DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

 

Dialectical Method

 

Like that of Hegel Marxist methodology is also known as dialectical. Distinguishing it from the dialectical method of Hegel, Marx said, “My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the idea’, he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demy-urge of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the idea’. With me, on the contrary, the idea is nothing else than the material world reflected by the husman mind and translated into forms of thought.” The basic postulates of the dialectical method of Marx, as outlined by Larson are as follows:

1. All the phenomena of nature are part of an integrated whole;
2. Nature is in a continuous state of movement and change;
3. the developmental process is a product of quantitative advances which culminates in abrupt qualitative changes;
4. Contradiction are inherent in all realms of nature but Particularly human society”

Marx’s philosophy of “Dialectic Materialism has grown from Hegelian philosophy. The difference between the two is that while Hegel was basically an idealist, Marx was basically a materialist. Although, Marx has agreed with Hegel’s dialectics, he has never agreed with Hegel’s idealism. He has in this respect himself said: “In Hegel’s hands dialectics underwent a mystification… In Hegel’s writings dialectics stands on its head you must turn it right way up again, if you want to discover the rational colour with the mystical smell.”

Dialectical materialism reflects most clearly the Marxian philosophy of change. It explains in detail the most general laws of the development of all history whatsoever. It is never a dogma, nor the Marxian metaphysics, but empirically discovered law of all change.

While writing about his difference with Hegel, Marx has himself remarked: “My own Dialectical method is not different from Hegelian, but it is direct opposite. For Hegel… the power of thinking which, under the name of idea, he even transforms into an independent subject is the de miargos (creator) of the real world, and the real world is only outward manifestation of the ‘idea’. With me, on the other hand, idea is nothing than the material world reflected by the human mind.”

Engels has brought out this difference somewhat clearly in the following words: “Hegel’s Dialectic is opposite down because its steps put the self-development on that of which the dialectic of facts is therefore only a reflection, whereas really the dialectic in our heads is only the reflection of the actual development which is philosophy in the world of nature and of human history.”

The basic difference between Marx and Hegel so far as dialectic is concerned is of the idea and the matter. Both were believers in dialectics; Hegel was an  idealist, while Marx was a materialist. In this respect the following lines reflect the position very correctly: “If Hegel was the dialectical Allah and Marx and Engels in a sense its prophets they do not hesitate to scold him for omission and even serious misconstruction of truth.”  Hegel placed considerable emphasis on the “ dialectic principle”. He taught that everything developed by conflict or by a “clash of opposites”.

According to Hegel, evolution proceeds according to a system of three stages-

         1.thesis,

2. anti-thesis and

3. synthesis.

“Every condition develops its negation, and the interaction of the two begets a new situation the new or resulting condition soon has its negation and the struggle continues. Or, every thesis has its anti-thesis and the clash between them then provides a new synthesis. This, in turn, becomes the new thesis and opposed to it as a new antithesis from which clash again comes a further synthesis.”” This purely dogmatic assumption was used by Hegel to “reveal” the historical process through which, “spirit”, which is self-moved, strived for self-realization, or freedom. This striving of spirit for freedom is the most fundamental cause of change. To  quote Hegel, “The final cause of the world at large, we the consciousness of its own freedom on the part of spirit.”

But the Marxian laws of dialectic “are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises”; they are abstracted “from the history of nature and of human society.”

They are not, as Engels puts it, “built into nature”; they are “discovered in it and evolved from it.” They are neither  “dogmas”, nor “principles”,  nor all embracing system  they are on the one hand merely “guides to further study and empirical investigation”, and on the other, “guides to further study and empirical investigation”, and on the other, “guides to action”, to “practice”, to history changing deeds. “Communism”, says Engels,  “proceeds not from principles, but from facts…. (it is) no doctrine but a movement.

The Marxian dialectical materialism is based on a few readily observable and universal truths:-

(1) That everything is dependent on other things. Water is water, but in order to become water, it is dependent on other things, and it remains water under certain conditions. If the temperature increases or decreases to a great extent, water will no longer be water; it will be steam. According to Marx, as already stated, the economic order depends mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual process of life.”

(2) That nothing in the world is really static, and that everything is moving, changing, either rising and developing or. The whole of nature, from the smallest element to the greatest, from grains of sand to sun, from protozoa to men, has its existence in eternal coming into being and passing away, in ceaseless flux, in untrusting motion and change. “In short, man changes by the very nature of the universe of which he is a productive forces and “the on declining and dying away part.”

