Dialectical materialism

The intellectual tradition that culminated in the doctrine of dialectical materialism began with German idealism in the late 18th century and evolved through the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the Young Hegelians, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and finally the Russian Marxists, who formalized the doctrine. The 19th century saw a confluence of rapid developments in philosophy and the natural sciences that set the context for this tradition. The materialism of the French Enlightenment, bolstered by advances in science, had challenged traditional religious and metaphysical worldviews. In reaction, a renaissance of idealism occurred in Germany, culminating in the grandiose system of Hegel, which emphasized development, process, and historical change. At the same time, sciences like geology and biology were making discoveries that revealed the long, evolutionary history of the natural world, most notably Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which placed humanity firmly within nature. German Idealism and Romanticism Classical German philosophers from Immanuel Kant onwards shared the assumption that all branches of knowledge formed a single, integrated system. The early German Romantics and Idealists, particularly Hegel's immediate predecessors Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, developed systems of thought based on the dialectical interplay of fundamental opposites. Schelling's philosophy of nature, or Naturphilosophie, was particularly influential. He argued that the Absolute, or ultimate reality, was a unified identity of mind and nature, subject and object. He posited two standpoints from which to view reality: "Reflection", which statically analyses objects as separate and fixed concepts, and "Speculation", which grasps the dynamic, interconnected flow of reality. Schelling's system was built on a series of polar opposites: Universal and Particular, inner and outer, nature and society, necessity and freedom. In this framework, "nature" represented the realm of Particularity, fragmentation, and necessity, while "society" represented Universality, cohesion, and freedom. The Romantic political economist Adam Müller applied these philosophical ideas to economics, conceptualizing 'use value' as the Particular, individual character of a commodity and 'exchange value' as its Universal, social character. Müller argued that capitalism would reach a point of culmination in a world market, at which point it would collapse. Hegel's system Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel systematized and radicalized the work of his Romantic predecessors. While he shared their goal of developing a comprehensive system, he broke with them by championing rational consciousness over the Romantic focus on intuition and the unconscious. Hegel's central project was to demonstrate the logical, self-driven development of the "Concept" (Begriff), which he saw as the engine of both thought and reality. His philosophical system is divided into three parts: the Science of Logic, the Philosophy of Nature, and the Philosophy of Mind (Geist). The Logic traces the movement of the Concept from the most abstract category, "Being", through a series of internal contradictions to its synthesis in the "Absolute Idea". This process, which Hegel called "dialectic", was a progression from the abstract to the concrete. Hegel drew a sharp distinction between the analytical mode of thought, which he called "Understanding" (Verstand), and the higher, synthetic mode he called "Reason" (Vernunft). The former deals with fixed, isolated categories and is the basis for everyday thinking and the natural sciences, while the latter grasps the unity of opposites and the dynamic, self-moving nature of the Concept. Hegel viewed "Nature" as the Idea in its state of "self-degradation"—the realm of contingency and necessity, external to the Concept. "Mind" or "Spirit" (Geist) represented the synthesis of the logical Idea and Nature, the sphere of human consciousness, society, and history, characterized by freedom and rationality. In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel analyzed the structures of society—the family, civil society, and the state—as logical moments in the self-actualization of freedom. Young Hegelian critique After Hegel's death, his followers, known as the Young Hegelians, began to critique his system. For them, Hegel's two most significant features were his revolutionary dialectical method, which presented a world in a constant process of becoming, and his system's immense power of synthesis. They rejected, however, what they saw as the "reactionary, anti-dialectical tendency" of his system, which presented itself and the contemporary Prussian state as the culmination of all historical development. The Right Hegelians used the system as a defense of the existing order, while the Young (or Left) Hegelians emphasized the "radical negativity of the dialectical process" to launch critiques of religion and politics. Among the Young Hegelians, the Polish philosopher August Cieszkowski argued that post-Hegelian philosophy must move from thought to action, or "praxis", while the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin developed a dialectic where the antithesis actively destroys the thesis rather than being reconciled in a synthesis, famously stating, "The desire to destroy is itself a creative desire." Ludwig Feuerbach was another key figure in this transition. In works like The Essence of Christianity (1841), Feuerbach "inverted" Hegel's idealism, arguing that abstract philosophical and religious concepts were merely alienated projections of man's own essential nature (Gattungswesen). He sought to replace the abstractions of philosophy with the study of "real, material" man and nature, describing his own philosophy as a form of "anthropological materialism" or "naturalism". This move toward materialism and the critique of abstraction heavily influenced the young Karl Marx. == Karl Marx's thought ==

