Talk:Dialectical materialism

Definition

Reading this article from the top it is not until the third or fourth paragraph that we see anything resembling a definition. The introduction should include a rudimentary definition that is clearer than the current "Dialectic Materialism is the merging of Dialectic and Materialism." Not being an expert on the subject I leave this in another’s more capable hands.--70.29.20.201 (talk) 04:31, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I second this. Please tell me what the hell Dialectical Materialism is, up front. Eunsung (talk) 17:17, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I third this. Few things are too complex to explain in a sentence. Surely, something approaching a clear definition has arisen in the many decades through which these ideas have been discussed, taught, pondered. (This note was originally unsigned by mistake, later signed as follows: --Dankelley (talk) 11:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC))

Fourthed. Who wrote that, anyway? I mean, sure, sometimes I'll gloss over what was said and have to reread a portion of a text, but the introduction here is just devoid of any information a layman would want. Plumbmeter (talk) 19:43, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Likewise. The introduction seems to refer entirely to natural processes, with no reference at all to social processes, politics or history Clivemacd (talk) 13:28, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

+1 on that, the opening paragraph uses so many words but has no real meaning. Even if the definition cant be agreed on by scholars, just say that and present a couple of different most commonly held views. It's as if the author was trying to fill a word count rather than actually explain the topic — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.98.69.218 (talk) 11:22, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

It is in fact impossible to define this 'theory'; scratch any randomly-chosen Dialectical Marxist and they will each give you a different, but no less vague and confused non-definition. Rosa Lichtenstein (talk) 13:22, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

I have read and re-read the first paragraph and I still have no idea what it is trying to communicate. Can someone with the requisite knowledge of the subject matter and with skill in communicating re-write the opening paragraph in a way that makes sense to the general public, please? --Gerntrash (talk) 01:05, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

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The very first statement of this article, "Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism developed by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels," is false. In fact, in the classic text, "Socialism: Past and Future" by one of the foremost authorities on socialism, Michael Harrington, we find this:

"The justification for all this brutality [in Stalin's Soviet Union] and one-man rule was a scientistic reading of Marxism that had some warrant in some of Engels' more careless formulations but violated the repeated defense of democracy and self-emancipation of both Marx and Engels. Marxism, in Stalin's version, was a system that explained both nature and society by means of "dialectical materialism" (a phrase never used by either Marx or Engels but popularized by the first Russian Marxist, Georgi Plekhanov). Thus, Stalin, as the supreme Marxist automatically was the infallible interpreter of the objective interest of the workers and the peasants, and if those classes perversely refused to recognize what was good for them, he had the right to impose it upon them."

Thus, "dialectic materialism" is more a Stalinist concept popularized by Plekhanov, but, obviously, as Harrington points out in the quote above, would have been anathema to both Marx and Engels, and is a distorted concept of their ideas. Thus, the first sentence in this article should be reworked so as to avoid the misattribution to Marxist philosophy and should be written correctly so that it is much more closely ascribed to Stalinist principles.

A better way to write this is first sentence would be "'Dialectical materialism' is a Stalinist construction of an incorrect reading of Marx that permitted autocratic rule of the Soviet Union.

References

This Article Kinda Sucks

Here is Dialectical-Materialism per the Columbia encyclopedia, as an example. Someone should really consider revising the Wikipedia article, or perhaps I might:

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. 1 See G. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism (1958, repr. 1973); A. Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism (1983); I. Yurkovets, Philosophy of Dialectical Materialism (1984). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.83.245.74 (talk) 17:30, 26 February 2007 (UTC).

But this entry from the Columbia encyclopedia is in its most important aspects essentially wrong. To judge this, one only needs to read what Engels wrote on the subject. Cf for instance

"According to the materialist conception of history the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.

"If therefore somebody twists this into the statement that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase." (Frederick Engels: From a Letter To Joseph Bloch, London, September 21, 1890. )

But the Columbia encyclopedia says (as quoted above) "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."

The essential point that Engels was making was that one cannot say "solely" in response to economic needs. This reduces Marxism to crude determinism, which is a serious error.

In other words, the Columbia encyclopedia, according to one of the two founders of the theory, Friedrich Engels, is guilty of "a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase." It is far too crude to represent the idea of a dialectical interplay between living forces.

Once the Columbia encyclopedia gets started, furthermore, it continues in this vein, leaving one to wonder what exactly Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky saw in struggling at all against exploitation (the last of whom struggled against the rise of Stalinism, and the great perversion of Marxism that this bureaucratic caste promulgated), since "individuals have little or no influence on [capitalist] development".

The last thing one would want to suggest is that the Columbia encyclopedia is misinformed, although one must grant that it represents a point of view which is well favoured by the opponents of Marxism. It would be better to say that the point of view of the Columbia encyclopedia is that of dialectical materialism as taught particularly in the USA at the present time, rather than to suggest that it is related to the historical ideas of Marx and Engels, or Lenin and Trotsky.

And of course, the "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" representation is properly criticised both in the wikipedia article (see footnote) and in the discussions here.

