Dialectical Materialism Thread

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File: 1428771608701.jpg (271.94 KB, 2560x1600, 8:5, 303815-nature-space-burnin….jpg)

Dialectical Materialism Thread Comrade 04/11/15 (Sat) 17:00:09 No.2380

Every Marxist should study and understand dialectical materialism. It's something I see little mention of on this board though. So let's have a thread about it.

Is there anything anyone is having trouble understanding about dialectical materialism?

Comrade 04/11/15 (Sat) 21:57:47 No.2383

What's difference between the dialectics of Stalin, Trotsky and Mao?

Comrade 04/13/15 (Mon) 06:08:26 No.2391

File: 1428905306312.jpg (52.17 KB, 468x551, 468:551, 3ob6ko.jpg)

>get into argument with gf
>mfw she's not being dialectical

Comrade 04/15/15 (Wed) 20:31:33 No.2400

How about giving some introductional articles or something. I always hear Dialectics mentioned but noone goes into depth about it.
>inb4 shitstorm, im just starting to get into marxism

Ismail 04/15/15 (Wed) 21:51:46 No.2402

File: 1429134706288.jpg (193.09 KB, 500x488, 125:122, Enver Hoxha a.jpg)

>>2400
Stalin's "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" is meant as an introduction: http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/DHM38.html

After you read that, you can read Engels' "Dialectics of Nature" here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/

These should also be useful:
http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/mpS1.htm
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1ZP6ZurgOg-OS1tZG9BdFo4MWs/edit
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1ZP6ZurgOg-bVJWNjFOTEw2eWs/edit

Comrade 04/17/15 (Fri) 05:05:45 No.2406

File: 1429247145573.jpg (49.31 KB, 445x600, 89:120, bal266170.jpg)

>>2400

This is pretty basic but still helpful.

Dialectical Materialism:

>Dialectical Materialism is the science of method. It vital to Marxism because it sets the logical framework for analysis. We are materialists as we aren’t looking at ideas separated from practice; we look at human practices as they materially occur. Dialectics is a bit more difficult, but it comes to play in the entire system of Marxism and most of its offshoots. Examples: the distinctions between form and content, whole and part, quantity and quality, relation and process, necessity and contingency, history and structure are component parts of dialectical analysis. We understand these entities as being in an organic relationship, as the relationship between these entities determines the nature of those entities, rather than understanding each entity in a vacuum.

>For example: we have necessary historical relations such as relations of production, with which society can’t do without, then we have contingent historical relations, for instance the specific and concrete way in which the nuclear family is structured. We have necessary structural relations, for instance capital and labor, and we have contingent ones, such as lumpenproletariat and petit-bourgeoisie, which aren’t necessary for the structural relations of capitalism, but rather are contingent. These categories are required for Marxist analysis and are themselves part of dialectics, necessary for the process of practice-theory-practice.

Historical Materialism

>Historical Materialism is the science of history, which sets the postulates of Marxist science. Generally, the postulates can be reduced to these:

>1. People must produce the means of their existence; 2. the economic base defines the limits of the superstructure; 3. the mode of production develops through the interaction between forces of production and relations of production; 4. class struggle is the motor of transition from one mode of production to another; 5. communism ends social antagonisms and marks the beginning of emancipation, where humans start making history consciously and collectively.

>History has no subject. History is a process with no single cause that indicates origins and ends of historical development. Individuals are shaped into social subjects by the social structures people interact with since or before their birth. We understand these social structures - the superstructure, which includes institutions such as the family unit, school, organized religions, arts, media, labor organizations, the medical establishment, and so on - as being determined by several factors (instances), but in the last instance determined by relations of production, the base.

>Like all sciences, Historical Materialism must develop through research.

Source: http://re-interpellated.tumblr.com/post/93000502359/some-basic-marxist-vocab-for-yall

Comrade 04/18/15 (Sat) 16:53:30 No.2409

>>2380
>Is there anything anyone is having trouble understanding about dialectical materialism?

Can someone explain what "quantitative" and "qualitative" means in relation to Dialectical Materialism?

Comrade 04/19/15 (Sun) 01:00:40 No.2410

>>2406
> do not credit me with any of this.

Ismail 04/20/15 (Mon) 00:38:39 No.2415

File: 1429490319395.jpg (372.17 KB, 985x692, 985:692, Enver Hoxha 1944.jpg)

>>2409

Stalin:

>Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard the process of development as a simple process of growth, where quantitative changes do not lead to qualitative changes, but as a development which passes from insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes to open' fundamental changes' to qualitative changes; a development in which the qualitative changes occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, taking the form of a leap from one state to another; they occur not accidentally but as the natural result of an accumulation of imperceptible and gradual quantitative changes.

>The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development should be understood not as movement in a circle, not as a simple repetition of what has already occurred, but as an onward and upward movement, as a transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, as a development from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher: [followed by quotes from Engels]

Comrade 09/24/15 (Thu) 19:27:29 No.2932

>>2409

Quantitative changes means quantitative aspects of the system such as: concentration, temperature, volume, etc. changing without the overall dynamics/properties of the system itself being changed. For example between -10 C and -1 C, ice simply gets colder without undergoing a qualitative change. It basically behaves qualitatively the same in terms of the dynamics of the molecules of the ice.

However from -1 C to +1 C, the quantitative changes to the temperature result in a qualitative change of the system from solid to liquid, where the behavior and functionality of the system are different from one state to the next.

Replace temperature with economic and sociological variables, and phase of matter with mode of production, and you get the application of dialectical materialism specifically in terms of historical materialism.

Reason I posted a sun for the OP image is because the concepts can be clearly be seen in the development of a star. There are millions of years of fuel use, changes in pressures and temperatures, punctuated by sudden qualtative changes such as supernovas, gravitational collapses, etc.