What is Dialectical Materialism? | Socialism 101 #8 ft. The Peace Report

[@YaBoiHakim]

Fantastic video. Very clearly explained; this just gets me more excited to see the next installments in this series! Keep it up habibi.

[@thesigmagoon]

When will the next video be released

[@avigailpekelman8239]

Hey, it's my habibi hakim!

[@big_sea]

very nice

[@renarddubois940]

@@daseapickleofjustice7231 does that mean comrade?

[@obsessedcore4519]

and yet you're religious... the jokes tell themselves

[@Naheed_Ahmed14]

Mashallah daddy Paul has uploaded

[@Marxism_Today]

Mashallah Naheed Ahmed has commented

[@naheanzaman]

Dialectical Materialism (AKA Historical Materialism) is a story that followers of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels tell about history progressing through different stages. Specifically, about how capitalism will eventually turn into, or be replaced, by socialism. The “Dialectical” part is based on the ideas of a philosopher named Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel taught that each era of history is defined by its dominant belief system, or ideology, which changes and improves with time. Here’s how it works: Every era’s dominant ideology has some true parts and some false parts. When an ideology (let’s call it “Ideology A”) has false parts, a second, opposite ideology (Ideology B) will be invented to contradict the first ideology. Then a third ideology (Ideology C) will be invented that resolves the differences between ideology A and B, and combines the good parts of each. Ideology C becomes the new dominant ideology and the process starts over. Ideology D comes around to negate C, then Ideology E combines them… and so on. The process continues over and over again through the ages, like a “dialectic” (which means a conversation or dialogue). As a result, the ideology of the times is always getting better, leading to more freedom for everyone. That’s what Hegel believed. Marx and Engels were students of Hegel, but they disagreed with Hegel in important ways. Hegel saw historical progress as a matter of ideas and beliefs - ideologies get better because people basically change their minds and start to think differently. Hegel’s dialectic is “idealist” because it is all about ideas. Marx and Engels argued that eras are actually defined by the technologies of the day, and the types of economies that they are able to have. A different type of economy is called a “mode of production”. The economic system of a society is the “base” that defines it, while its ideology is only a window-dressing called the “superstructure,” which distracts people from what’s really going on. Marx and Engels argued that each era’s economic system created the technologies and resources necessary to overthrow that system and replace it with a better one. And they argued that this process was objective and would happen inevitably, regardless of what anybody happens to think or believe. Since Marx and Engels believed that material things were more important to progress than ideas were, they called their theory of history a “Materialist” (instead of Idealist) dialectic. That’s why it’s called Dialectical Materialism.

[@bhumikabhagat7362]

Can I write this in exam

[@shadowcween7890]

So that's what Caesar meant when he talked about a dialectical synthesis between the NCR and the Legion

[@sopita2236]

This was so incredibly helpful thank u

[@gbombmr6125]

Would post communism be a system of AI and Robots then

[@RichardEnglander]

Right, therefore Marxism is a gnostic religion

[@Mrs.Sardonicus]

Thank you for getting into this topic. It is confusing.

[@someguy3167]

A long time ago I watched a bunch of biology lectures uploaded to youtube by Robert Sapolsky. I remember he made a joke about not understanding Marxists, but years later after learning about Marxism and Dialectical Materialism I realized that a lot of what he talked about was basic Marxist, and some anarchist I think, ideology. He was one of those secret Marxists professors that turned me gay and communist that fox news warned us about lol.

[@despa7726]

I better start watching his videos, then!

[@genk9798]

I read his book "Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst" and it turned me from "left-leaning liberal" straight onto the road to actual communism. I highly reccomend the book, and apparently I need to watch his lectures now!

[@yPGzRicardo]

@@genk9798 the book is basically a more detailed and updated version of the lectures, but there's still value in watching them as he's a very good teacher

[@JadyGrudd]

Your professor made you gay... what a modern statement, you're so cool.

[@donny_doyle]

Good work comrade.

