Talk:Dialectical materialism/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

in english?

i got through this entire article and i still have no idea what 'dialectical materialism' is or why i should care . Decora (talk) 14:34, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

It's something terribly important to old commies, because it makes their failed system somehow seem worthwhile. As far as I know, it's hardly contributed to modern mainstream philosophy. — OttoMäkelä (talk) 23:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

something terribly stupid to say given what's going on with the global economic system. perhaps you should think about making a trip to some of the european countries such as greece, spain, or italy to express your positive views regarding this great system that we have. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.58.133.229 (talk) 23:58, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we should look instead to the economic miracles that are/were the USSR, Cuba, North Korea and the like. Fortunately we still have a handful who understand this; psychologically stable individuals like "Rosa Lichtenstein" and "Papapazou". With revolutionaries such as these the future is bright.

The problem here is German intellectualism, which is mainly a problem because they were fond of using big words that are rather clunky to the anglophone mind. Materialism is greed: people want more of everything. Dialectic is back-and-forth, a sort of karma, a "debate", pilpul, I think. 192.12.88.41 (talk) 06:10, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Ahem. The Wikipedia article currently says that 'dialectical materialism' is a fancy way of saying that the economy strives towards maximum efficiency, and doing so, it becomes a house divided unto itself, and therefore cannot stand192.12.88.41 (talk) 06:16, 15 May 2012 (UTC).

Dialectical Materialism: The frame of mind within which we are expected and taught to think of gain and industry, above psychology and self-knowledge, self-preservation or self-education. We are given the bug to consume words, regardless of their source, and when not consuming to think constantly in our own heads. Try to not think, read or hear anything for 10 minutes.86.130.244.250 (talk) 17:25, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

---

Once again (and I only mentioned this three years ago)! This link at the foot of the page:

Grant, Ted; Woods, Alan (2003), Dialectical Philosophy and Modern Science,

in fact takes us to Henri Lefebvre's book, not Woods and Grant's chapter. It needs correcting. I'd do it myself but I don't know the correct url!

Rosa Lichtenstein (talk) 04:14, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

---

And while we are at it why is this still in the article?

"The thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectic triad..."

This is Kant and Fichte's method not Hegel's!

How many times does this point have to be made?

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Thesis_Anti-Thesis_Synthesis.htm

Rosa Lichtenstein (talk) 04:30, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

"...in the formulation" :Grammar problem or obscure English?

Second para:

It was exported to China as the "official" interpretation of Marxism but has since then been widely rejected in China in the formulation of the Soviet Union.

Surely should be:

...rejected in China as the formulation...

Centrepull (talk) 21:10, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Lead

Per WP:LEAD: "The lead section (also known as the lead or introduction) of a Wikipedia article is the section before the table of contents and the first heading. The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents. It is not a news-style lead or lede paragraph." The key word there is summary. The very purpose of the lead is to repeat, in a condensed form, what can be found elsewhere in the article. I have just had to undo a recent edit to the lead that removed content from the lead for an entirely mistaken reason: "it's already mentioned elsewhere in the article". That the content in question is "already mentioned elsewhere in the article" is a reason for having it in the lead, not for removing it. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:22, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Cherkash, it would be courteous to reply to me on the talk page, rather than simply continue to make reverts at the article. You wrote in your edit summary, "mentioning only one critic in the lead (while many criticisms have been mounted) violates WP:LEAD & WP:NPOV". Might I ask, then, who are the other critics who ought to be mentioned, in your view? Or is it your position that the lead should not mention any criticism of dialectical materialism at all? It is peculiar that you would complain that my edits violate WP:NPOV, because excluding all mention of criticism of dialectical materialism from the lead, and thus presenting dialectical materialism as though it were uncontroversial, certainly violates WP:NPOV, in quite a drastic fashion. Wikipedia doesn't exist to promote Marxist philosophy. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 09:03, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

(Seems like our edits here have crossed in the wires. I'm not going to re-write again, so here goes the response.)