Karl Marx never used the term "dialectical materialism". His work was a critical engagement with German philosophy and classical political economy, which he sought to synthesize into a "critique of political economy". This project was intended to reveal the internal contradictions of capitalism and the historical necessity of its supersession by communism. Both Marx and Friedrich Engels felt that a separate compendium on dialectics was needed to make the Hegelian method more accessible, though Marx's intended work on the topic was never written. According to some scholars, Marx's philosophy is better understood as "Marxian naturalism," a perspective that is historical, sociological, and anti-metaphysical, and which differs significantly from the system later developed by Engels and the Soviets. The "critique of political economy" Marx's intellectual project, conceived in the early 1840s, was to develop a critique of political economy patterned on Hegel's Science of Logic. He aimed to show that economic categories such as the commodity, money, and capital were logically interconnected and developed dialectically from one another, just as Hegel's logical categories did. For Marx, these economic categories were not mere ideas but "crystallizations" or "abstractions" of man's real social relationships, which had become "externalized" and appeared as alien, natural forces. In his 1843 critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx applied Feuerbach's concept of alienation to the political sphere. He argued that the modern state is an "alienation of the collective nature of society," an abstract entity separate from and opposed to the real life of the people. The goal of "true democracy" was to overcome this alienation by creating a "socialized human being" where the individual and the community are unified. Marx's critique of the "old materialism" of Feuerbach and the French mechanists was that it was contemplative and failed to grasp the importance of "human sensuous activity" or praxis. In his early Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx outlined this project, identifying "alienated labour" and "private property" as the fundamental concepts from which all other economic categories could be deduced. This naturalistic perspective held that man is a social being whose reality is shaped through labour. For Marx, nature itself became a "man-made nature," socially mediated through man's "unceasing sensuous labour and creation." In his 1857–58 drafts, later known as the Grundrisse, he systematically used the Hegelian dialectic of the Universal and the Particular to derive the category of money from the commodity. Exchange value was the commodity's "Universal" or "social" aspect, while use value was its "Particular" or "natural" aspect. Money represented the Universal equivalent, an abstract form of man's social nature, separated from the Particularity of the commodities themselves. While Marx's "materialist conception of history" generally presents consciousness as determined by material life, in Capital (1867) he distinguished human labour from animal activity by noting that an architect, unlike a bee, "has built a cell in his head before he constructs it in wax." The labour process, he argued, involves a "purposive will" that realizes a pre-conceived ideal, giving a significant role to consciousness. Later revisions and Russian studies Marx's original scheme envisioned a continuous expansion of capital, driven by its own internal logic, which would progressively dissolve all pre-capitalist social formations and create a universal world market. This process, which he termed the "subsumption" of labour and society under capital, would eventually create the conditions for its own collapse and the emergence of communism. However, he found himself unable to logically demonstrate the necessary expansion of capitalism from its internal process of circulation. His empirical research revealed that the dissolution of traditional societies, such as in Britain, had often been accomplished by state force rather than by the purely economic "circulation of capital". His attitude towards Hegel, initially one of critical admiration, soured into scorn and eventually indifference as he moved away from speculative philosophy towards an empirically oriented "science of man". This led him, from the late 1860s onwards, to an intensive study of the Russian peasant commune (mir). Works by Russian scholars like Georg von Maurer and Maxim Kovalevsky convinced him that such agrarian communes were not necessarily doomed to be destroyed by capitalism. They could, under certain historical conditions, survive and even become a direct basis for socialism. This discovery was marked by a letter he wrote to Engels on 25 March 1868, in which he noted that the philosophical categories of the 'Universal' and the 'Particular' had concrete origins in the social forms of common land and private property. After this, Marx ceased to use these Hegelian philosophical terms in his writings. He revised the first volume of Capital, particularly the second German edition (1872) and the French translation (1875), to remove much of the Hegelian terminology and the universalist historical scheme, limiting his analysis of capitalism's origins to "Western Europe". == Formulation by Engels and Plekhanov ==