[@dorothydepth000]

For some reason the law of Quantity and Quality is almost exclusively talked about in a positive context. As in, if you have growth in quantity you will arrive at a new level of quality. But it works the other way around too! As in, if the quantity is shrinking, we regress to the previous level of quality. Let me illustrate this. In the 90s in Russia, after the illegal dissolution if the USSR, the quantity of our plants, factories, and overall industrial facilities had DROPPED drastically. This in turn had delivered a major blow to our proletariat and our class consciousness. This is how our newly emerging bourgeois class, who all had studied Marx in school, waged the class war against the workers and made the capitalist restoration take deep roots and succeed.

[@el5880]

Damn!

[@littlestone1541]

Tried several times to explain dialectics and more specifically dialectical materialism to my ma... Just now showed her this video and after we'd sat through it together she turns to me, wide eyed and, apparently sincerely surprised, exclaimed "Oh yeah, right... hey, now i get it! Why the heck wasn't i taught this in school?! I guess the next video I'll watch with her is the one on class struggle, as that should answer her question.

[@1homelander179]

George Orwell never understood dialectical materialism. And created his famous concept of doublethink from his non-understanding of dialectical materialism. 'War is Peace’ - imperialist class war buys social-peace in the core capitalist nations for the ruling class. ‘Freedom is Slavery’ - liberal slaveowners (like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson) were the architects of ‘capitalist freedom’ that their class enjoys today. ‘Ignorance is Strength’ - the strength of the capitalist class lays entirely on maintaining the working class ignorant about their own power and historic mission.

[@anonymouseovermouse1960]

That's just a bunch of semantics games. When you refuse to adopt a more nuanced analysis of a concept, and maintain that a single adjective describes the concept precisely in it's entirety (eg. "War is Peace" or "War is Not Peace") - or at least precisely enough for that adjective to be used as a synecdoche for the concept that you are attributing that adjective to - you end up with nothing but worthless, meaningless cerebral masturbation. So, quite obviously, mulling around abstract ideas, feeding them arbitrarily into the undefined function of "dialectics", is nothing more than word games. No intellectual value whatsoever.

[@materialmanners]

@@anonymouseovermouse1960 never heard of cerebral masturbation before

[@georgesais8687]

This is so good, explained beautifully by young people. Great work! (i did philosophy at uni. Sydney also government and if it wasn't for Marx, Engles and Freud i probably would have gone crazy) i am 68 now and still learning from you and others in my retirement thanks!

[@lvernon9471]

This might be the fifth time I’ve come back to this video to fully understand DIAMAT. The more I learn about socialism and communism and Deprogram my brain, the more and more this video makes sense.

[@EastWindCommunity1973]

Taouwsands and taouwsands of people will hopefully see this and perhaps read a link or two. Great presentation!

[@Marxism_Today]

I wish! I don't think the YT algo will start being kind to Marxist educational videos at this stage, but here's hoping anyway 😅

[@Nickwritespoetry]

@@Marxism_Today Out of all the videos I see on my main page, I see you on the first screen regularly more than anyone else and I watch probably over 200 channels. I think the algo is working in your favor, at least in my case.

[@groofay]

9:45 Dammit, Charizard has even taken over Marxism now. When will it ever end? This was one of the subjects I was looking forward to, and you did a fantastic job as per usual. I know about dialectics from Taoism and whatnot, but the application of it in Marxism is very interesting.

[@iceuni963]

The yellow Charmander has taken over Chameleon too.....

[@beccagrantham5978]

I'll be honest, this is the first video in the series that I'm struggling to wrap my head around. This is a DIFFICULT concept. I've watched this video about three times now and I'm only kinda starting to understand. But thank you for making these! If you weren't here making this easier to understand, there's no way I'd even begin to get it. As someone who has just recently (over the last few months) began getting into socialism and communism and is now trying to understand more about everything, THANK YOU. Keep doing what you're doing. You are appreciated more than you'll ever know, comrade.

