Dialectical Materialism

Hello, this is Henry.

I have recently been reading “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi for my English 1A class.  In “Persepolis” young Marjane’s parents are Marxists.  Marjane is given a comic book called “Dialectic Materialism” which becomes her favorite book.  So what is Dialectic Materialism?

 

Dialectical Materialism is a philosophy that Karl Marx developed to explain his socio-economic ideas.  As its name suggests, it is a combination of Dialectics and Materialism.

Dialectics is a method of argumentation in which two people (or groups) who disagree use reasoned arguments to arrive at the truth.  It is unlike other forms of discourse in that arguments are based on logic rather than on emotion or ethics. This method originated with the Greek philosophers, especially Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Zeno.  Dialectic argumentation has been - and is still – widely used in the Western world to resolve disputes and advance our knowledge.

            Materialism is the concept that the universe is composed solely of matter or energy.  It admits the existence of thought and the metaphysical only as a product of matter.  Materialism is contrasted with idealism, which holds that the universe is composed solely of mind or spirit, and that the material is only a product of the mind.  Materialism revokes idealism, claiming that the world is made up of the material, not the mental.

            Marx combined these two ideas to form his philosophy of Dialectical Materialism in order to describe historical change as the result of conflict over material goods.  Here is an example of Marx’s ideas that illustrates Dialectical Materialism:  He believed that all societies undergo changes that are a result of tension between members of society that have wealth and those that do not.  Society in its primitive form is one in which material goods are communally owned but there is generalized poverty.  People who don’t have enough want more and this conflict produces another stage in the development of society:  private ownership and more wealth.  Because the wealth is in the hands of only a portion of the population, another round of conflict produces the final stage in society’s evolution:  communal ownership of generalized wealth.