You are not stating the facts correctly, I explicitly mentioned this as a reason: "mentioning only one critic in the lead (while many criticisms have been mounted) violates WP:LEAD & WP:NPOV". Happy to elaborate if it's still not clear: basically, the dialectical materialism has been criticized and argued about quite a bit, and there's a specific section (Dialectical materialism#Philosophical evaluations) to talk about it. There are quite a few specific critics and works mentioned there. Singling out a single author for mentioning in the lead section is not reasonable, and goes against presenting a neutral point of view: since the lead is a quick summary, it appears that this is the only criticism – and it clearly is not. If you want to mention that criticism exists, please do so in the lead (something to the tune of "there are other viewpoints, yada, yada"), but no reason to essentially copy a small part of a section into the lead. Again, please re-read WP:LEAD & WP:NPOV if this sounds crazy or unclear. cherkash (talk) 09:11, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I am aware of the reason you stated. I'll repeat that the existence of a section discussing criticism of dialectical materialism is not a reason to remove all mention of criticism of dialectical materialism from the lead. I do not consider singling out a single critic to mention in the lead inherently unreasonable - since Kolakowski is a famous figure and his criticisms seem to do a good job of summing up the case against dialectical materialism - but I agree that there might be better ways of approaching the issue, and I am open to specific suggestions. I do not agree with the suggestion you offer above, however. It is useless to suggest that the lead should mention that other philosophies besides dialectical materialism exist, as the point of the criticism dialectical materialism has received is of course not that other philosophies exist (which obviously no one disputes) - it's that dialectical materialism is wrong. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 09:22, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Isn't a lot of criticism raised in the form "this is wrong" (whether wholly or partially wrong)? So again, the lead is supposed to be a summary of the article, where the article talks about the details within the appropriate sections, and the lead summarizes a top-level view. In this particular case, saying that criticism has been mounted should be enough to direct an interested reader to a section discussing the details. cherkash (talk) 04:09, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

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'How' in this context isn't redundant?

Hello all,

I'm reading the article today for Dialectical Materialism and became confused at the need for citation in the following.

"The formulation of the Soviet version of dialectical and historical materialism in the 1930s by Joseph Stalin and his associates (such as in Stalin's book Dialectical and Historical Materialism) became the "official" Soviet interpretation of Marxism. It was codified and popularized in textbooks which were[when?] required reading in the Soviet Union as well as some Eastern European countries. It was exported to China as the "official" interpretation of Marxism but has since been widely rejected in China in the Soviet formulation.[how?]"

Is it necessary to outright say Marxist-Leninist-Maoism is an ideological break from Marxist-Leninism? Thanks 2604:2000:D05D:9000:950D:2001:ADDC:6469 (talk) 23:27, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Needs drastic editing

This page is a mess. It appears to have been hijacked by someone spreading an unorthodox interpretation of Hegel and (to put it charitably) a highly imaginative interpretation of Marx -- based on the ideas of Leonard F. Wheat. This Wheat business seems to be metastasizing: it's also invaded the page on Hegel and the page on Dialectic (and perhaps others?). I'm not an expert on Hegel, so I'm not going to edit the Hegel page, but I do know a great deal about Marx's theory of history, and this "Dialectical materialism" page needs drastic editing. First, almost all the Wheatian stuff in the "Hegelian background" section is superfluous and should be deleted. (In any case, it's duplicated on other Wheat-infested pages.) The section on "Marx's Hegelian dialectics" is very misleading, POV, and in places flat-out wrong: e.g., the claim that "Marx perceived dialectics as a metaphysical force that actually determines the course of history. Although both Hegel and Marx were atheists, Marx was nonetheless a supernaturalist of sorts; he was a metaphysical supernaturalist who believed in metaphysical (supernatural) determinism of history." Marx and Engels explicitly and repeatedly rejected this view. Scales (talk) 03:53, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. This article is overladen with personal opinion and "original research". Bgvaughan (talk) 13:13, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

You say it is "flat-out wrong" that "Marx perceived dialectics as a metaphysical force that actually determines the course of history." Several interpreters disagree with you. Tucker says that Marx "regards the victory of the proletariate to be historically preordained." Supernatural determination of future events, when not determined by a god, is metaphysical determination. (Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, p. 227.) Popper refers to Marx's "metaphysical theory of economic reality." (The Open Society and Its Enemies, volume 2, p. 108.) Stumpf writes, "Marx clearly expressed a metaphysical belief in the existence of a predetermined goal for all history." (Philosophy: History and Problems, 417. Yet you seem to reject the widely accepted fact that Marx regarded final Communism as inevitable. If this final development in history is inevitable, it has to be supernaturally caused. Supernatural causation can be the work of either gods or mindless metaphysical forces such as the Greek logos. It is well known that Marx was an atheist ("Religion is the opium of the masses"), so Marxian historical determinism can't be the word of God. That means the determinism is metaphysical. Where are your authorities who say that Marx's dialectical materialism embodies no metaphysics?Atticusattor (talk) 01:10, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