[@atticusosullivan9332]

Hey Becca, Honestly I think it's easier to break the term up. First, try to understand what Marx's materialism was. Most Marxists get this horribly wrong and are only "materialists" in name (most of 20th century Marxism was actually--unlike Marx--highly idealist, not materialist). His materialist ontology (view of reality) was predicated on the view that human beings are animals existing in a physical universe that is independent of human thought. Human society, and capitalism, arrise, in his view out of this "universal metabolism of nature" (Marx's words). I think before moving on to historical or dialectical materialism it's worth first looking into Marx's concept of "social metabolism", and "universal metabolism". A quick Google will show plenty.

[@majesticfool]

because marxists can't be objective about the reality of the freemarket and human behaviour. If they did their whole ideology falls apart. So they use this almost cult-like pseudo babble rhetoric to make it look like sense.

[@meowwwww6350]

You can also read the book by Maurice conforth named materialism and the dialectical method a three volume work of dialectical materialism

[@devavratk]

One for the algorithm gods

[@eliplayz22]

Here’s mine for the algorithm too

[@BBSF88]

This channel deserves a Lenin Peace prize🏆. Highly informative.

[@kaan1780]

I feel like the quality of these videos are getting better and better. Great work Paul!

[@cyclonasaurusrex1525]

Thanks Paul and Will.

[@Megaritz]

Slight correction. On standard readings, Descartes's "I think, therefore I am" does not express idealism. It expresses dualism. Descartes thought matter DID exist whether or not it was subjectively perceived, even though his epistemology begins with perception, so he was not an idealist. Some frameworks distinguish three theories, which can be roughly summarized as: Idealism (fundamentally only mind exists, matter is contingent on mind), materialism (fundamentally only matter exists, mind is contingent on matter), and dualism (fundamentally both mind and matter exist, neither contingent on the other). The relationship between the historical and non-historical versions of these theories isn't entirely clear to me, though. For instance, I don't see any reason why a Cartesian dualist couldn't think dialectical materialism (as basically a social/historical theory) is correct. Some Christian leftists seem to hold such a combination view, for instance.

[@robertstan298]

One of the few cases where I found it easy to not skip ads or block them, hope it helps. Thank you for your work and take care Paul! Also... dat algorithm!

[@saradam1505]

I need to read much more because i have not completely and fully understood it, but this is so so beginner friendly! the topic themselves seem so big but you guys gave such a great starting point! thank you so much!!

[@magubi]

Excellent video!

[@1Dimee]

Marx is a Dialectical Dad

[@SocialistSwann]

Incredibly well explained comrade, Diamet made easy! Great job 😁

[@dierotefahne4370]

Good video !

[@asg8086]

Great video, comrade!

[@tankpiggy]

Nice editing

[@ruelow]

Love the visual explanation at 4:40

[@ChipsNsalsita]

I was late to this one, but it really is great. Also, thanks for the extra material in the description. You're a lovely teacher!

[@adamharris6608]

Excellent video, well made, informative, delivered with passion, passion without hubris. Wonderful! You give an old Red like me...hope! Solidarity, Comrades :)

[@gamechairphilosopher950]

Thank you for this series. I’ve considered myself a communist for a good while, but as a filthy casual, it’s good to always brush up and keep these ideas top of mind. Thanks!

[@Regi254.]

I agree w you. I lean this direction and love to learn from professor Wolfe. Living in central Texas I need to learn all I can bc I am surrounded by far right ppl who say Marx is evil. It does not feel evil to me. It feels wrong to not consider it since capitalism is failing the majority of us.

[@hamza-mohammedyusuf-uddin7024]

lmao at charmander dialectics Great video, you never disappoint

[@crazywavybaby]

Thank goodness I’ve been waiting so long for this vid!

[@hyperrealhank]

Amazing animation work in this video

[@tomt55]

An excellent and digestable video to begin examining and understanding this complex topic. This greatly helped me get a basic understanding of a complex topic. Well done!

