Dialectical materialism

Dialectical materialism. Scientific philosophical conception of the world, one of the component parts of Marxism, its philosophical basis. It was created by Marx and Engels and has been the subject of further study by Lenin and other Marxists.

Summary

[ disguise ]

• 1 Emergence
• 2 Preceding philosophy
• 3 Modern Era
• 4 Influences on your training
• 5 Consequences of your birth
• 6 Cornerstone
  • 1 Dialectic
  • 2 Physical theories
• 7 System of fundamental laws
  • 1 Law of unity and the fight of opposites
  • 2 Law of the negation of negation
  • 3 Law of transition from quantitative to qualitative changes and vice versa
• 8 Historical practice of humanity
• 9 Applications
• 10 Concretion of its principles and thesis
  • 1 Principles
• 11 External links
• 12 Fonts

Emergence

Dialectical Materialism emerged in the 1840s and has developed in inextricable connection with the results of science and practice of the revolutionary labor movement. Its birth represented an authentic revolution in the History of Human Thought and in the History of Philosophy . But this revolution implied succession, the critical reworking of everything advanced and progressive that had already been achieved by the History of Human Thought.

Preceding philosophy

Two fundamental currents of the preceding philosophy merged in Dialectical Materialism and were fertilized by the new approach, by the new and deeply scientific Conception of the world . On the one hand, it was the line of Materialist Philosophy, whose sources went back to a distant past; On the other hand, it was the line of development of the dialectical Conception of the world, which also had deep traditions in the History of Philosophy.

The development of philosophical thought in intimate relationship with science and with all the historical practice of humanity, led, subject to laws, to the victory of the materialist Conception of the world. But the theories of the old materialists suffered from an essential defect, that of being metaphysical , mechanistic, despite containing some glimpses of the Dialectic , they combined materialism in the Conception of nature, with idealism in the elucidation of social phenomena. .

Modern Era

The philosophers who in the Modern Era advanced the dialectical Conception of the world were fundamentally idealists, something that was manifested with particular clarity in Hegel ‘s system .

Marx and Engels did not limit themselves to adopting the theories of the old materialists and the dialectics of the idealists, synthesizing them into a unity. Based on the most recent results of Natural Science , in all the historical experience of humanity, they demonstrated that materialism can only be scientific and consistent to the end, if it becomes dialectical, while dialectics can only be authentically scientific. if it becomes materialistic.

Influences on his training

The formation of Dialectical Materialism was essentially influenced by the fact that the scientific conception of social development and its laws were structured ( Historical Materialism ). Without the dialectical materialist conception of the world it would have been impossible to defeat idealism in its last refuge: the explanation of the essence of human society.

On the other hand, without a materialist approach to society, without an analysis of historical-social practice and, above all, of social production as the basis of the human being, it would have been equally impossible to create a consistent philosophical conception of the world, to explain the laws of human knowledge . The founders of Marxism solved this problem. For this reason, Dialectical Materialism emerged as a great philosophical synthesis that encompassed in a single conception the entire complex network of phenomena of nature , human society and thinking, a synthesis that organically united within itself the philosophical method capable of explaining and analyzing reality with the ideas of practical-revolutionary transformation of the world. The latter constitutes one of the most characteristic features of Dialectical Materialism, unlike the old Philosophy, which, fundamentally, was limited to explaining the world.

Consequences of his birth

With the birth of Dialectical Materialism, the historical process that led Philosophy to separate and form a separate science, with its specific object of research, fundamentally culminated. Such an object is constituted by the most general laws of the development of nature, society and thought, those general principles and foundations of the objective world and its reflection in human consciousness that provide a successful scientific approach to phenomena and processes, a method of elucidation, cognition and practical transformation of reality.

Cornerstone

The cornerstone of Dialectical Materialism is the theory relating to the material nature of the world, to the fact that nothing exists in the world apart from matter and the laws of its movement and change. Dialectical Materialism is a determined and irreconcilable enemy of all representations about supernatural essences, whatever the clothing that religions and idealist Philosophy dress them. Nature develops and reaches its higher forms, including life and thinking matter, not thanks to a force from beyond, but thanks to causes given in itself, in its laws.

Dialectics

The Dialectical Theory of Development (Dialectic) developed by Dialectical Materialism, indicates what are the general laws thanks to which the processes of movement and change of matter occur, the passage from its lower forms to its higher ones.

Physical theories

Current physical theories on matter, space and time, by recognizing the mutability of matter whatever its species and the inexhaustible faculty of material particles to undergo qualitative transformations, are not only in perfect agreement with Dialectical Materialism, but only in it can they find the necessary philosophical ideas and methodological principles. The same can be said of the sciences that investigate other natural phenomena.

System of fundamental laws

The mission, the object of science consists, first of all, in understanding reality as an objective process of movement and development, a process that is conditioned and obeys the operation of objective laws. When Marx and Engels defined the philosophy of Marxism as the science of the most general laws of nature, society and thought, they did not lose sight of the importance of the other elements of its structure (principles, concepts and categories), to all of which the criterion of maximum generality is equally valid. However, they wanted to emphasize the role of laws as the fundamental support of all science.