The system of "dialectical materialism" was constructed after Marx's death by Friedrich Engels and Georgi Plekhanov. It combined a materialist ontology with a set of "dialectical laws" claimed to govern both nature and society. Friedrich Engels and the "dialectics of nature" Friedrich Engels initiated a significant shift by extending the dialectical method to the natural sciences. In works like Anti-Dühring (1878) and his posthumously published Dialectics of Nature, Engels, influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, proposed that nature itself was historical and developed dialectically. Some interpretations view this as a departure from Marx's view, which treated nature as a static, ahistorical backdrop for human social history, though others note that Marx's correspondence with Engels shows that he followed Engels's studies of the natural sciences with interest and believed that the law of the transformation of quantity into quality held "alike in history and natural science," a view he included in Capital. Anti-Dühring became the canonical statement of the new doctrine, and was the most systematic exposition of the Marxist worldview in its time, playing a decisive role in shaping the ideas of the Second International. Engels's undertaking was not a personal "inner urge" but a response to the political needs of the socialist movement, particularly the refutation of rival theories such as those of Eugen Dühring, and the need to provide a comprehensive, scientific worldview for the working class. According to the historian Z. A. Jordan, Engels, a lifelong admirer of Hegel, synthesized Marx's naturalism with Hegelian philosophy and elements of French positivism, creating a form of "Hegelian positivism". Engels formulated what he considered the three general laws of dialectics: • The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. • The law of the interpenetration of opposites. • The law of the negation of the negation. For Engels, these were not just laws of thought but objective laws of the development of nature, society, and the human mind. His system was a form of "absolute materialism" which held that "the real unity of the world consists in its materiality". In his view, the "dialectic of concepts itself became merely the conscious reflex of the dialectical motion of the real world". It was also anti-reductivist, arguing for the emergence of qualitatively new levels of existence, such as life and mind, from the complex organisation of matter—a doctrine of "emergent evolution". In his view, the "economic relations of their time" furnished the "real base" from which the entire superstructure of society could be explained. This formulation positioned the economic base as the ultimate determining factor in history. Engels's work was largely programmatic, and he was inconsistent on some points, such as the status of philosophy in relation to the sciences. While generally arguing for a synthesis of philosophy and science, he sometimes suggested that philosophy had been made superfluous by scientific advances. His historical account of science anticipated later developments in the philosophy of science, such as the work of Thomas Kuhn, but placed scientific development within a broader socio-historical context. Georgi Plekhanov's synthesis Georgi Plekhanov, often called the "father of Russian Marxism," formally established the doctrine of "dialectical materialism" in the 1890s. In works like Socialism and the Political Struggle (1883) and The Development of the Monist View of History (1894), he systematized the ideas of Marx and Engels into a comprehensive philosophical system. Plekhanov's primary motivation was his polemical struggle against the Russian revolutionary movement known as Narodism. He characterized the Narodniks as "subjectivists" who believed that Russia could bypass capitalism and achieve socialism based on the peasant commune, a view he attributed to their idealist philosophy. In opposition, he proposed "dialectical materialism" as the synthesis of two one-sided philosophical traditions: the "metaphysical materialism" of 18th-century France (e.g., Baron d'Holbach) and the "dialectical idealism" of German philosophy (Hegel). Plekhanov modified Engels's system, rejecting "absolute materialism" and adopting a more critical, Kantian-influenced epistemology he called the "theory of hieroglyphs," which held that human sensations do not directly copy external reality but function as symbols or "conventional signs" of it. He also reinterpreted the laws of dialectics, reducing them to two basic principles—the interpenetration of opposites and the transformation of quantity into quality—and discarding the Hegelian triad as a primary law. In Plekhanov's "monist view", the development of the "productive forces" (the 'instruments of labour') was the ultimate cause of historical change. These forces determined the economic base, which in turn determined the ideological superstructure. A crucial innovation in Plekhanov's system was his reinterpretation of human nature. Whereas for Marx human "social nature" was a constant and the driving force of history, for Plekhanov human nature was a variable, a product of its external historical environment. History's driving force was thus located outside man, in the development of productive forces. This interpretation established the inevitability of capitalism in Russia, arguing that the country must pass through the same "natural phases of its development" as Western Europe. This "socio-cosmic" doctrine, which used cosmological laws to justify a particular path of social development, became the orthodox position of Russian Marxism and later of the Soviet state. == Soviet dialectical materialism ==