[@Marxism_Today]

If you found this useful, consider supporting the continuation of this series on Patreon: www.patreon.com/paulm_yt or a once-off donation on Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/paulm_yt

[@1homelander179]

somebody sad this under some video "Dialectical materialism is the most important concept in socialism. Dialectical materialism is the very foundation of Marxism. Socialism without dialectical materialism is not Marxism. Dialectical materialism is the very thing that distinguishes Marxism from utopian forms of socialism. “Communism is the real movement which abolishes the present state of things” For Marxists, socialism is a process. Not a checklist. Socialism does not have a definition. Dialectics is the method of reasoning which aims to understand things concretely in all their movement, change and interconnection, with their opposite and contradictory sides in unity. Dialectics is opposed to the formal, metaphysical mode of thought of ordinary understanding which begins with a fixed definition of a thing according to its various attributes. For example formal thought would explain: ‘a fish is something with no legs which lives in the water’. Darwin however, considered fish dialectically: some of the animals living in the water were not fish, and some of the fish had legs, but it was the genesis of all the animals as part of a whole interconnected process which explained the nature of a fish: they came from something and are evolving into something else. Darwin went behind the appearance of fish to get to their essence. For ordinary understanding there is no difference between the appearance of a thing and its essence, but for dialectics the form and content of something can be quite contradictory - parliamentary democracy being the prime example: democracy in form, but dictatorship in content! Socialism is a PROCESS. The process of analyzing contradictions in society and resolving them. This process is WHAT socialism IS. Every society has unique contradictions depending on their conditions, so socialism will have a different appearance, but it’s the same process. China uses Dialectical materialism to identify contradictions in society and resolve them. This is WHAT socialism is. Their solutions aren’t what determines whether or not they are socialist. The PROCESS is." What is your opinion about this? How would you respond to it?

[@50733Blabla1337]

@@1homelander179 What a good read! But wouldnt that mean that democratic socialist countries are in fact socialist if they are still evolving away from capitalism?

[@rotgardist8777]

Long needed, great!

[@dannylieberwirth1784]

ohhh god my brain is NOT looking forward to all that reading, i hope ill have a nice quiet day soon to get into it. thanks so much for this series! its made it a lot easier to wrap my mind around this topic.

[@sunflowersamurai10]

Thank you so much for making this topic somewhat accessible

[@alex0_graham]

Yo, I could be THE third comment? How cool

[@andrewlim9345]

Thanks, this is a good introduction to dialectical materialism.

[@strawberry_cake1703]

Could there be a dialectical relationship between materialism and idealism?

[@themindbenderr]

i asked myself the same question! I think there is.

[@knivves0ut]

This is so helpful, I finally feel like I understand this!

[@ardillarevolucionaria]

Great video, thank you!

[@Not_that_Brian_Jones]

I think that it would be interesting to study Marx from a Kantian, as opposed to Hegelian, standpoint. Though he described himself as an 'idealist' of sorts, contradiction for Kant was both procedural and phenomenalistic; by acting in the (phenomenalistic, materialistic) world, we become 'authors' of universal law by maxims that guide, or once identified through examination, can be taken to guide, that action. If those maxims become 'self defeating', if the universalization of a given maxim leads to it's own negation, as you might put it, then they must be revised. Further, for Kant, thought is 'awakened by' and can only be rationally applied to, the external world, in this way. Kant's notion of schema is also much improved over the empiricistic 'impression' or 'image'. Further, once you strip out the misogyny, Kant's 'kingdom of ends' is pretty close to the Communistic ideal.

[@dialecticalveganegoist1721]

Great explanation!

[@belphegor_dev]

Great vid!

[@greengirl4985]

wow! I'm a newbie learner and the 3 laws of dialectics were interesting and thought-provoking! thank you!

