DIALECTICAL MATERIALIM AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE

BY: Khairi Janbek


A lot of people have the wrong idea about Maerx, he didn't think capitalism was something a nation can do without. The materialist dialectic is about the gradual and regular march from oppression to liberty, from feudalism to communism, and capitalism is a necessary step on this path.

Now, by materialism Marx did not mean a lust for possessions. He meant that human attitudes, aspirations, and activities are shaped by material circumstances (such as a geography and economy). As for the dialectical part; Hegel had pictures history as an ongoing and progressive struggle, in which thesis clashes with anti-thesis to produce a better sythesis. Marx like the model, but rejected Hegel's aaumption that, the hisrotical dialectic is guided by ideas or a "Spirit"; ie God.

History does indeed progress through a series of reversals and upheavels, Marx believed, but these are inspired by material circumstances of life, whose base is the economic structure of the time. Economic arrangements determine every form of cultural expression and change; from politics and class to art and religion. Marx called these expressions; Superstructures.

Dialectic arises out of the conflicts inherent in economic systems. In the capitalist system, to take the best known example, there is inevitably and necessarily conflict between those who control the means of production (the bourgoisie) and those who actually produce (the Proletariat). But capitalismis a necessary ddtage of economic development. Sprung from the ruins of feudalism which met its anti-thesis in the development of the bourgeois class, the capitalist system promoted the development of indutrialism and effeciency in production. But the internal conflict between capitalist and worker will lead inevitably to class struggle, with the workers coming out on top. In dialectical terms, the "thesis" of capitalism meets its "antithesis" in an organised proletariat , and from the resulting struggle emerges the "synthesis" of the socialist system.