Concerning the Materialist Dialectic

Engels once remarked to Marx that the “materialist dialectic, which for years has been our best working tool and our sharpest weapon, was, remarkably enough, discovered not only by us but also, independently of us and even of Hegel, by a German worker, Joseph Dietzgen.” The status of the dialectic, however, within what ought to instead be described as Dietzgen's inductive empiricism, is problematic. Dietzgen's work stands as a hitherto unacknowledged precursor to the Marxist ideology of Diamat. The first question is whether or not Marx's materialism ought to be conflated with Dietzgen's empiricism. Second, Dietzgen's efforts to establish a theory of human thought structured through the methods of the natural sciences requires critical evaluation. Although Dietzgen's works may anticipate some of the theoretical contours of Diamat, equating materialism with empiricism and rendering the dialectical method into a universal methodology on a par with the methods of the natural sciences, as pursued by Dietzgen, is a project that is perhaps not worthy of Marx's and Engels’ nominal veneration.

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The Materialist Dialectic

Short Handbook of Communist Ideology - Sovietica ◽

10.1007/978-94-010-3584-2_2 ◽

1965 ◽

pp. 2-5

Author(s):

Helmut Fleischer

Keyword(s):

Materialist Dialectic

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Althusser’s Dream: The Materialist Dialectic of Rationalist Empiricism

10.5422/fordham/9780823290000.003.0003 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 50-70

Author(s):

Nathan Brown

Keyword(s):

Historical Materialism ◽

Marxist Philosophy ◽

Philosophical Intervention ◽

Materialist Dialectic

Chapter 2 offers a detailed elaboration of Louis Althusser’s brief reference to “rationalist empiricism,” deploying this elaboration toward a reading of Meillassoux’s After Finitude as a work of “Marxist philosophy.” Althusser considers the defense of philosophical materialism as integral to the critique of idealist ideology, and therefore as essential to defending historical materialism (Marxist science) against ideological deviations. I flesh out this framework by comparing After Finitude to Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, arguing that Meillassoux fulfils more rigorously the project of Lenin’s early philosophical intervention.

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The Materialist Dialectic

Philosophical Inquiry ◽

10.5840/philinquiry1990123/412 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 12 (3) ◽

pp. 32-47

Author(s):

R. Schmitt ◽

Keyword(s):

Materialist Dialectic

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Philosophy in Russia

Philosophy ◽

10.1017/s0031819100018507 ◽

1935 ◽

Vol 10 (38) ◽

pp. 222-224

Author(s):

Natalie Duddington

Keyword(s):

Soviet Union ◽

Natural Science ◽

Social Democracy ◽

Dialectical Materialism ◽

Fiftieth Anniversary ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

Materialist Dialectic

In U.S.S.R. dialectical materialism is still the only subject discussed by writers on philosophy. Philosophical publications during the last year include Lenin’s Philosophical Note-books; Dialectical Materialism and the Theory of Balance, by Selektor; Marx’s Philosophical Development, by Lipendin; A Course of Dialectical Materialism, by Markuse; Dialectical Materialism and Social Democracy, by Rudash; The Idealistic Dialectic of Hegel and the Materialist Dialectic of Marx, by L. Axelrod. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Marx’s death the Communist Academy Institute of Philosophy has published a Symposium containing papers on materialistic dialectics, on the relation of Marxism-Leninism to culture and natural science, and discussion of those papers. A number of small textbooks on dialectical materialism, or Diamat as it is called for short, are issued for university schools not only in Russian but also in some of the languages spoken in the Soviet Union.

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