dialectical materialism, on the other hand, is supposedly the philosophical foundation for historical materialism, derived from Hegel and given a materialist spin, and has been extended, controversially, into a "theory of everything existing".

Whilst there are a number of definite and clear sources for HM in Marx's writings, such as The German Ideology (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a2), Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm), and The Communist Manifesto (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm), the roots of DM are found in later interpretations of Engels' attempt to sketch a dialectic of nature by 2nd and 3rd International theorists. I believe that DM was first codified by the Russian communists in order to provide a state-sanctioned philosophy of science, but I'm open to be corrected on this point. This is Stalin's take on the relationship between DM and HM (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm)which is pretty much a restatement of 2nd international orthodoxy.

[Red Economist]

I believe that DM was first codified by the Russian communists in order to provide a state-sanctioned philosophy of science, but I'm open to be corrected on this point. This is Stalin's take on the relationship between DM and HM (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm)which is pretty much a restatement of 2nd international orthodoxy.

This is basically right. Dialectical Materialism was first conceived by Jospeh Dietzgen, a contemporary of Marx and Engels who came up with this idea independently of them. Marx and Engels had a similar idea, which came up in Engel's Dialectic of Nature. The idea of dialectical materialism circulated round the Second International and there was some dispute over it's meaning in Lenin's Materialism and Empiro-Criticism, with Lenin criticizing Dietzgen as not being Marxist enough.But eventually it's definition was standardized under Stalin and Joseph Dietzgen's work was discarded by communists in the 1930's. So the Marxist-Leninist (Stalin's) use of Dialectical Materialism differs from that of the second international because it uses Lenin's work, not Dietzgen's.