Thumbnail is Marx's manuscript for The German Ideology. Summary below is a compilation of my notes I wrote when reading Materialism and the Dialectical Method by Maurice Cornforth, along with general knowledge from reading various Marxist authors.
Often times, Marxists use the term "material conditions," and "dialectics." What does this mean? Why do Marxists care so much about material conditions? The answer is that Marxists seek materialist explanations for observed processes as opposed to idealist, and do so dialectically, as opposed to metaphysically. In other words, Marxists apply dialectical analysis to find materialist explanations for phenomena. Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of the proletariat as a class, and serves as the most vital ideological tool for overthrowing capitalism.
In order to understand dialectical materialism, we need to understand its component parts, materialism and dialectics, and their historical predecessors, idealism and metaphysics.
Idealism
Idealism is, in short, to put ideas prior to matter. Idealism has been used by feudal lords to justify their position above the serfs, forming the ideological basis for feudalism. The 3 major assertions of idealism are as follows:
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Idealism asserts that the material world is dependent on the spiritual
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Idealism asserts that spirit, or mind, or idea, can and does exist in separation from matter. (The most extreme form of this assertion is subjective idealism, which asserts that matter does not exist at all but is pure illusion.)
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Idealism asserts that there exists a realm of the mysterious and unknowable, "above," or "beyond," or "behind" what can be ascertained and known by perception, experience, and science.
Early Materialism
Common idealist arguments are appealing to a supernatural "human nature," or "good vs. evil" explanations for processes. Materialism arose over time, as people grew to understand the world more deeply, and especially as a tool to overthrow the feudal aristocracy that justified its existence via the church. In other words, materialism rose to help the bourgeoisie. The 3 basic teachings of materialism as counterposed to idealism are:
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Materialism teaches that the world is by its very nature material, that everything which exists comes into being on the basis of material causes, arises and develops in accordance with the laws of motion of matter.
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Materialism teaches that matter is objective reality existing outside and independent of the mind; and that far from the mental existing in separation from the material, everything mental or spiritual is a product of material processes.
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Materialism teaches that the world and its laws are fully knowable, and that while much may not be known there is nothing which is by nature unknowable.
Shortcomings of Metaphysical Materialism
The type of materialism that overthrew the feudal lords was still underdeveloped, and metaphysical. The bourgeoisie needed an explanation for why the feudal lords were illegitimate, but still needed to support their own static, permanent rule. This was called mechanistic materialism, for the bourgeois scientists saw the world as a grand machine repeating simple motions forever. Mechanistic materialism, therefore, makes certain dogmatic assumptions:
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That the world consists of permanent and stable things or particles, with definite, fixed properties;
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That the particles of matter are by nature inert and no change ever happens except by the action of some external cause;
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That all motion, all change can be reduced to the mechanical interaction of the separate particles of matter;
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That each particle has its own fixed nature independent of everything else, and that the relationships between separate things are merely external relationships.
Moving from Metaphysics to Dialectics
This, of course, has proven false. History did not end with the dissolution of the USSR, despite what modern mechanistic materialists claim. Mechanistic materialism relies on metaphysics, seeing everything as a static abstraction, devoid of its context. It has no explanation for how new qualities emerge, and ultimately fell to idealism to explain the "first mover," ie "God." Dialectical materialism holds instead:
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The world is not a complex of things but of processes;
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That matter is inseperable from motion;
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That the motion of matter comprehends an infinite diversity of forms which arise one from another and pass into one another;
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That things exist not as separate individual units but in essential relation and interconnection.
Dialectical Materialism
This became remarkable for the proletariat, as it sees nothing as static, and therefore marks the eventual downfall of the bourgeoisie. Putting it all together, we get the following:
- Dialectical materialism understands the world, not as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which all things go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away.
In other words, when analyzing events and contextualizing them, we must always viee them as a struggle between the rising and the falling, the old and the new, for example the concentration of capital in markets and the rise in socialize labor.
- Dialectical materialism considers that matter is always in motion, that motion is the mode of existence of matter, so that there can no more be matter without motion than motion without matter. Motion does not have to be impressed upon matter by some outside force, but above all it is necessary to look for the inner impulses of development, the self-motion, inherent in all processes.
In other words, all movement is a result of contradiction. Your foot presses on the Earth, and the Earth presses back on you.
- Dialectical materialism understands the motion of matter as comprehending all changes and processes in the universe, from mere changes of place right to thinking. It recognizes, therefore, the infinite diversity of the forms of motion of matter from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher.
In other words, dialectical materialism recognizes that development exists as a change of quantity into quality. Addition or subtraction gives way to qualitative change. A balloon is filled with air, until at a given point it pops due to pressure buildup. Water goes from liquid to gas at its boiling point, and back into liquid when cooling down to said point.
- Dialectical materialism considers that, in the manifold processes taking place in the universe, things come into being, change and pass out of being, not as separate individual units, but in essential relation and interconnection, so that they cannot be understood each separately and by itself but only in their relation and interconnection.
In other words, everything is connected, and must be analyzed in context to truly understand it. A worker isn't just an individual, but instead part of a social class of many workers. Wages are not something invented brand new every time, but instead are set by societal standards, controlled by the ruling capitalist class.
Conclusion
Karl Marx created dialectical materialism by turning Hegel's idealist dialectic into a materialist one. Then, he applied it to the progression of society, creating historical materialism. By analyzing social structures and progress as a dialectical process based in materialism, we can learn from history and analyze where it's going. This is scientific socialism in progress. Human thought is shaped by our social experience, forming class consciousness and ideology. How we produce and distribute determines our ways of thinking.
