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Dialectical Materialism: Karl Marx
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D[I]alectical materialism is the world outlook and method of scientific socialism. It holds that every natural, social and intellectual formation is the transitory product of given material conditions. That all phenomena come into being, develop and eventually perish as a result of the action of the contradictions within them. For Marx and Engels dialectical materialism provided the means by which the illusions of religion could be dispelled, philosophy could be retrieved from speculation to serve the liberation of humanity, and theory could be put on a scientific basis. Above all, dialectical materialism is the conception of the world which conforms with the interests of the self-emancipation of the working class and the struggle for communism and human fulfilment.
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Dialectical materialism is the philosophical basis of Marxism as defined by later Communist s and their Parties (sometimes called "orthodox" Marxism). As the name signals, it is an outgrowth of both Hegel 's dialectic s and Ludwig Feuerbach 's and Karl Marx 's philosophical materialism , and is most directly traced to Marx's fellow thinker, Friedrich Engels. It uses the concepts of thesis, antithesis and synthesis to explain the growth and development of human history. Although Hegel and Marx themselves never used the "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" model to summarize dialectics or dialectical materialism, it is now commonly used to illustrate the essence of the method.
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[T]he 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.
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If the naturalism of Marx should be differentiated from the dialectical materialism of Engels, the problem arises as to how the latter emerged from the former. To answer this question, the problem has first to be extended. Naturalism is closely related to positivism and clearly opposed to metaphysics or speculative philosophy. To regard Marx as a naturalist philosopher seems to militate, therefore against the accepted view of Marx being deeply affected by Hegel and sharply critical of Comte and positivism. On the other hand, dialectical materialism is hostile to positivism and favourably disposed to speculative philosophy. This particular combination of intellectual attitudes appears in turn to be incompatible with the view that Engels is the founder of dialectical materialism, for he is, or is widely considered to be, a positivist rather than a Hegelian.
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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 ... 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[3]. 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.
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In the work of Marx and Engels the dialectical approach to the study of history became intertwined with historical materialism, the school of thought exemplified by the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. (Marx himself never referred to "historical materialism.") A dialectical methodology came to be seen as the vital foundation for any Marxist politics, through the work of Karl Korsch, Georg Lukács and certain members of the Frankfurt School. Under Stalin, Marxist dialectics developed into what was called "diamat" (short for dialectical materialism). Some Soviet academics, most notably Evald Ilyenkov, continued with unorthodox philosophical studies of the Marxist dialectic, as did a number of thinkers in the West. One of the best known North American dialectical philosophers is Bertell Ollman, Professor of Political Science at New York University.
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Karl Marx