Dialectical Materialism is the philosophical underpinning of Marxism.
This foundational part of Marxism requires a significant amount of attention and study,
far beyond the scope of what’s possible in a short video like this.
After you’ve watched this video, take a look at the reading and resources list (with
books, articles, podcasts, and other YouTube videos) in the description box below and dive
into those materials to continue to develop your understanding of this important topic.
Now, in order to develop a well-rounded understanding of Dialectical Materialism, we need to take
a deeper look at both aspects of it in more detail: dialectics, and materialism.
But first of all, we need to clarify a couple of points upfront.
When we talk about “materialism”, we’re using the philosophical understanding of the
term rather than the popular concept of being “materialistic”.
We’re not talking about being overly concerned with worldly possessions, being obsessed with
acquiring consumer goods, or anything like that.
The philosophical materialism that we’ll be talking about today is in contrast to philosophical
“idealism” – which is not to be confused with the popular usage of the term “idealist”
to describe a person who is guided more by lofty unrealistic ideals rather than by practical,
realistic, grounded considerations.
So, that’s what we’re not talking about Now, let’s get into what we are talking
about: Dialectics, Materialism, and their combination into Dialectical Materialism.
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Now, Dialectics as a concept has been around for thousands of years, and we can trace its
roots back to both Ancient Eastern and Ancient Western philosophy.
We can look to the works of Plato to see demonstrations of an early idealist dialectical method.
These are dialogues between two characters who argue back and forth with one another,
refining their arguments in the process through exposing flaws in each other’s positions,
and together developing the correct conclusion.
The first person will initially present an argument (the thesis).
The other person will then present a counter-argument (the antithesis).
And, through argument, a more refined position is reached between them (the synthesis).
But that’s not the end of it - now this synthesis becomes the new thesis.
And in opposition to this new thesis, we see a new antithesis emerge.
And from this new thesis and antithesis, we arrive at another synthesis – and so on
and so forth.
And this triad of thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis is often the way in which we’re taught to
understand later iterations of dialectics – most notably the idealist dialectics of
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
However, it’s important to state clearly that Hegel himself never formulated it this
way, and that this simplified formulation can cause problems in trying to correctly
understand dialectics.
Importantly, rather than seeing the thesis emerging and existing by itself for some time,
only to be challenged by the antithesis at an indeterminate later stage, the thesis and
antithesis (the two contradictory aspects) emerge simultaneously.
For a less abstract and more concrete example of this, there can be no exploiter without
the exploited.
No bourgeoisie without a proletariat – their existence depends on each other and so both
emerge simultaneously in unity and contradiction with one another.
A unity of opposites.
Now, you’ll notice that by introducing the dialectical relationship between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie, we’ve shifted gears from focusing on the contradiction between
simple conversational ideas (the realm of philosophical idealism) and have instead moved
to discussing class contradictions (the realm of philosophical materialism).
Unlike Hegelian Dialectics, which rely on idealism, Marxist Dialectics are materialist.
But what does this mean?
Philosophical Idealism posits that existence is inseparable from human perception – that
reality primarily stems from the mind perceptually or from ideas of some kind.
This is exemplified in the statement “I think, therefore I am”, wherein thought
precedes and affirms reality.
The beginning of existence here is subjective thought.
Extreme versions of philosophical idealism can be seen in “solipsism”, which holds
that a person can only be certain that their own mind exists and that everything else outside
of that is potentially just an illusion.
Philosophical materialism flips idealism on its head – becoming “I am, therefore I
think”, wherein objective existence precedes subjective perception.
Rather than assuming that all existence begins with the Ideal (with subjective thought, with
consciousness, the products of the mind), philosophical (or ontological) materialists
accept that there is existence beyond and before our mere perception – that matter
objectively exists independently of whether or not we subjectively perceive it.
In stark contrast to idealist notions, Marx posits that "It is not the consciousness of
men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines
their consciousness."
Marx believed that this idea of a mind that somehow exists separately to our physical
bodies is incorrect: "It is impossible to separate thought from matter that thinks.
This matter is the substratum of all changes going on in the world."
Thought, then, comes from matter – the brain being the material organ of thought.
Lenin summarised it when he stated that: "Materialism in general recognises objectively
real being (matter) as independent of consciousness, sensation, experience....
consciousness is only the reflection of being, at best an approximately true (adequate, perfectly
exact) reflection of it.
"
In other words, materialism holds that objective material reality exists, whether or not we
subjectively perceive it, and that matter precedes thought.
Therefore, materialists begin our analyses by studying matter.
Now, this battle between idealism and materialism has been a long-standing debate in philosophy.
However, modern science has long since come to embrace materialism as its starting point
for research.
But where the popular materialism of scientific discourse often falls into the trap of being
a materialism that finds itself static - rigidly fixed in one place - Marxist materialism is
anything but static.
Rather, Marxists view all matter as interconnected and constantly in motion - constantly changing.
Darwin’s theory of evolution illustrates this interconnectedness of everything in the
material world and the process of constant change and motion.
Everything that currently exists only does so as the result of processes that have been
ongoing for billions of years - processes of dialectical development between opposing,
or contradictory, forces.
It’s precisely the study of dialectics which allows us to move beyond metaphysical rigidity
and understand the perpetual motion of the material world.
Lenin reminds us that “Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction
in the very essence of objects.”
Objects, here, meaning literally all phenomena.
Let’s take a deeper look now at contradiction through the fundamental laws of materialist
dialectics.
Dialectics.
How can we better understand it and apply it to the world around us, especially in our
organising efforts?
