Marxism – Introduction and Dialectical Materialism

Marxism emerged from the debris of the industrial revolution. The factory system had uprooted thousands of people and put them into ghetto-like situations as there was no fixed wage and working hours, and exploitation was rampant. Karl Marx like early socialist thinkers like Saint Simon and Robert Owen was peeved at their precarious living conditions and pathetic situations. He clearly understood that industrialization was wreaking havoc on Worker’s life.

He wanted to transform society on human grounds, so he underlined the contradiction inherent in a society working on the principles of crass profit, free competition, and laissez-faire. Marxism is one of the most powerful ideologies of the 20^th century. Jean-Paul Sartre rightly said: If one wants to understand the 20^th century, one will have to understand Marxism. Some have termed it as the dominant ideology of the last millennium. Marxism has some tenets like Dialectical materialism that must understood.

Also Read: Libertarianism – An Overview

Welfare State – A Positive and Democratic State

IVC – Indus Valley Civilization – Living Pattern

Dialectical Materialism

Dialectical materialism is the central tenet of Marxism, although it is borrowed from the philosophy of Hegel. Regarding the Hegelian dialectics, which was different from that of Feuerbach’s concept of ‘elements of the human mind are derived from man’s material environment’, which finds the historical development of the society in conflict with ideal forces. Marxism modifies it to fit in his scheme of things. As Marx has himself commented, ‘In Hegel’s writing dialectics stands on its hand, one must turn it the right way up again’.

Marx agreed with Hegel that history is a process, and it moves in dialectics, where similarities end. Hegel views history as the manifestation of ideas and consciousness while Marx sees it as the primacy of material forces. As in his work, ‘Misery of Philosophy’, Marx has observed: ‘In changing the modes of production mankind changes all its social relations. The hand mill creates a society with feudal lords, and the steam mill is a society with industrial capitalists.

Marx also asserts that ‘the history of the society is the history of material production and of the contradiction between the material productive forces and relations of production that arise on their basis’. Moreover, this contradiction is resolved through class struggle and the establishment of a classless society. Borrowing the dialectical relationships from Hegel, he applied it to the realm, of material forces. Hegel has used it in the realm of ideas and consciousness.

Marx, however, emphasized the role of economic factors in the process of dialectics. Dialectics is a process that characterizes the history of change in the human society. At any point in time, one set of forces can be termed as thesis, another anti-thesis, and lastly as synthesis. Feudalism is a thesis. When the thesis is confronted with anti-thesis (capitalism), the next phase of the development takes place and it results in synthesis (socialism). According to Marx, at every stage of human society, thesis & antithesis, and synthesis have been working and guiding the march of history.

Synthesis combines the best characteristics of both thesis and synthesis.