Lenin's revisions Vladimir Lenin's philosophy was a development of the ideas of Engels and Plekhanov, which he revised to serve his political and revolutionary ends. In his major philosophical work, Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909), Lenin defended Engels's materialism against the "Machist" revisionists within his own party who, influenced by positivism, sought to develop a philosophy of science independent of metaphysics. Lenin's key philosophical innovation was his redefinition of materialism as "epistemological materialism". He abandoned Engels's "absolute materialism" and its metaphysical concept of matter, replacing it with a purely epistemological definition: "Matter is a philosophical category designating the objective reality which is given to man by his sensation, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them." This redefinition was a defensive measure. The "revolution in natural science" at the turn of the 20th century, where matter seemed to "vanish", had made the older, metaphysical concept of matter vulnerable to criticism. By defining matter in purely epistemological terms as "objective reality", Lenin hoped to make materialism immune to changes in physical theory. In this, Lenin's materialism became virtually synonymous with philosophical realism. Lenin's second major contribution was the "principle of partisanship" (partijnost) in philosophy. He argued that all philosophy is fundamentally divided into two camps: materialism and idealism. This division, he claimed, corresponded to the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Any deviation from materialism was thus a political concession to the class enemy. In his Philosophical Notebooks, written during World War I, Lenin further revised the laws of dialectics. This later work showed a more sophisticated engagement with Hegel; Lenin now argued that "intelligent idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than stupid materialism" and that human consciousness "not only reflects the objective world, but creates it". He followed Plekhanov in discarding the law of the negation of the negation, but went further by reducing all three of Engels's laws to a single principle: the "unity and struggle of opposites." Compiling a list of sixteen "elements of dialectics", he declared the unity of opposites to be the "heart of the dialectic", giving much greater emphasis to internal contradiction as the source of self-movement than previous formulations had. For Lenin, this law provided a dialectical justification for cosmological atheism by demonstrating that the self-movement of matter, driven by internal contradiction, made a creator or external prime mover superfluous. Lenin's philosophy became an explicitly "socio-cosmic" cosmology, where the laws of nature were interpreted to justify a revolutionary political programme. It was an instrumentalist doctrine, a weapon in the class struggle. Mechanist-Deborinite controversy After the 1917 revolution, philosophical debates in the Soviet Union were dominated by the controversy between the "Mechanists" and the "Deborinites" (or "Dialecticians"). The Mechanists, led by figures like Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov and Nikolai Bukharin, espoused a positivist-influenced materialism that sought to reduce philosophy to the natural sciences and dialectics to a theory of equilibrium. The Deborinites, led by Abram Deborin, were Hegelian-trained philosophers who insisted on the primacy of dialectics as a philosophical method that stood above the special sciences. The journal Pod Znamenem Marksizma (Under the Banner of Marxism), founded in 1922, became the primary forum for these debates. Although he did not fully resolve the dispute, Lenin encouraged a "systematic study of Hegelian dialectics from a materialist standpoint" and proposed the formation of a "Society of Materialist Friends of Hegelian Dialectics". The posthumous publication of Engels's Dialectics of Nature in 1925 and Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks in 1929 provided new grounds for the debate, and appeared to lend support to the Deborinite position. The Mechanists argued that Engels's later writings showed a move toward a "mechanical understanding of nature," reducing all processes to physics and chemistry. The Deborinites, in contrast, emphasized the Hegelian philosophical framework of Engels's work, arguing that dialectics was a universal methodology that could not be reduced to any single science. The controversy ended in 1929 at the Second All-Union Conference of Marxist-Leninist Scientific Institutions, where the Deborinites succeeded in having the Mechanists formally condemned as a revisionist deviation. However, the Deborinites themselves were soon accused of "Menshevizing idealism" by a younger group of philosophers and were overthrown in 1930–1931. Stalin's codification Joseph Stalin's contribution was to codify Lenin's philosophy into the official and unchallengeable ideology of the Soviet state. His 1938 essay, Dialectical and Historical Materialism, became the canonical text for all students of philosophy. In this work, Stalin simplified and, in some cases, altered the previous understanding of dialectical materialism. Stalin's "philosophical materialism" abandoned Lenin's dual concept of matter (philosophical and scientific), recognizing only the single, philosophical concept. He presented four "principal features" of the dialectical method: • Nature is a connected, integral whole. • Nature is in a state of continuous movement and change. • The process of development is a transition from quantitative to qualitative changes. • Internal contradictions are inherent in all things as the source of their self-movement. This formulation is notable for completely eliminating the law of the negation of the negation. Stalin's version of dialectics became a rigid set of cosmological laws used to justify his