Marxist Doctrine and Materialism Working Class

Marx’s Dialectical Historical Materialism

Marx’s position on dialectical historical materialism and the importance of the economic system was that materiality deserves its primacy of place in the discussion of ideals. Ideals should be connected to materialism and not an independent subject, such as in the Hegelian ideal. Marx (1873) believed that “the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought.” His view was that all things were connected, in nature, and through materialism, everything integrated and intertwined and thus nothing should understood in isolation: a phenomenon could only be “understood and explained if considered in its inseparable connection with surrounding phenomena, as one conditioned by surrounding phenomena” (Stalin, 1938). The surrounding phenomena, moreover, are responsible for the constant development and rising into being of things: and the dialectical historical materialism of Marx transposes this view of nature onto society, showing that society is always in constant evolution and that what matters most is the development of new phenomena out of the ashes of the old.

There is inherent in this view a recognition that a struggle must take place between the old and the new, the lower and the higher, as there are contradictions in nature and in the material order that must be overcome. As Stalin (1938) points out, Marx’s dialectical historical materialism recognizes “the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place not as a harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things and phenomena, as a ‘struggle’ of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.” This struggle is at the heart of Marx’s conception of the economic system and the role of the working class in establishing the new social structure by overthrowing the ruling class in a revolution and assuming ownership in the means of production. The essence of Marx’s dialectical historical materialism was that the working class would rise up in a struggle against the owners of the means of production, the bourgeoisie, the enemy and oppressors of the working class.

Marx saw this struggle as one already in existence: he saw the pressure building among the working class just as pressure builds in a volcano—the time of when it might erupt is unknown because there are so many factors involved in the exact science of it, it is impossible to predict. Nonetheless, one can say with certainty that the volcano will explode, based on the assessment of nature and one’s understanding of how all the parts and elements are integrated. Marx applied this sense to human society and believed that the same pressures that might cause a volcano to blow could be applied to human society, with the working class blowing up the bourgeoisie being the perfect illustration of this principle. This is in essence was the fundamental foundation of his dialectical historical materialism.

Production, which the working class participated in, and the forces of production, which the working class had no ownership over, were the source of conflict. Social class was defined by this conflict, with the owners of the means of production asserting their privilege and power over the lower class, the underprivileged class, the working class. This was the underlying tension of class conflict: the owners of production did not share with the laborers the profits they obtained. The laborers were paid a minimal wage for their work while those who basically owned them and their labor earned far more—much more—so much more that it was expected that it would anger the working class and lead them to explode like the volcano against their owners. This is what Marx expected to happen.

One reason it did not happen was because of the working class’s false consciousness. The ruling class was able to embed its ideology into the working class, so that the working class was happy to be the subordinate class. The working class willfully submitted to the ruling class because of the belief in the ideological system and values propagated by the ruling class. The working class did not benefit from this ideology or from their own labor in the way the ruling class did—and this was why it was deemed a false consciousness. The working class believed it was working for its own good in serving the ruling class and that there could be no other way but, according to Marx, this only prevented the struggle from taking place more fully and allowing the workers to finally rise up against the people in power. False consciousness was like wearing blinders: workers thought they were awake but in reality they were asleep to their own enslavement and oppression. This was the main idea of false consciousness and how it operated to keep the working class under the ruling class (Eagleton, 1991).