First, many scholars don't think that Marx was a "dialectical materialist" at all. On that score, I could add many more references to the ones I included. I've quoted Marx and Engels as rejecting what they perceived as the metaphysical notion of history with a capital "H". On that, I could have inserted a number of additional quotations from Marx and Engels separately. (I could, because I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Marx's theory of history.) Frankly, not a lot written about Marx's theory of history, especially in English, before the 1970s is worth much. Popper, for example, confused Marx's theory of a model of the capitalist economy, with its peculiar laws of development, with Marx's general theory of history, applicable to all modes of production. Marx warned against turning "my historical sketch of the development of capitalism in Western Europe into a historical-philosophical theory of universal development predetermined by fate for all nations, whatever their historic circumstances in which they find themselves may be...." (Saul K. Padover, ed., The Letters of Karl Marx, p. 321) But that's just what Popper (and others) did. Fortunately there was a renaissance in scholarship on Marx that began in the 1970s. Scales (talk) 02:12, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I've done the deed, or at least made a major start. Scales (talk) 23:29, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

You certainly have done the deed. And an evil deed it was: you have taken the thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics out of dialectical materialism – by wildly swinging away with your ax in a manner that would have made Lizzie Borden proud. I can’t fight no-nothing vandals like you, so I won’t try to undo your undo. What I can do is put a brief summary of Hegelian-Marxian dialectics here on the Talk page so that people who get this far can understand that “dialectical materialism” is more than a meaningless label for Marx’s thought.

Marx’s dialectical materialism relates to a very small element of his thought, namely, his description of human history. Marxian history is progress from primitive communism through three stages of “enslavement” (slavery, feudalism, and capitalism) to final communism – separation from and return to communism. Marx’s base-superstructure nonsense, in which he tries to describe the evolution of systems of production, is nondialectical and has little connection with his human history dialectics.

When Marx said, in effect, that he was going to turn Hegel’s “standing on its head” dialectics right-side up, he was accurately recognizing the thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics in Hegel’s thought. But it was only the Hegelian format that he approved of, not the substance. (Hegel’s substance dealt with ideas, whereas Marx believed the true substance of dialectics was things in the material world – modes of production, classless and class societies, wealth and poverty, and literal and figurative enslavement of the working classes.) The two broadest examples of the Hegelian dialectics (Hegel has dozens of dialectics) are these:

* Thesis: unconscious + union

* Antithesis: conscious + separation

* Synthesis: conscious + union (Spirit’s “self-realization”)

I won’t try to explain the substance of this dialectic; I won’t go into what unconscious and conscious mean or what union and separation mean. What concerns us is the format. The format in this and most other Hegelian dialectics consists of a two-concept thesis, a two-concept antithesis, and a two-concept synthesis. The concepts can usually be stated in one or two words. Each antithesis concept is the opposite of, not just different from, its thesis counterpart. (Conscious is the opposite of unconscious; separation is the opposite of union.) The synthesis genuinely synthesizes by combining the best concept from the thesis with the best from the antithesis. (Synthesis means putting things together. It is the opposite of analysis, which is taking things apart.)

My second example of a Hegelian dialectic is this:

* Thesis: potential + freedom

* Antithesis: actual + bondage

* Synthesis: actual + freedom (another description of Spirit’s self-realization)

Both this second dialectic and the first illustrate a second characteristic of Hegelian dialectics: separation and return. Paul Tillich, a later dialectician with a firm grasp of Hegel’s dialectics, wrote: “Obviously – and it was so intended by Hegel – his dialectics are the religious symbols of estrangement [separation] and reconciliation.” And Hegel wrote: “Spirit . . . becomes alienated [separated] from itself and then returns to itself [reunion] from this alienation” (‘’Phenomenology’‘, Miller translation, paragraph 36). The “religious symbols” Tillich refers to are from the gospel of John, where God separates from himself by coming to earth as God in the “flesh” (the God-incarnate Jesus) while simultaneously remaining in heaven, then returns to himself in heaven after the crucifixion. In the first of the above two dialectics, Spirit separates from and returns to union. In the second dialectic, Spirit separates from and returns to freedom.

Marx copies the Hegelian format in the following history dialectic (and in several others):

* Thesis: communal ownership + poverty (primitive communism, or “Gens”)

* Antithesis: private property + wealth (slavery, feudalism, and capitalism)

* Synthesis: communal ownership + wealth (final communism, which lies in the future)

Observe that this dialectic incorporates the two salient features of the illustrative Hegelian dialectics. First, it uses the two-concepts-per-stage format in which the synthesis borrows one concept from the thesis and one from the antithesis. Second, it embodies the separation-and-return concept: the dialectic separates from and returns to communism (communal ownership of property). Robert Tucker, in his outstanding book on Marx’s thought (Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx) puts it this way: “Communism lost and communism regained [separation and return] –such is the plot of world history” (p. 23).