political policies. For example, the law of the transition from quantitative to qualitative change was used to demonstrate the cosmic inevitability of revolution. The law of the unity and struggle of opposites was used to explain the origin of motion and the necessity of class struggle. During World War II, Stalin initiated a rehabilitation of formal logic, arguing that it was a necessary tool for rational thought; a Soviet textbook on the subject was written by Arnost Kolman in 1941. Stalin's philosophy was characterized by its extreme "voluntarism" and "instrumentalism". Theory was not an end in itself but a "guide to action", and the will of the leader could determine the course of history. His original contributions to historical materialism included an emphasis on the "tremendous organizing, mobilizing and transforming value" of the superstructure (new ideas, theories, and political institutions) in reacting back upon the economic base, and the concept of "revolution from above." He proposed new "driving-forces" for the development of classless socialist society to replace the now-absent class struggle: the moral and political unity of Soviet society, Soviet patriotism, and criticism and self-criticism. Late in his life, in works such as Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (1951), Stalin appeared to retreat from this extreme position, acknowledging the existence of objective laws of nature and society that could not be overcome by political will. The entire system was a "sociomorphic conception of the universe", where the laws of dialectics served as a cosmological justification for the inevitability of the Communist Party's policies and Stalin's own leadership. Post-Stalin era After Stalin's death in 1953, a period of "de-Stalinization" and "thaw" occurred in Soviet philosophy. The critique of the "cult of personality" challenged the absolute authority of Stalin's philosophical works. The rigid structure of Stalin's 1938 pamphlet, with its four dialectical and three materialistic features, came under criticism. Philosophers called for a return to the three laws of dialectics as formulated by Engels, which meant rehabilitating the "law of the negation of the negation" that Stalin had abolished. There was also renewed interest in developing a proper theory of categories, another area neglected in the Stalinist period. Despite a more critical atmosphere and debates over dogmatism, the fundamental Leninist framework, including the principle of "partisanship" and the ultimate authority of the Communist Party in philosophical matters, remained in place. == Core tenets ==

Conception of philosophy Soviet dialectical materialism posited itself as a distinct philosophical discipline, rejecting both the positivist attempt to dissolve philosophy into the special sciences and the "Menshevizing idealist" view that reduced philosophy to a pure methodology. Instead, it was conceived as a combination of a "world-outlook" (mirovozzrenie) and a methodology. It investigated the "most general laws of motion, change and development in Nature, society and knowledge", providing a "unitary, scientific world-picture" that generalized the findings of all sciences. This marked a break with Engels's more positivistic view, which suggested that what remains of philosophy after the development of the special sciences is only "the science of thought and its laws—formal logic and dialectics." While claiming not to be a "science of sciences" standing above other disciplines, Soviet dialectical materialism functioned as a universal method, the "method of dialectical and historical materialism," which was said to penetrate all natural and social sciences and equip them with general principles of operation. Over time, Soviet philosophy saw a retreat from Engels's position and a gradual reinstatement of individual philosophical disciplines. Where Engels sought to restrict philosophy to logic and dialectics, Soviet thought re-integrated nature and history into its scope, establishing disciplines such as the philosophy of nature (now called 'philosophy of science'), psychology, and others. Two methodological principles were particularly characteristic of Soviet philosophy: the unity of theory and practice, and partisanship in philosophy. The demand for the unity of theory and practice originated in Marx's early writings, where he argued that philosophy must be "transcended" by being "actualized" in concrete, perceptible practice. In Leninism, this took the form of insisting that socialist theory must be brought to the workers' movement "from without" by the Communist Party. Theory became a "tremendous force" only when it was built up in "indissoluble connection with revolutionary practice." The Party's role was dual: it both generalized the experiences of the working class to develop theory, and it brought this theory back to the masses in the form of "clear-cut slogans and directives" to guide their practical struggle. This led to the principle of partisanship (partiynost), which Lenin defined as the requirement to "openly adopt the standpoint of a definite social group". According to this doctrine, no "non-party, neutral philosophy" could exist in a class-divided society. Bourgeois philosophy was inherently partisan but concealed this under a mask of objectivity. Its purpose was to provide a distorted account of reality that served the interests of the exploiting class. Proletarian philosophy, by contrast, was openly partisan, because the class interests of the proletariat coincided with the objective laws of social development. Partisanship required loyal adherence to the Party line in all philosophical work and a relentless struggle against bourgeois ideology. During the "Zhdanovshchina" after World War II, this