Three Definitions of the Marxist World Outlook
Today, I was heavily inspired by an amazing book called “Materialism and the Dialectical Method” by Maurice Cornforth. Truly an inspirational text, in less than 300 pages the entire world outlook of a Marxist party and person are outlined with extreme clarity. The farther we get away linguistically from Engels and Marx, the more opaque their words can become to a working class growing up under completely different social conditions and with an entirely transformed colloquial vocabulary. To say it bluntly…these texts can be problematically opaque. In the true Marxist spirit, Cornforth consolidates and synthesizes the main points of texts like Anti-During and The Three Sources of Marxism.
In this article, I will answer one question in three different ways: simple, intermediate and complex: what is dialectical and historical materialism?
Simple Explanation
‘Dialectics’ is the study of interconnections between things in their movements, and ‘materialism’ can be understood best as the study of reality: what is actually the material (or existing) state of a thing?
Dialectical materialism makes no claim to objectivity. It is an outlook that centers working class people as the value-creators of society, and puts their interests at the center of any societal organization.
A dialectical materialist studies how the interconnections between things, people and events lead to tangible outcomes. Historical materialism is simply this outlook applied to history. For example, one might look at fascism in the 20th century as an outcome driven by bad ideas: racism and nationalism of the Germans against the Jews. A materialist looks at the events in context: Germany, having been beaten in WWI, had been put in a position of major austerity by the Allies, and their people in a state of desperation that led to susceptibility to fascist sentiment. Fascism and its mythology, however, are simply the skin worn by capitalism to rationalize violence and terror. What was really happening materially was that German corporations were struggling, and needed to draw on the state apparatus to expand and find new markets. Scapegoating minority groups simply gives the fascists an easy story and validation of military expansionism, and diverts attention from the culprits: the American and German (among other) corporations that bankrolled Hitler into power and sustained him as long as he worked for their interests.
Intermediate Explanation
At it’s core, we can look at dialectical materialism as ‘materialist in its theory’, and ‘dialectical in its application and methods’. What does that mean? It means that all events and systems in class society can be seen as operating in the interest of particular class. It means that politics and policy have class dimensions. When the US enshrines ‘free speech’ in its constitution, one must ask, free speech for whom? When we look at who wrote the Constitution, we see a group of white colonizing land and slave owners. Their interests (wealth accumulation) are contrary to the slave class, and the burgeoning wage-earning class of the time that industrialized the nation with their labor.
The historical materialist viewpoint sees that abolition of slavery was a prolonged struggle against the slave owning class, not simply the ‘better ideas’ of men and women who thought slavery was immoral ‘winning out’ due to their inherent virtue. In fact, this abolition took many decades and centuries of collective action: slaves and free people alike joining hands in rebellion and working to shift the scales of power in their favor.
One of the core tenants of ‘dialectics’ involves contradictions. It states that development of society results from the unity and struggle of opposites, encapsulated by the concept of quantitative change culminating in qualitative change. All qualitative changes, distinguished by visible/distinct changes in character, are proceeded by struggle: large amounts of quantitative change. Think about boiling a pot of water: visibly, not much changes from room temperature to boiling point. But what proceeds this rupture in state, from liquid to gas? What causes the tumultuous change in state from still to rippling surfaces? Well, heat! Heat applied to the water causes large quantitative change, moving the water from 70 degrees to the ~208 boiling point.
Societal changes of state work the same way. Primitive communism (hunter gatherer society) was dismantled by the beginning of civilized, stagnant agriculture and accumulation of people and processes in cities and towns. Slavery was destroyed by the cumulative effect of slave rebellions and over extension of empires in their search for their main source of ‘value’ (slaves). Capitalism has rung its own death knell by proletarianizing the majority of society, exposing them to the exploitation that drives the organization to dismantle it. At the same time, quantitatively, profit rates have fallen on average as capitalists invest in automation and machinery that replace their main source of profit (labor). Thankfully for us, they are not as smart as they make themselves out to be.
So after all this, we see that dialectical materialism is the study and understanding of the contradictions within systems and between classes, and an application towards progress with this outlook: policies and movements that address the contradictions head on, without idealist fantasy or confusion.
Complex Definition
Cornforth breaks down the barriers in understanding in his pivotal text, and three of the main concepts can be useful for a more detailed understanding of dialectics and materialism as world outlooks:
- Negation of the Negation
- Criticism and Self-Criticism
- Dialectics and the Scientific Method
Negation of the Negation
This concept is in contradiction to most philosophy: it asserts that not all negations are negative, and that negations can actually be progressive. An example in the book highlights the power of the historical materialist conception of history. One could argue that the establishment of communism would be a historical regression, seeing as we already experienced a period of primitive communism, where societies produced and used everything in concurrence with their needs, prior to feudalism and capitalism. The liberal conception of ‘negation’ assumes that ‘negation means no’. However, the dialectical view shows that a negation can end one state while maintaining its best qualities and moving forward to a new stage of development. The idea of ‘negation of the negation’ posits that when we negate capitalism, we are transferring to a higher state of being. It recognizes the progress the previous system made in developing the productive forces (this can mean education, science, technology, etc). Therefore, a communist keeps the best parts of the system at hand…advanced productive forces, science and technology… while solving for the main contradictions and issues of the mode of production, namely socialized production with private accumulation. Put simply, this entails the abolition of private property.
Criticism and Self-Criticism
The main point of this tenant is that a spirit of continual progress must be maintained even after the economic base of society changes. It stresses that a dialectical world outlook (looking at the connections and interweaving of things and people inside of systems) is essential to advancing the productive forces of society. Stress is put on the fact that the dialectical method can only be refined through its usage in the planning of society. Many human instincts, biological and environmental, can cause a person to cling to outdated methods and practices. A dialectician applies ruthless criticism to the present state of things, in order to bring to light and come to consensus on a new state of things. In this way, we can constantly observe the connections and interactions between things (dialectics), while also pointing to (material) reality as the basis of our criticism, ultimately driving society forward at a clipping pace.
Dialectics and the Scientific Method
In this section of the book, Cornforth outlines the historical precedent for a dialectical and materialist outlook on society, namely the theory of evolution. Darwin’s theory advanced an entirely new way of looking at the natural world. After many years of struggle and debate, it has become widely accepted as a source of truth and lens to view the biological changes inside of natural development. Marxism applies a similar technique and method of understanding to social science.
Darwin saw contradictions between a species ‘will’ to exist and its environmental factors. Evolution occurred as the natural resolution of these contradictions: when a species adapted positively to its surroundings, it survived and reproduced. This same struggle, of new against old, drives the development of society from one stage to the next.
Also in this chapter, Cornforth rightfully stresses that scientific development slows to a halt as modes of production outlive their usefulness. He points to race science and philosophers like Thomas Aquinas that ideologically supported and rationalized slavery, instead of advancing society and solving the contradictions between slavery and the slave owners. He stresses that in today’s world, capitalism has become a deterrent to scientific advancement, and idealism and opportunism have begun to be pushed in place of actual solutions.
Conclusion
I’ve found through my time reading that the same concept repeated multiple times, in different ways, can be extremely helpful in fully grasping an idea.
I hope that this article was able to provide some clarity or understanding for the reader, the way Cornforth’s book did for myself. If you are still having cloudy thoughts, I fully recognize that my explanations may not have hit your personal target. Please go ahead and read Cornforth’s text if you want a longer form, more structured definition and explanation.
Solidarity and love.