(3) The change or development that takes places in things is not always simple and smooth, but is broken at a certain point in a very sharp way. To take sample of water again, we find that while the temperature is being raised water remains water with all the general characteristics of water, but the amount of heart in it is increasing and is being accumulated. At a certain point, a sudden break occurs and the water completely changes its qualities and starts  boiling-it is no longer only water but a boiling water or steam. This sudden break is the revolutionary stage of social change and is always “heated” by the material forces of production.” Revolution is an inevitable social phenomenon and each revolution attends the birth of each new stage of society.

(4) This process of development is universal and continual. One feature or factor in society is always expanding, the other resisting that expansion and it is this conflict between these two which is the content of the whole process of social change or development.

Each stage, therefore, contains the seeds of its own decay, and they ripen into the opposing order of its antithesis, the counter-movement which asserts those aspects denied by the former. But the Antithesis is also a development of what was implicit in the thesis. It attains a higher level, and in its suppression the synthesis of the two comes into being.”

Thus, in every society two distinct and opposite forces-thesis and antithesis-work and follow each other until a solution is found in the form of a new order-synthesis. These opposite forces, according to Marx, are two distinct classes.

As the modes of production change, a new class rises in power and there comes a clash between the old and the new. Thus, in ancient societies, there were the slave owners and the slaves, in the medieval age, there were feudal lords and serfs: and in modern age, there are the capitalists and the labour class. Slavery was abolished, the power of the feudal lords was overthrown, and “it may be fully expected from the contemporary evidence of the direction of social movement and of human striving” that capitalism will also wither away.

Finally, socialism will be established by and for the proletariat. The future stage of social relations will be socialistic in character, and “it will come”, Marx asserts emphatically.

 

 

                                       CLASS CONFLICT

 

Class conflict constitutes the central theme of Marx theory of conflict .Karl Marx described in Communist Manifesto about class conflict. Establishing his theory of social class Karl Marx-went to point out that there has always been lass conflict among different classes “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. Free men and slaves,  patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, In a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, own hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

Marx’s original idea was that there is a fundamental contradiction between wage earners and capitalists. He was convinced moreover; that fundamental opposition of interests dominated all of capitalistic society and would assume an increasingly simplified form in the course of historical development. From another point of view, excellent observer historical reality, Marx was aware of the plurality of social groups plurality, reducible to two large groups is capitalists and proletariat. However, a capitalistic society did exhibit these two features which should not be confused with social groups.

In the case of the workers verses the owners of the teams of production, the various inertia which may he invented or observed are  identifie. Accepting the difference between the conflict among classes in ancient societies and the modern and the difference between the nature of exploitation Karl Marx admitted, “The fact that modern workers are formally ‘free’ to sell their labour while being existentially constrained to do so makes their condition historically specific and functionally distinct from that of earlier exploited classes.” The industrial workers have determined mode of existence which depends on the lot they are assigned in capitalistic society. They are conscious of their solidarity, they are antagonism towards other social groups hence a “social class” in the true sense of the term. The proletariat will plan it in fundamental opposition to the capitalists.

There are sub-groups within each of these classes and also groups which are not yet identified into the camp of one or the other of the Iwo chief actors in the drama of history. But these exterior or marginal Groups will gradually, in the course of historical evolution, be obliged to join once or the other of the two existing camps of the proletariat or the camp of capitalists.  Marxist theory of class conflict requires the understanding of the development of the proletariat, the importance of property, the identification of economic and political power, the identification of authority, polarisation of classes, theory of surplus value, pauperization, alienation, class solidarity and antagonism, revolution, the dictatorship of proletariat and finally the inauguration of the communist society.

The class conflict starts with the development of proletariat, the importance of property and the polarisation of classes.  It is a result of exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists and their consequent pauperization. Exploitation leads to alienation. Class solidarity and antagonism lead to revolution. Revolution eliminates capitalism and establishes dictatorship of the proletariat the class conflict ends in the inauguration of the communist society. In fact, the most significant part of the social thought of Karl Marx is the theory of class conflict. Therefore, the above mentioned factors may be classified in three groups :the development of social classes, the class conflict, and finally the revolution.