took the form of combatting "objectivism", "cosmopolitanism", and "servility towards bourgeois culture." This created what has been described as a "philosophical atmosphere" of a "godless theology," where philosophical inquiry was subordinated to political directives and consisted in the "unmasking of heresies". Theory of matter According to Gustav Wetter, Soviet dialectical materialism inherited from Engels a confusion between materialism and realism. The "great basic question of all philosophy," according to Engels, was the relation of thinking and being. This epistemological question was confounded with the ontological question of the relation of Spirit to Nature, or God to the world. Materialism was defined as the view that regarded Nature as primary. This hybrid meaning, which conflated materialism with realism, had a decisive effect on the subsequent history of the doctrine. Lenin's philosophical definition of matter—"objective reality which is given to man by his sensation"—was primarily a realist one. The definition was so broad that it could, in principle, encompass a spiritual being. However, Lenin converted this realism into an unambiguous materialism by confining reality to that which affects our sense organs and exists in space and time. Soviet philosophy held that the world is by its very nature material and that nothing exists apart from "matter in its perpetual change and motion." The theory of the "material unity of the world" was said to be proved by a long development in philosophy and science, from Copernicus's heliocentric model to spectrum analysis and Michurinist biology (Lysenkoism). Matter and its "mode of existence," motion, were held to be eternal, uncreated, and indestructible, a view supposedly confirmed by the law of conservation of energy. This stood in some contrast to the thesis that the world's development is an ascending process, which implies a beginning. Motion was conceived as an essential and inseparable attribute of matter, its "self-movement" (samodvizhenie). This was crucial to avoid the need for an external prime mover, or God. Motion was understood not merely as mechanical change of place but as change in general, encompassing higher forms such as heat, electricity, chemical change, life, and thought, none of which could be simply reduced to the lower forms. Space and time were considered objective forms of the existence of matter, inseparable from it. There was no matter without space and time, and no space and time without matter. The laws of dialectics In the Soviet view, the essence of the materialist dialectic was summed up by Engels in three basic laws: • The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. • The law of the mutual interpenetration of opposites. • The law of the negation of the negation. Until the 1930s, this formulation was common in Soviet philosophy, with the law of the unity of opposites usually placed first, reflecting the importance Lenin attached to it as the source of motion. In his 1938 essay, Stalin omitted the law of the negation of the negation and laid down four "principal features of the Marxist dialectical method": • The general connection between phenomena in Nature and society. • Movement and development in Nature and society. • Development as a transition from quantitative changes into qualitative ones. • Development as a struggle of opposites. The law of the transformation of quantity into quality held that development proceeds through the gradual accumulation of small, imperceptible quantitative changes, which at a certain point leads to a rapid, abrupt qualitative change, or "leap". This provided a philosophical justification for the concept of revolution. To avoid the implication that the Soviet order must also be advanced by a revolution, Stalin introduced a distinction between a sudden, violent "explosion" (vzryv), which applies only in class-divided societies, and a gradual transition, which occurs in a classless socialist society. The law of the unity and struggle of opposites was considered the central principle of dialectics. It held that all things contain internal contradictions, which are the source of their "self-movement". Lenin declared that the "struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute," while their unity is "conditional, temporary, transitory, relative." This was later modified by Stalin, who argued in his writings on linguistics that, however sharp the class struggle, it cannot lead to the disintegration of society, because society is also held together by a real unity. The distinction was also made between "antagonistic" contradictions (founded on the irreconcilable interests of hostile classes) and "non-antagonistic" contradictions (which exist in socialist society). The former were resolved in violent collision, while the latter were resolved through criticism and self-criticism. The law of the negation of the negation described the tendency and direction of development. The dialectical process followed an ascending spiral, where a first negation is "transcended" by a second, preserving what was positive in the previous stage and returning, in appearance, to the starting point, but on a higher level. After being omitted by Stalin, this law was "rehabilitated" in the post-Stalin era. Theory of knowledge The dialectical materialist theory of knowledge was based on the "copy-theory" (teoriia otrazheniia), which held that human consciousness reflects the external world. The knowing process proceeded in two dialectical phases: from living intuition or sensory perception to abstract, logical thought; and from abstract thought to practice. Sensation was the result of external objects acting on the sense-organs, a "transformation of the energy of external excitation into a