[@Marxism_Today]

Stick with it. Dialectics is really tricky to understand at first. But keep going and one day it will fully click and completely transform the way you understand the world. Make sure to check the two follow-up videos to this on Historical Materialism and Contradiction, then try to have a read of Mao's "On Contradiction". That book in particular is probably one of the fastest routes to fully grasping dialectical materialism in existence. And it's nice and short, too. You can read it in an hour or two

[@compulsive_jaywalker1861]

Comment offering for the algorithm 👋😌

[@5driedgrams]

Wow, great quality. Keep it up with the good work.

[@cheesemanmaster]

This video is amazing! Everything clicked together when it said "I am, therefore I think"

[@ultraprincesskenny6790]

So it's a fancy way of saying learn from mistakes, get conclusions, repeat based on the knowledge attained. Like science evolving

[@ultraprincesskenny6790]

Sorta I guess my comment doesn't really involve learning and listening to opposing viewpoints to find faults and then better the conclusion but I didn't ignore it, I just don't know how to incorporate it into the initial reply

[@DBrown-ig8em]

Whenever socialism has become dominant over capitalism, feudalism has remained. Engels explains this when he writes of an "equal obligation to work." He calls for "establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture." The conscripts in these armies are best referred to as "serfs." Some of us who have watched socialism supersede feudalism and capitalism wonder about a dialectic between foolishness and wisdom.

[@basedneet_n3w0rd3r]

Perfect introduction! The examples mentioned and shown in the background were superb to get a feeling for it.

[@papichulo4171]

Another banger

[@agentprismarine2778]

what precisely is the difference between marxist materialism and modern scientific materialism ? 6:10

[@Marxism_Today]

Dialectics.

[@Evolcun]

Beans and soup

[@panache2521]

The summary saved my ass in understanding the material that was presented.

[@flying_oyster]

I'm an accountant by trade. Dialectical comes quite naturally after you learn debit credit. I recommend Mao's On Contradiction.

[@comNartheus]

13:10 You have a bit of oversimplification that can cause some issues with understanding. There are not only remains of the old to be overcame, but also some essential moments that have to be carried to the new in order for it to function. For instance slavery gave the society its ability to concentrate labour and made philosophy possible. Feudalism refined a concept of collective entity and stated that humans cannot be someone's property. Capitalism gave us large scale and global manufacturing.

[@michaelgavinjohnston7985]

I am interested in dialectical materialism ("diamat"). I desperately want to understand it. However, in my research of it, I discovered a number of criticisms of dialectical materialism. I want to understand dialectical materialism and I want the criticisms I hear people making of it to be refuted. However, every time I talk to a Marxist (or other dialectical materialists) about this stuff, they tend to get defensive or resort to fallacies to hand-wave away the criticisms of dialectical materialism. Can you help me? Basically, the criticisms I encounter of diamat have their roots in such thinkers as Karl Popper, Leszek Kolakowski, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and the logical positivists like Schnetck. These thinkers (I want to keep this post short) argue two main points: that 1.) diamat is unempirical (and thus unscientific), its foundational axioms have never been proven in a laboratory setting, and 2.) in the case of the famous Karl Popper, Diamat can never be demonstrated in a laboratory setting because it is unfalsifiable (i.e. it fails the falsifiability criterion). He makes this case in "The Open Society" and in "Logic of Scientific Discovery". Basically, diamat has already been thoroughly and conclusively refuted. When Marx lived, epistemology hadn't developed into the science that it is today. Although in the 19th century his epistemology would not have been considered unsound, today it is. The ONLY reliable method for arriving at truth is empiricism. Diamat does not rely exclusively on empericism. It doesn't reject empiricism whole hat, but it tries to introduce qualifiers to it. But you can't qualify empiricism. It either is or it isn't empirical. Moreover it is unfalsifiable. I was wondering what you have to say about this? Other thinkers, like Georg Lukacs, Louis Althusser, Michael Foucault, Galvano Della Volpe, and Luciano Colletti (all Marxist thinkers themselves) also prove diamat to be unscientific. In defending diamat, these thinkers either try to argue that 1.) not all science needs to be empirical (an obvious fallacy), or 2.) they just give up and try to say that it isn't science, but it is still true anyway. Della Volpe even tries to go back to rationalism, resurrecting the old, long-ago-disproven dichotomy between a-priori and a-posteriori ideas (i.e. he tries to say that Engel's three laws are a-priori, or knowledge that can be known without reference to experience, which is not scientific). Althusser said that marxism was a new "continent of knowledge" or such nonsense.

