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:
- All the phenomena of nature are part of an integrated whole;
- Nature is in a continuous state of movement and change;
- the developmental process is a product of quantitative advances which culminates in abrupt qualitative changes;
- 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,
- anti-thesis and
- 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.