Andysoh 00:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

This article doesn't actually explain what it actually is, in simple terms. --Liface 05:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

It's a very difficult thing to explain. I don't know if it could be done more simply. Grant | Talk 07:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

No, actually, it is pretty easy to explain. The problem is that when you don't use Marxist gobbledygook to explain it, the stupidity of the idea becomes obviously evident to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of history. None of the things that Marx and Engel predicted would definitely result from their pseudo-scientific model actually happened. So we now have to deal with all the Marxist obscurantism trying to prevent this article from actually stating things clearly. 76.168.4.212 (talk) 08:40, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

I think there is a difference between over-simplifying a complex concept and explaining it in simple terms, to set the audience on a path of discovery about the topic. It is relatively easy for any decent teacher to explain any concept, however abstract and complex, in simple terms. Only an ass would over-simplify. And asses are not good teachers.

In regard to dialectical materialism, the only real reason it does not work (in my own opinion, only, of course) is that it has never existed. People (again, only in my opinion) are inherently self-disciplined and even altruistic in matters of simple survival. It is only institutions that are heartless. For instance, very few actual living breathing people would refuse food to a starving child, even if a person has only one slice of an apple or one bite of a burger to share. A government, however, will casually dump a million tons of oranges into the sea while millions of children starve to death. A government (even a dictator) is a ruler, not a person. And the ruler wants his/her/its ideology to rule.

Therefore, it is in matters of ideology that people turn violent. Ideas are not debatable, in a sense. Ideas are absolute. You can eat half an apple or one grain of rice from a pot, but you cannot, in any real sense, present or accept "half" or "one grain" of an idea. An idea either is or it isn't. When a "ruler" tries to impose his/her/its ideology on people, the people rebel and "kill" the ruler. I think that people like to be allowed to think as they please even if they can't live as they think. Rulers, such as Marx, who try to tell people how they have been thinking or how they should think, are rejected through a "revolutionary" process -- a process that revolves ideas until they hit the exit chamber. The only way for an idea at the exit chamber to "return" is to walk in with other ideas that are, as yet, untested. The new version of the idea then keeps revolving until it hits the exit chamber again, and so on.

I get the impression you assume that dialectical materialism and the Soviet Union, or some such so-called socialist regime, is dialectical materialism in practice. This would perhaps explain why you refer to Marx as a "ruler", although I'm sure that was a slip of the keyboard (since he never was). But your connection of dialectical materialism and the Soviet Union, however wrong it may be, is understandable since the Soviet Union's leaders said they followed dialectical materialism, and Stalin wrote a book on it -- but remember that if we took people at their word and ignored their deeds we would be fools.

Marxism, guided by dialectical materialism, gives a very useful explanation of why governments prefer to dump food rather than give it away, whatever they may claim, but it is widely known anyway - it keeps the price of food up, and this is what "capitalism" is all about, and that's why people die every second of every day through under nourishment.

I think when you say ideas are not debatable, you mean, not that they are not debatable, since ideas are always being debated, but that some people approach them from a Yes / No, right or wrong way, (and shout you down if they don't agree). Fox News gives perfect examples of this way of thinking every day.

This is where materialism comes in. If people starve, people want to know why. Then they re-assess the 'capitalism is good, marxism is bad' "right or wrong" approach, read what Marx wrote, find out about other Marxists, and realise that, like most living ideas, within the tradition of 'dialectical materialism' there are opposites: trends which represent a dead end, and trends which still offer a genuine alternative to the "free market" system where the dumping of food is just one example of how, in practice, to use your words: "it has never really existed." Andysoh 20:11, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

This article is a mess, all Marxist related articles are in a mess...

I will try to fix this, but my knowledge on Marxist thought is scarce (but since ruling party o the second-largest economy in the world actually believes in this stuff, maybe it should be expanded?)... Anyhow, I'll read like hell. --TIAYN (talk) 11:25, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

This article is beyond a mess- it reads like the scribblings of a severly bipolar individual in manic phase. This article is a testament to why the mentally ill should not be allowed near Wikipedia unless they've taken their medications(yes, I know, how "bourgeois" of me to suggest this). What's scarier is that the author has been hovering over this article and its talk page for at least 8 years. These are the people still attracted to Marxism- it's become a fringe cult for damaged individuals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.228.216.148 (talk) 00:16, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

The problem remains that the only people who want to engage in this article are people who are Marxists. Given that Marxism is the province of the illiterate, you end up with this article... Unless someone is tasked with trying to fix this actually important article not from a Marxist perspective, that is how it will stay. 76.168.4.212 (talk) 08:45, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

"Marxism is the province of the illiterate" - even though it's based on his literature? I spot far-right bigotry. 2.28.151.246 (talk) 02:48, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Image is completely wrong

Any brief engagement with the literature shows that the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model is not how dialectics works. I recommend premier dialectical critic Fredric Jameson's Marxism and Form or Valences of the Dialectic. Meeeeeeerzfu (talk) 19:09, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Meeeeeeerzfu please point to what do you mean specifically. In the interim I have reverted your edit to the stable version. Best! VV 19:28, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Given that this article already specifically notes Marx's disavowal of the model ("Marx rejected the language of 'thesis, antithesis, synthesis'"), it seems a bit strange to plaster it on the top of the page in image form. Given that dialectical materialism is a Marxist philosophy, we ought to represent it accurately and impartially in regards to Marx's elaboration of it. Best-- Meeeeeeerzfu (talk) 12:39, 27 May 2021 (UTC)