Socialism and communism also have their own contradictions as well, and just because we progress on to socialism does not mean we cannot fall back to capitalism. The dialectical materialist world outlook understands that nothing is static, and there is always new contradiction and new movement from that.
If you keep these in mind, you can do your own dialectical materialist analysis. Always seek explanations based on the material, not the ideal, and always do so by contextualizing the processes, analyzing their contradictions, the unity and struggle of opposing tendencies. Quantitative changes lead to qualitative development, and progresses as a result of the conflict or struggle of opposite tendencies. There's much more to dialectical materialism, but this should help serve as a simple overview!
Finally, Comrade, you understand what I've been trying to explain to you for so long.
You tell me I'm subjective, basing my statements solely on my own experience, and I tell you it's because you haven't read the books I've read, nothing more.
And as we've already noted, the books I've read are somewhat different from the ones you've read, judging by your reaction to them. That's why I kept saying that everything here is somehow different, seemingly in its place, but somehow different...
I highly recommend you read the works of this modern historian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Zhukov_(historian)
Here's his book, which explains the fatal mistake the Bolsheviks made by not listening to Stalin.
The book is called: Stalin's First Defeat. 1917-1922
In Brief:
This book recounts the early political career of the future leader of the Soviet Union. It tells how, during the years of revolution and civil war, he tried to preserve Russia's unity, preventing its disintegration or fragmentation into national republics. It also explores who opposed him in this effort, and why Stalin was ultimately unable to achieve victory in such a brutal and uncompromising struggle. Based on unique archival documents, most of which have only recently been declassified, the book offers a completely new perspective on the events of those turbulent years. It provides a fresh perspective on questions that remain extremely sensitive today, convincingly proving the seemingly unbelievable: the views of Stalin—the third-largest figure in the Bolshevik Party in 1917—and Milyukov—the leader of the Cadet Party and ideologist of the "White movement"—were completely aligned on the question of what the country should be. The disintegration of Russia, as early as the spring of 1917, was initiated by the separatist aspirations of the Ukrainian Central Rada. In the spring of 1919, Stalin was removed from Moscow, barring him from participating in the leadership of the party and state until the end of the civil war; in 1920, there were no serious grounds for recognizing the independence of the Baltic republics; the USSR, in the constitutional form approved in December 1922 and which remained in effect until December 1991, was created over Stalin's objections, in favor of the left-wing radical utopias championed by Lenin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Trotsky.
He wrote many books, I recommend him to you. His first book was published in 1995; he was the first to publish it.
Regarding the "Holodomor": I have a question for this anti-communist. What possible motive would Stalin have had for exterminating Ukrainian peasants, given that they were the ones producing the most grain in the USSR? I would only believe such a claim if it were on par with Putin blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline.
Such an act would be the behavior of a mentally unstable madman. It would imply that Stalin killed Ukrainians purely for pleasure—even at the cost of incurring economic losses. There is absolutely no common sense or logic in such actions. Why would he do it?
Incidentally, the Holodomor was not confined solely to Ukraine; that summer was marked by a severe drought.
That year, famine struck the Volga region as well, and affected several Eastern European nations—Poland, Hungary, and Romania, if I recall correctly.
As for the repressions and Stalin's personal involvement in them: the peak of the purges occurred between the summer of 1937 and the autumn of 1938. During this period, the NKVD was headed by Yezhov. Following Yezhov's arrest, he was succeeded by Beria, who—in an incredibly short span of time—ordered the release of a million people from prison.
Subsequently, a major public trial was organized to prosecute the very NKVD officials who had issued unlawful orders. The entire foreign diplomatic corps, as well as representatives of the international press, were invited to attend this trial. The court transcripts were published in the press.
This raises a pertinent question: what possible benefit could Stalin have derived from this entire spectacle?
Zhukov posits that the repressions were triggered by the "Stalin Constitution," which envisaged free elections for local Party leadership positions. Fearing the loss of their posts, local Party officials began eliminating their rivals or engaging in excessive zeal to curry favor with their superiors.
Another significant contributing factor was the looming threat of a major war; the domestic political climate had become strained to the breaking point, and people began to view everyone around them as a potential Trotskyist or German spy. Furthermore, it can now be stated with certainty that a conspiracy was brewing among the military elite to oust Stalin from power.
Yet, at the very same time:
GDP growth during the 1930s stood at 14% per year.
By 1930, the USSR had already emerged as a global power.
The 1939 Census: According to the census results, the population of the USSR totaled 167 million people. Over the entire decade, the total population growth amounted to approximately 15 million people.
I appreciate the recommendation, comrade, though unfortunately I can't find it in English (yet). You can see my frustration, given that most books written by communists are not available in English, be they Chinese, Russian, etc.
As for the 1930s famine, indeed. The liberal narrative is that "Stalin targeted Ukrainian nationalists in a terror-famine," but of course this runs counter to the fact that the USSR needed grain both to industrialize and feed its people.
Interesting commentary on the purges, I had not seen that theory before.
Furr actually uses Zhukov in his "Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform" (part one | part two) with something very like what Sedan is saying about the constitution (although I only started on part one, barely got a few pages in, curse of wanting to check the sources)
Oh, neat! Thanks for checking! Sedan has a lot of intriguing information that I'm upset isn't available in English (even if the Moon landing claims make me skeptical of other claims).