Dialectical materialism, or \u201cdiamat,\u201d is a worldview and philosophy created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.\u00a0 It is one of the most important aspects of Marxism, and encapsulates all of Marx\u2019s ideas about the world, society, economics, and what he thought was the immanent socialist revolution.<\/p>\n
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But, perhaps surprisingly, it is often an obscure, opaque topic.\u00a0 Many Marxists don\u2019t even understand it, or don\u2019t understand it well enough to explain it to someone else.\u00a0 It took me months<\/em> before I had a firm grasp on it, and to my dismay, there are very few online resources that put it in concise, understandable terms.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start to rectify that.\u00a0 Here is a primer on dialectical materialism, from someone who believes in it, put in terms anyone should be able to understand.\u00a0 Obviously I\u2019ll be streamlining and simplifying, but this is a basic overview of what it means and why it\u2019s important.\u00a0 It will serve as an introduction to a future post, where I will explore the implications of dialectical materialism for Christianity.<\/p>\n Dialectical Materialism is a way of understanding society, history, and the world around us<\/em>.\u00a0 Applied properly, it can explain just about everything there is to do with humans, our civilizations, our cultures, our religion, etc.<\/p>\n Basically, the type of society we live in is dependent on the \u201cmode of production\u201d in which we live.\u00a0 As Engels put it:\u00a0 \u201cThe determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 This includes the propagation of the species.<\/p>\n Human society is based on the production of food, clothing, shelter, tools, resources, etc.\u00a0 Without these things, we would never have been able to expand and flourish.\u00a0 The natural resources we have available to us, plus our ability to shape these resources to our liking, plus the relations between individuals, groups, and classes, form what is called the base<\/strong> of a society.<\/p>\n Materialism<\/em> in this sense means that the world (and human society) is made up of material<\/em> things, or, put more scientifically, of matter<\/em>.\u00a0 This was Marx\u2019s alternative to GWF Hegel\u2019s \u201cidealism,\u201d which basically holds that things are the way they are because of our ideas<\/em>.\u00a0 Idealism holds that there is no \u201cobjective reality\u201d and that reality is in some way dependent on the human mind.\u00a0 It is the basis of postmodernism and wholly rejected by most Marxists, although Marx greatly admired Hegel (and Hegel\u2019s philosophy is much more complicated than we have time to get into).<\/p>\n To illustrate the differences between materialism and idealism in practice, let us consider two explanations for the fact that European empires dominated indigenous peoples on every continent for over half a millennium.<\/p>\n The (not necessarily Hegelian) idealist might posit that Europeans were able to colonize the rest of the world because Europeans are somehow inherently superior, or ordained by God to do so \u2013 that is a form of idealism as it is based on \u201cideas\u201d about the world, and about people.\u00a0 The materialist<\/em> explanation for European imperial\/colonial domination is that European cultures, due to their close proximity to each other which facilitated trade, exchange, and competition, reached higher levels of technological achievement than most other parts of the world, which they then leveraged into military domination.\u00a0 One is based on ideas, the other on material conditions.\u00a0 Which makes more sense to you?<\/p>\n So we understand materialism, but what makes it \u201cdialectical\u201d?\u00a0 Dialectics means two or more things are constantly affecting each other, back and forth, back and forth, until they reach a culmination of some sort.\u00a0 In idealism, this culmination is the synthesis<\/em> of a thesis and antithesis.\u00a0 In materialism, this culmination is revolution.<\/p>\n Remember our base<\/strong>, which encapsulates the material realities of the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life.\u00a0 It is only one half of our dialectic; the second half is called the superstructure<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The superstructure is all of the elements of society not directly related to production.\u00a0 These elements are apparent to even the least astute observer.\u00a0 It\u2019s the art a society creates, its family values, its religious makeup, its societal norms, its politics, and on and on.<\/p>\n All of that stuff doesn\u2019t seem like it has anything to do with the \u201cproduction and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life,\u201d but it really does.\u00a0 For example, in prehistoric or \u201cstone age\u201d human societies with no concept of private property, monogamy was much less common (or even non-existent) and marriage did not exist<\/a>.\u00a0 But when these societies evolve to horticultural and agricultural societies with tools and implements (means of production) capable of creating a surplus, the concept of \u201cprivate property\u201d arises, and with it marriage and the family, which is the only way to ensure that a man\u2019s property is truly left to HIS children when he dies (parentage was matrilineal<\/a> in human societies before the development of private property).\u00a0 Thus you get patriarchy, slut-shaming, and gender roles.<\/p>\n So the base creates the superstructure, which then reinforces the base.\u00a0 Think of orthodox Christianity\u2019s emphasis on \u201cobeying your Earthly masters,\u201d working hard, and achieving a heavenly afterlife at the expense of a decent life on Earth.\u00a0 This pacifies people on the lowest rungs of society by encouraging them to accept the relations of production, or the base.\u00a0 The base forms the superstructure, which reinforces the base.<\/p>\n But that is not the whole story.\u00a0 The base shapes (and maintains) the superstructure, which maintains (and shapes) the base.\u00a0 But there is still the culmination of this process:\u00a0 revolution.<\/p>\n Revolution occurs when internal contradictions within a society\u2019s base create what I\u2019ll call \u201cdissenting forces\u201d within the superstructure.\u00a0 When these dissenting forces reach critical mass, they will destroy the old base and replace it with a new one.\u00a0 Slavery became feudalism, feudalism became capitalism, capitalism will become socialism.<\/p>\n This is why social movements and ideologies that challenge the base are often crushed by the dominant powers of the superstructure, most often the State.\u00a0 Think of revolutionary Christianity and the hippie movement, or Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. These are movements within the superstructure that sought to fundamentally change the base.\u00a0 In the former two examples, the movements were neutered and gradually accepted into the superstructure in less revolutionary forms; the latter two examples were\/are suppressed, often violently.<\/p>\n So, to sum up, the material conditions of a society (base) create the identity of that society (superstructure).\u00a0 The society continues until its internal contradictions create the material conditions for a revolution, which has the power to fundamentally restructure the base.<\/p>\n That, in a nutshell, is dialectical materialism.\u00a0 It is a simplified and overly linear explanation, but it is enough of an introduction to begin thinking dialectically.\u00a0 When I return I will flesh it out even more by going into detail with one example; I shall explore Christianity through the lens of dialectical materialism.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"dialectical](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/717\/2017\/06\/dialectical-materialism.jpg\")
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