There you have it. Thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics is not the myth that Mueller said it was. It is a real triad used by both Hegel and Marx. But the vandals who have massacred the article just can’t believe the evidence in the former article. And so only the people who read the article and then go beyond it to the Talk page are going to learn the truth. What a shame. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atticusattor (talk • contribs) 00:02, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I forgot to sign the above. Here is the correction.Atticusattor (talk) 00:07, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I have reintroduced some of your material, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with it but simply indicating (as is proper in an encyclopedia entry) that this is one scholar's position. Even if you are 100 percent right in your interpretation of Hegel and Marx and all who disagree with you are wrong, an encyclopedia cannot give pride of place to unorthodox or novel views. Scales (talk) 06:38, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for restoring a few pieces of the original article. You are wrong, however, in saying that the illustrative Marxian dialectic originates with Wheat, is of recent origin, and is novel. Bober first called attention to this dialectic in his 1927 book, Karl Marx’s Interpretation of History. Bober pointed out that the three middle periods of the Marx-Engels five periods of history (primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, final communism) are collapsed into three for dialectical purposes. The three periods are characterized by class societies, private property, and separation of the worker from the fruits of his labor. Bober wrote: “Primitive communism represents the thesis; the private property of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism is the antithesis; and the communism of the future will reestablish the communal property of archaic days, but as a synthesis of a higher dimension” (p. 386). Bober also pointed out a "dialectic formula on a reduced scale" covering just the last three of Marx's five periods (p. 386). The shorter dialectic is this:

* Thesis: domestic production + worker ownership of tools (feudalism)

* Antithesis: factory production + capitalist ownership of tools (capitalism)

* Synthesis: factory production + worker ownership of tools (final communism)

Also, your restored material needs at least a small amount of additional material to clarify the fact that the characteristics of Marx’s dialectics originate with Hegel.Atticusattor (talk) 23:56, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

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Of course, the above 'method' was Fichte's, not Hegel's, and, as far as I am aware, Marx used the terms 'thesis', 'antithesis', 'synthesis' in only one of his works (The Holy Family), and even then it is arguable he was being ironic.

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Thesis_Anti-Thesis_Synthesis.htm

Independently of this, it is quite easy to show that by the time he came to write Das Kapital, Marx had waved 'goodbye' to that confused mystic, Hegel (upside down or the 'right way up').

Any who doubt this might like to consult the proof, set out here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_01.htm#Marx-And-DM--11

[If you are using Internet Explorer 10, you might find that the links I have posted won't work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View' (in the Tools Menu). That appears to fix the problem.]

Finally, one can impose any number of arbitrary schemas on an author's work, just as one can impose a secret code on the Bible, but if we attend to what Marx actually wrote (follow the above link for more on that), as opposed to what he can be made to say, his work isn't the least bit metaphysical, or deterministic (which is, incidentally, a confused theory, at best!), and it certainly doesn't conform to Fichte's ridiculous 'method'.

Rosa Lichtenstein (talk) 05:16, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Marx examines Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis in depth in The Poverty of Philosophy. This page's claim - backed up with a citation from the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy - that Marx rejected the Hegelian dialectic is entirely unsubstantiated. RnRa76 (talk) 20:13, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

The article does not claim that "Marx rejected the Hegelian dialectic". It states that Marx rejected the language of "thesis, antithesis, synthesis", and the statement is properly cited, to a reliable source (actually The Oxford Companion to Philosophy; I have corrected the citation). Please see WP:NPOV and WP:RS, which explain that the content of articles is based on reliable sources. Your argument for removing the material is original research. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:22, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Bad Citation

In question is this line: "There are critics, such as the Marxist Alain Badiou, who dispute the way the concept is interpreted.[46]"

Which then refers to page.44 of Zizek's book "Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism". Now, I have that book, and could not find Badiou saying anything of the sort on that page. There is brief mention by Zizek in that chapter (but not that page) about how the mistakes of interpretation involved in Hegel's dialectic are themselves interesting case studies on its method, and that Hegel was only possible through the chain of Kant-Schelling-Fichte-Hegel, which suggests that each subsequent philosopher in the chain works by misinterpreting the theory of the previous one. Whatever may be the case, I challenge anyone with a copy of the book to refer me to the page being mentioned where Badiou specifically disputes the way Hegel's dialectic is being interpreted (also, by whom? It's so vague as to be almost meaningless). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FEA8:E60:BF6:ECA3:D54E:AD9:C7F6 (talk) 16:08, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

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)

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)

---

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