Law is a form of universality. Thanks to the knowledge of the laws, the complex and multiform world is collected in concepts in its unity and integrality. Laws express necessary relationships between things, phenomena and processes, emanating from their internal nature, from their essence. They are objective, since they exist independently of the consciousness of men, although they are discovered by them in the process of knowing reality.

By relying on knowledge of the laws of nature, society and thought, men can scientifically foresee events, transform the products of nature for social benefit and modify the social conditions of their lives for specific purposes. Knowledge of the laws that govern the emergence and development of natural, social and cognitive processes and phenomena constitutes one of the most significant steps in man’s aspiration to provide a scientific response to the natural and social environment in which his life develops. existence and for the formation of his scientific conception of the world in general.

The laws of dialectics reveal the essential features of development, whatever the sphere of reality to which it belongs. They give a complete interpretation to the most transcendental moments of the development process; its genesis, its tendency or direction and the character and dynamics of this process.

Law of unity and the fight of opposites

Main article: Law of unity and struggle of opposites

Universal law of reality and its knowledge by human thought; It expresses the essence, the “core” of the materialist dialectic. Each object contains opposites. On the contrary, dialectical materialism understands the moments, “aspects”, etc., that

1. They are in indissoluble unity,
2. they are mutually exclusive and this not only in different relationships, but also in the same relationship, that is,
3. they interpenetrate each other. Their unity is relative, their struggle is absolute.

The struggle of opposites means that the contradiction given within the essence of the object is constantly resolved and is also constantly reproduced, which leads to the transformation of the old object into a new object. With this, such a law allows us to explain the internal objective “source” of all movement without resorting to foreign forces of any kind, allowing movement to be conceived as self-motion.

This law reveals the authentic concrete unity of multiplicity as a concrete, and not dead, identity. With this, it allows the concrete totality and development of the object to be reproduced “in the logic of concepts.” This explains why the law of unity and struggle of opposites constitutes the “core” of dialectic. In the stated law, the opposition of dialectical to metaphysical thought is expressed in the most concentrated way, which conceives the “source” of movement only as distinct from the movement itself and, external to it, and unity, as “a beyond.” for diversity. Metaphysics induces us to replace movement and the concrete unity of diversity with the description of the external results of movement and of the only externally opposed aspects of the object. The entire history of dialectics is the history of the struggle around the indicated problems, it is the history of the attempts undertaken to resolve them.

Marxism has interpreted and formulated in a materialist sense the law of unity and struggle of opposites.

“as the law of knowledge and the law of the objective world”

Lenin .

The conception of this law from the point of view of the principle of the coincidence of dialectics, logic and the theory of knowledge is directed against the attempt to reduce it to a “sum of examples.” The objective universality of the law of unity and struggle of opposites constitutes the basis of its methodological functions in knowledge. To demonstrate its universality, it is necessary to investigate its methodological functions. The indicated law also determines the structure of scientific theory, since it reveals the dialectic of the unfolding of the singular.

Marx ‘s Capital offers a typical model of such a structure. The solution of contradictions advances research through the logic of the object itself and serves as a rational procedure to develop new concepts. In knowledge, dialectical contradiction is not reduced to the conflict of thesis and antithesis, but consists of the movement towards its resolution. Understanding dialectical contradiction means understanding how it is resolved. Resolution has nothing in common with the elimination of tangled formal logical contradictions in reasoning. It is only possible to adequately formulate the dialectical contradiction within the theory, in the ascending process from the abstract to the concrete. For this reason, a broad exposition of the theory cannot be constrained within the framework of a single “non-contradictory system.” The development process is carried out through the conflict of external, relatively independent oppositions. Dialectics does not see these external oppositions as distinct essences from the beginning, but as the result of the unfolding of the singular, ultimately as derivatives of the internal ones. The Marxist theory about social development has been established by applying this law, investigating the contradictions of society; It bases the thesis about the class struggle as a driving force for the development of class society and infers all its revolutionary conclusions from said law. Socialism is the lawful result of the development and resolution of the contradictions of capitalism through social revolution. The contradictions and the ways to resolve them are diverse.

Socialism also develops through contradictions, but these have a specific character (antagonistic contradictions and non-antagonistic contradictions). The category of dialectical contradiction also has great methodological importance for modern natural science, which increasingly faces the contradictory nature of things. Marxism-Leninism has shown that communism will convert the category of contradiction into a category proper to a way of thinking derived from the total assimilation of the world by man, who will no longer have reason to fear contradictions or to hinder resolution. from the same.

Law of negation of negation

Main article: Law of negation of negation

The law of the negation of negation conditions the connection that indicates the tendency or direction of development, the continuity between what denies and what is denied, by virtue of which dialectical negation does not become a hollow, empty metaphysical negation. , which rejects all previous development, but a condition of development that maintains and preserves in itself all the positive content of the previous phases, which repeats on a higher basis certain features of the initial phases and reveals (considered as a whole), the character progressive ascending development of reality.