state of consciousness." Unlike "physiological idealism", which held that sensations are purely subjective, or Plekhanov's "hieroglyphic theory", which regarded them as mere symbols, Soviet philosophy maintained that sensations were "truthful reflections" of objective properties, though subjective in form. From sensation, knowledge ascended to the "logical stage" of abstract concepts. This transition was a qualitative leap. Logical knowledge penetrated to the "essence" of things, to the "inner connection of appearances according to law." The unity of sensory and rational knowledge was held to overcome the one-sidedness of both empiricism and rationalism. Practice was the foundation of the entire knowing process and the ultimate criterion of truth. Soviet philosophy distinguished between objective, relative, and absolute truth. Objective truth was "the content of human thought ... which is in conformity with objects, and is thus independent of the subject." Truth was a process of progressive approximation toward absolute truth, which was the "sum-total of relative truths." While it was held that absolute truth will never be fully attained by mankind, it was also asserted that "for objective dialectics there is an absolute even within the relative" and that the fundamental theses of Marxism-Leninism are "absolute truths." Logic and theory of categories According to Lenin, dialectics, logic, and the theory of knowledge were identical. This thesis, borrowed from Hegel, was justified on the grounds that the logical laws of thought are copies of the objective laws of nature, and that the subject-matter of logic is the historical development of human thought, which reflects the historical development of the objective world. This led to a prolonged controversy in Soviet philosophy over the status of traditional formal logic. In the 1930s, formal logic was dismissed as "metaphysical." After 1946, it was officially rehabilitated, and a dualist position was adopted, which held that formal logic is the science of the elementary laws of thought, while dialectical logic is the science of its higher laws. The categories of dialectical materialism were its basic logical concepts, reflecting the most general properties and relations of reality. The main categories included: essence and appearance; cause and effect; necessity and contingency; form and content; and possibility and actuality. In the Stalinist period, the theory of categories was largely neglected, with the categories being treated as subordinate aspects of the four "principal features" of the dialectic. After Stalin's death, there was a renewed effort to develop a systematic theory of categories. == Relation to other concepts ==

Historical materialism The relationship between dialectical materialism (the philosophical worldview) and historical materialism (the theory of history) evolved significantly over time. Marx and Engels never claimed that historical materialism was logically derived from a broader philosophical system. According to Z. A. Jordan, Marx's theory of history had two distinct formulations. The first, found in early works like The German Ideology, was a methodological hypothesis based on "naturalism" and "empiricism", which sought to explain history as the product of the activity of real, living individuals. The second, found in later works like the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, was a metaphysical "philosophy of history". This version reified concepts like "productive forces" and "relations of production" and presented a universal "law of motion" of society, a substantive theory of historical causation. Engels's approach was more sociological. He emphasized the role of class struggle, which he had observed independently in England, as the driving force of modern history. He later revised the doctrine of historical materialism, moving away from a simple, monistic economic determinism to a more complex model of interaction between the economic base and the ideological superstructure. It was Engels, however, who initiated the "new departure" of connecting historical materialism to a broader metaphysical worldview—a dialectical philosophy of nature. He argued that the dialectical laws which govern history were the same laws that operate in nature, and that historical materialism was thus validated by its correspondence to these universal laws. Plekhanov formalized the connection that Engels had suggested. He argued that historical materialism was an application of dialectical materialism. The materialist explanation of history, he claimed, "presupposes the dialectical method of thought" and is rooted in it. Lenin carried this line of argument to its conclusion, asserting that historical materialism was a direct deduction from the principles of "philosophic materialism" (which for him was equivalent to dialectical materialism). He presented the theory of history not as a testable hypothesis but as an "incontrovertible truth" and a "scientifically proven proposition," whose validity was guaranteed by its philosophical foundation. Stalin codified this view, declaring that historical materialism is the "extension of the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of social life." This logical deduction provided a new, meta-historical method of validation for the theory of history. The truth of historical materialism was no longer a matter for empirical verification but was guaranteed by the supposedly self-evident truth of the philosophical system. Stalin presented two versions of historical materialism: a rigidly deterministic one, derived from the "socio-cosmic" laws of dialectics, and a more voluntaristic one which emphasised the role of the superstructure in creating its own base. He oscillated between these