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Marxs Dialectical Historical Materialism
Marxs 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, Marxs 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 Marxs 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...…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).
For Marx, the dialectic of materialism would not be completely realized until the working class actually rose up against the ruling class and took over the means of production, owned their share and profited from their own labor. By abandoning the ideology of the ruling class, the working class could begin this process, since the ideology of the ruling class was a kind of mental oppression that kept the working class from taking direct action and becoming the rightful owners of production and assuming their role in the establishment of a…
References
Eagleton, Terry. 1991. Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso.
Marx, Karl. 1873. Capital: Afterward. Retrieved Apr. 30, 2018
(https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm).
(https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm).
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