Law of transition from quantitative to qualitative changes and vice versa

Main article: Law of transition from quantity to quality

This law reveals the interconnection and interaction of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the object, by virtue of which quantitative changes, accumulating in a continuous and gradual manner, alter the measurement of the object and cause cardinal qualitative changes, which occur in leaps. and are carried out depending on the nature of the objects and the conditions of their development in different forms. The law demands that phenomena be examined and studied only as a unit of quantitative and qualitative aspects and that the complex interconnections of said aspects and the changes in solutions between them be seen.

The quantity-quality contradiction is nothing more than a manifestation of the general principle of the contradictory nature of everything that exists, the source and motive of development. Hence, Lenin described the theory of contradictions as the core of dialectics.

Historical practice of humanity

The historical practice of humanity that, taking a radical turn, leaves aside old forms of social life, already perished, to adopt new forms of life, serves as confirmation of the principles of Dialectical Materialism. Articulating in a unity the theory of being, of the objective world, and the theory related to the reflection of the latter in the consciousness of man, Dialectical Materialism is a theory of knowledge and logic . The fundamentally new step taken by Dialectical Materialism in this field and which places the theory of knowledge on a solid scientific foundation, lies in having included practice in said theory.

“All the mysteries that lead theory astray towards mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the understanding of this practice” ( Marx ).

Applications

After applying the dialectical theory of development to knowledge, Dialectical Materialism established the historical character of human concepts, revealed the interconnection of the relative and the absolute in scientific truths, elaborated the problem concerning the objective logic of the movement of knowledge.

Concretion of its principles and thesis

With each great scientific discovery, with the change in the forms of social life, the principles and theses of Dialectical Materialism are concretized, developed, and new data from science and the historical experience of humanity are assimilated.

Dialectical Materialism constitutes the philosophical basis of the program, strategy and tactics, of all the activity of the communist parties .

Beginning

They are initial statements or starting points in the research process of a universe of relationships between objects, processes and phenomena that, because they are in constant movement and change, cannot be exhausted once and for all. However, they also constitute an arrival point for the level of knowledge that is established and renewed at each historical moment and for the revolutionary practice of men, aimed at transforming the material and spiritual life of society.

They are not axiomatic postulates, but rather theoretical statements that, when defining a philosophical position or a tendency of development in its conceptual expression, must be the object of explanation and demonstration in the process of scientific reasoning. They are part of a dynamic structure that has multiple meaning, whose function is to reveal the dialectic of objective reality, the process of knowledge production and its active and creative function. They constitute the result of the set of relationships studied by philosophy, whose interconnections constitute a synthetic expression.

In addition to the theoretical and methodological value of the principles in the scientific-methodological structure of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, their projection in the context of philosophical controversy takes on a first-order importance, given that they constitute nodal points around which sharp confrontations occur. between the idealist conception of the world, between the reactionary and the revolutionary; principles define positions. Remember, for example, this criterion expressed by Fidel

“Is socialism irreversible or not in a country? It is absolutely irreversible if the principles are applied…”.

From the point of view of scientific investigation of material, social and cognitive reality, principles act as normative and regulatory elements of heuristic behavior as links leading to higher and more complex wholes in both their theoretical and practical expression. The basic principles of materialist dialectics constitute indispensable methodological ingenuities for human practice, as well as ideological, axiological and theoretical criteria in general. In “Philosophical Notebooks” Lenin enunciated the demands of the materialist dialectical method that govern universally as regulatory principles.

The representations and notions of man must agree with the objective nature of things, processes and phenomena with their connection and movement. Hence, objectivity in their consideration contributes to a consistently scientific analysis. Disregard for objectivity can lead to serious errors. Elevating the subjective factor to absolute terms can lead to voluntarism, subjectivism and therefore ignorance of the conditions and laws by which development is governed. This has a universal character. Hence the fundamental principle of materialist dialectics is also established. It helps to understand the phenomena and to orient yourself in the activity. Since the various changes that occur are not equal either in their character or in their orientation, those that are characterized by the passage from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher, in an elevator, progressive line indicate development as main trend (which do not exclude regressive moments in certain circumstances). This process takes place under specific conditions that cannot be ignored. The concrete historical analysis, therefore, indicates that the conditions, place and time in which the phenomenon manifests itself must be considered for a correct assessment.

These relationships are infinite by virtue of the principle of the universal concatenation of phenomena described by Lenin as the first and fundamental rule of scientific research in general and of Marx ‘s dialectic in particular. Taking into account the multiple and varied relationships between things and phenomena, based on the constant mutability of everything that exists, it is not possible to fail to take this principle into consideration for the consistent analysis of reality and human practice in general, since By expressing the interaction of all material and ideal processes in its historical development, it reveals the unity of the universe and is the very expression of everything that happens, since it is the first thing that jumps out in the examination of reality.

From universal concatenation and development emanates the thesis about the fundamental link in the chain of historical events as a key element to highlight the internal relationship that ensures the course of events in a certain direction and establish to what extent it coincides with the transformation objectives. typical of human activity. The concrete historical approach to phenomena in their universal concatenation, objectively analyzed in the light of development, must find its expression in the system of laws and categories of materialist dialectics.