two versions according to political needs. Scientific socialism The term "scientific socialism" was coined by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and taken up by Engels, who used it to distinguish the ideas of Marx and himself from the various "utopian" socialisms. Marx, however, generally avoided the term. In the later Marxist tradition, the concept of scientific socialism acquired three distinct meanings: • A socialist theory based on a scientific understanding of society and history (a Weltanschauung). This science of society, which Engels called "the sum total of the so-called historical and philosophical sciences," was a comprehensive theory of the world that was dialectical and evolutionary. • A socialist theory with predictive power. Based on the materialist conception of history, it claimed to have discovered the "laws of motion" of capitalist society, which would inevitably lead to its collapse and replacement by socialism. It could therefore make scientifically grounded predictions about the future course of history. • A socialist theory founded on the reality of the class struggle and the revolutionary mission of the proletariat. It was a science because it recognised that the class divisions and antagonism in capitalist society were the "motive force" of social development and that the proletariat had a historic role to play in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. According to Jordan, the concept of scientific socialism suffers from a fundamental confusion between its descriptive and prescriptive aspects. It conflates socialism as an inevitable, evolutionary outcome of history with socialism as a moral ideal. This leads to the naturalistic fallacy by suggesting that what must happen is also what ought to happen. This "eschatological conversion of hope into certainty" reintroduces a form of utopianism into the doctrine. == Interpretations and critique ==

The formalization of dialectical materialism gave rise to a long-running debate, particularly concerning the role of Friedrich Engels. The controversy began in socialist circles in the 1890s with critiques from figures like Eduard Bernstein, but it became a central issue with the publication of Georg Lukács's History and Class Consciousness in 1923. Lukács famously argued that "Engels—following Hegel’s mistaken lead—extended the [dialectical] method also to the knowledge of nature," a move he considered illegitimate. In the Communist International, the works of Lukács and Karl Korsch were condemned for their rejection of the dialectics of nature and their "Menshevizing idealist" tendencies. This initiated the "Engels debate", which has often framed subsequent interpretations of Marxism. Critics in the Western Marxist tradition, such as Herbert Marcuse and Jean-Paul Sartre, have argued that Engels distorted Marx's thought by introducing a positivist and metaphysical "dialectics of nature" that was alien to Marx's own humanistic and critical method. According to Kaan Kangal, this critique often served a political purpose, allowing theorists to distance Marx from the dogmatism of Soviet Marxism, for which Engels was seen as the original source. Engels was thus often treated as a "scapegoat" for the perceived failures of both the Second International and the Soviet Union. Another tradition of British and French Marxist scientists, including J. D. Bernal, J. B. S. Haldane, and Paul Langevin, vigorously defended the dialectics of nature, viewing it as an integral part of a comprehensive, scientific worldview. According to Z. A. Jordan, the historical development of dialectical materialism from Engels to Stalin marked a transition from a cognitive, metaphysical project to a "political cosmology". Engels's original formulation was a genuine attempt to create a metaphysical theory of the universe that would reflect the nature of the physical world. Plekhanov began the process of subordinating this cosmology to political and social considerations. In Lenin's work, cosmology gives way to a "socio-cosmic" worldview, and in Stalin's, it becomes a purely political tool, an instrument for justifying practical decisions and maintaining ideological control. This evolution produced two distinct conceptions of dialectical materialism. The "minimalistic" conception, represented by Engels, is a set of metaphysical presuppositions intended to provide a foundation for an empirical theory of social and historical development. The "maximalistic" conception, initiated by Lenin and completed by Stalin, elevates the laws of dialectics to the status of ultimate laws of a nature, from which all other laws can be derived. In this view, the validity of all knowledge is determined by its compatibility with these fundamental laws, and the philosophical interpretation of science is transferred to the jurisdiction of political authority. Gustav Wetter argues that Soviet dialectical materialism is an "eclectic medley" of diverse elements, often borrowed from philosophical positions at variance with one another. He identifies a fundamental contradiction within the system between its dialectical component and its materialist dogma. The dialectical aspect acknowledges qualitative distinctions and the emergence of higher, spiritual forms of existence, while the materialist aspect denies the existence of anything beyond matter. This contradiction, he suggests, poisons the entire system and leads to a "continual self-violation of the causal principle". Wetter also highlights the "religious" character of the system, with its "classics" functioning as "holy scriptures", the Communist Party as an infallible "church", and the dialectic itself serving as an element of "mysticism" that enabled Marxism to achieve such success in Russia. ==See also==