Well, one of the fine gentlemen behind me (Friedrich Engels) laid out three fundamental
laws to help us understand dialectics.
The first law is the unity and struggle of opposites.
The second law is the transformation from quantity into quality.
And the third law is the negation of the negation.
Let’s break these laws down:
The law of the unity and struggle of opposites, holds that the unity of opposites exists in
all objects and processes from beginning to end.
Vladimir Lenin once said that “The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its
contradictory parts is the essence of dialectics.”
And Mao Zedong once said “The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of
opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics.”
Within every object, two contradictory aspects form the entire object.
These two aspects both unite and struggle, pushing that object forward, placing it in
constant motion.
This is also known as the law of contradiction.
Lenin said it best: In mathematics: + and —. Differential and
integral.
In mechanics: action and reaction.
In physics: positive and negative electricity.
In chemistry: the combination and dissociation of atoms.
In social science: the class struggle.
“One divides into two” is another way of identifying the contradictions within an
object or process.
In this case, mathematics is divided into plus and minus.
Physics into positive and negative electricity.
So on and so forth.
As dialecticians, we must find the two contradictory aspects of that object in order to understand
it concretely.
This is the law of the unity and struggle of opposites.
The law of the transformation of quantity into quality.
This law explains that gradual quantitative changes give rise to revolutionary qualitative
changes.
Basically, Quantity is gradual change.
Quality is revolutionary change.
This law takes into account how all things and processes go from being one thing or process
to transforming into another thing or process.
The essence of a thing gradually changes, through increases and decreases, but after
a certain level of gradual change, a qualitative leap occurs which fundamentally changes that
thing or process.
With this law, we must understand that a fundamental change that occurs within an object doesn’t
just occur with gradual changes, but a qualitative leap must occur for actual change to occur.
For example, when we heat water up until it boils, the temperature gradually changes until
it transforms from a liquid to a gas, representing a qualitative change.
Or when we freeze water until it transforms into a solid state known as ice.
Examples like these are found all over the universe, including in human society and human
thought.
In the Marxist sense, when we apply this law to society, the qualitative change is revolution.
This is the second law, the transformation of quantity into quality.
The law of the negation of the negation.
This is sometimes referred to as “negation and affirmation”.
The simplest way to explain this law is when the new supersedes the old.
When the old state of an object reaches its limit before a qualitative change occurs,
this is the first negation.
After surpassing this limit, the object transforms into a new state, which is the second negation.
Therefore, we have a negation of the negation.
The negation (or limit) is negated (or superseded by something new).
Karl Marx described an example of this law:
“The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production,
produces capitalist private property.
This is the first negation of individual property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor.
But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own
negation.
It is the negation of the negation.
This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual
property based on the acquisitions of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation and
the possession in common of the land and the means of production”.
Negation, in the Marxist sense, does not mean completely wiping out the existence of something.
In the process of an object transforming from one state to another, old remnants of the
old state still remain in the new state.
When feudalism become dominant after slavery, slavery still remained.
When capitalism became dominant after feudalism, old remnants of feudalism still remained.
Even when socialism becomes dominant after capitalism, slavery, feudalism and capitalism
still have remnant which remain and must be overcome in order to reach communism on a
global level.
A negation of the negation means a transformation from the old state into a new state of an
object, when the new supersedes the old, but in a way which has continuity with the past
but also ruptures from it.
This is what Marxists mean when we say progress does not travel in straight lines, but in
spirals:
“Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly
approximates a series of circles, a spiral.”
To sum up, life, society, ideas and motion are in a continual process of gradual changes
which can build up into revolutionary qualitative changes due to the contradictions within a
process, and this is all pushed forward by the unity of opposites within that process.
And there we have the three laws of dialectics which form the basis of the philosophy of
Marxism.
Today we’ve taken a look at the development of both Dialectics and Materialism.
We’ve traced dialectics all the way back to Plato, through Hegel, and up to the modern
day.
We’ve also explored the differences between philosophical idealism and philosophical materialism,
as well as connecting that materialism to dialectics in order to better understand the
interconnectedness of all things, which exist in constant motion.
Will from The Peace Report laid out Frederick Engels’ 3 fundamental laws of dialectics:
(1) the law of the unity of opposites, wherein two aspects of a contradiction are in opposition,
yet are interdependent and so united; (2) the law of the transformation of quantity
into quality, wherein incremental quantitative changes (changes in quantity) give way to
revolutionary qualitative transformations (changes in quality), and; (3) the law of
the negation of the negation, wherein the old gives way to and is supplanted by the
new.
In short, Dialectical Materialism is the philosophical underpinning of Marxism which posits that
there are opposing forces which exist within all phenomena, and that these contradictions
drive change in the material world.
Next up, we’ll be looking at how this applies to social-historical development as we dive
into Historical Materialism.
And I know some of you are itching to learn more about contradiction, given that it’s
a fundamental part of understanding dialectical materialism – so that’ll be covered in
the following video.
Thank you for watching this video.
Hopefully you’ve found it useful and not too overwhelming.
Don’t worry or feel discouraged if this topic hasn’t clicked just yet – dialectics
takes a long time to master and it can be quite a frustrating process.
I strongly recommend you dive into the reading and resources list in the description box
below to help develop your understanding of this important topic.
I wanna give a massive thank you to Will from The Peace Report for his excellent contribution
to this video.
Will’s currently working on a massive project diving into these very topics in much greater
detail.
I’ve taken a sneak-peak at the script for it and it’s unreal, so make sure to get
over to his channel right now to subscribe and be notified when it’s released.
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