 

Development of social class

 

Class conflict presuppose the development of social classes.The following are the important steps in this direction:

 

1. Importance of property.

Classes are determined on the basis of the relation of the individual to the means of production. As the importance of property increases so increases the distance between different classes.

 

2. Theory of Surplus Value.

Surplus value refers to the extra value  Produced by the worker by means of his labour. In fact, this is the share of the worker usurped by the capitalists resulting in exploitation.

 

3. Polarization.

Exploitation results in polarization. In the word: of Ralf Dahrendorf, “The whole society breaks up more-and more-into two great hostile camps, two great directly antagonistic classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat.

 

4. Proletarianization.

According to Raymond Aaron, “The rise of 4. Proletarian results is proletarianization which means that, along with the development of the capitalist’s regime, the intermediate state between capitalists and proletarians will be worn thin and that an increasing number of the representatives of these intermediate strata will be absorbed by the proletariat.” Mats described the process of development of the proletariat as follow: “The first attempts of the workers to associate among themselves always take place in the form of combinations (unions). Large-scale industry concentrates in one another. Competition divides their interest. But the maintenance of this common interest which they have against the boss unites them in a common thought of resistance-combination. Thus, combination always has a double aim, that of stopping the competition among themselves, in order to bring about a general competition with the capitalists.”

 

5. Praise of political authority

In word of Raymond Aron “Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another.” The political power is embodied in the state. In the capitalist society the state is an instrument of economic exploitation and the consolidation of the interest of the capitalist. This is the identification of economic and political power. This  of intensifies class conflict which ultimately leads of revolution.

 

6. Pauperisation.

The exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalist leads to pauperisation of the masses. In the words of Raymond Aaron, “Pauperisation is the process by which the proletarians tend to grow poorer and poorer as the forces of production are developed.” It follows that in every mode of production which involves the exploitation of man by man, the social product is so distributed that the majority of people, who labour, are condemned to toil for no more than the barest necessities of life.  Sometimes favourable circumstances arise when they can win more, but more often they get the barest minimum, and at times not even that. On the other hand, an animosity, the owners of means of production, he property owners, enjoy le insure and luxury. Society is divided into rich and poor.”

 

 7 Alienation.

Economic exploitation and the inhuman working conditions in capitalist society lead to alienation of men. Due to alienation impediment in the ideal of total man. Explaining the process of increase of alienation of man Karl Marx has said, “ Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer ; all means for the development of production trumsform them salves into means of domination over and exploitation of the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion incorporated in it as an independent power ; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism, the more hateful for its mean-noses ; the transform bits life time into working-time and drag his wife and child under the wheels of the juggernaut of capital. But all methods for the accumulation of surplus value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of those methods. It follows, therefore, that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer is his payments high or low must grow worse.”

 

8. Class Conflict.

Tracing the process of class conflict in the capitalist society, characterised by proletarisation, pauperization and alienation Karl Marx said, “With the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeoisie and the resulting commercial crises make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuated. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes Their livelihood more and more precarious individual workmen and individual bourgeoisie take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. There upon the workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeoisie; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provisions beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.”

 

9. Social Revolution.

According to Karl Marx the social revolution is a law of development of an antagonistic class society. In his preface to A Contribution to The Critique of Political Economy Marx wrote that at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production within which they have been at work hit hereto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins a coach of social revolution. To quote Marx: “Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going in fact within the whole range of old society, on within the ruling class, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeois ideologists who have risen Themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically.

 

10. Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Between capitalism and Socialism “lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” The dictatorship of the proletariat is a qualitatively coercive, determined and ruthless. It is constructive and educative. It is the highest type of democracy. It takes various forms in transition from capitalism to communism. The Marxist party in USSR took the leading role in the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, the concept of social dictatorship gradually became controversial among the Marxists. As Irving Howe observes: treacherous phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, both because it is open to obvious misconstruction and because it has acquired, in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist dictatorships, abhorrent connotations. Marx himself had written that he differentiated himself from ‘those communists who were out to destroy personal liberty and who wish to turn the world into large barrack or into a gigantic warehouse.”

 

 11 Communist society.

In the end class a conflict result into victory of the proletariat and establishment of a communist society which abolishes provide property and eliminates class. Karl Marx proclaimed that the communist state is the instrument for establishment of communism after the achievement of this purpose the state withers away