[@Marxism_Today]

Read Chapter 2 of "Continuity and Rupture" by Joshua Moufawad-Paul to explain this. It deals with the arguments you present above: www.amazon.com/Continuity-Rupture-Philosophy-Maoist-Terrain/dp/1785354760 Also recommend listening to these podcasts: revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/this-ruthless-criticism-of-all-that-exists-marxism-as-science revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/red-menace-srsly-wrong

[@michaelgavinjohnston7985]

@@Marxism_Today Cool. I am looking forward to a purely empirical treatment in which Engel's 3 laws are demonstrated in a laboratory setting. Thanks!

[@XDarkxSteel]

Idk if anyone will see this that knows, but at the end of the the video there's a SO for the peace report that mentions a big up coming project. I've subscribed to them after seeing this video months after its released, but the channel has no content atm. I was wondering if the video is still in the works or if they've deleted all their videos at some point?

[@TheJayman213]

During the segment on the transformation of quantity into quality I kept thinking of another example I heard which is a collection of grains of rice becoming a bowl of rice which isn't materially a qualitative change at any concrete step, is it? I guess that was a bad example after all.

[@MatusKnizka]

I am not so convinced about the "contradiction in the matter" part. Maybe in days of Engels, but how do you explain neutrons? Is positron contradiction to electron, or the proton is? I am not disputing the application in social sciences, but to apply that to the natural sciences seems a bit of a stretch to me. I will gladly be proved wrong.

[@samage2]

"Interests" of the neutrons is to maintain atomic parts stuck together, per law of charges, equal charges repel each other, to form the elements atoms, even though protons interests' is to repel each other and be apart.

[@jessegreywolf]

Although i have a basic understanding of dialectical materialism, at least as far as a self educated not to bright communist can, what i have yet to understand is WHY we must have a deep understanding of dialectical materialism to put communist theory into useful action

[@Marxism_Today]

Thanks for the comment. Class struggle is a dialectical struggle between contradictory aspects. Without understanding the dialectical relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, we can't understand how this contradiction has to be resolved, leading to all kinds of reformist and revisionist positions, class collaborationist ideas, etc. Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie is the dominant aspect of the contradiction. Under socialism, the proletariat becomes the dominant aspect of the contradiction. Under communism, we've negated the negation, finally abolishing class once and for all. But this can only come about through qualitative transformation, like from water into steam, liquid into gas (the qualitative transformation being revolution), rather than quantitative changes (reformist, incrementalist, social-democratic policies). The importance of dialectics to our practice should become clearer in the upcoming videos about historical materialism and about contradiction, but hopefully this response has helped to point towards the real-world (revolutionary) implications of dialectical materialism

[@b9l_onion758]

Re watching the video helps a lot

[@comradekenobi8146]

The Peace Report took their channel down :-(

[@Marxism_Today]

RIP to a real one :(

[@richardgabbrielli3328]

Excellent video, very clear and well laid out

[@ltcitadel]

Never thought I'd find marxist jacksepticeye

[@Evolcun]

Embrace Marxist Jacksepticeye, he can't hurt you.

[@TheGagginator]

Great video explaining a difficult concept! I'm fairly new to dialectics, and in turn dialectical materialism, but I have a question (please don't be rude if I get something wrong or use the wrong terminology, I'm genuinely asking): If we as a society manage to achieve Communism through the use of Hegelian dialectics, what's stopping our society from falling back to Capitalism using the same means? Would/should democracy as we know it be forbidden, or would it not be necessary? If democracy gave us capitalism, should it still be allowed for the sake of "freedom", even if people's ignorance gives us less freedom through reinstating a primarily capitalist control of society? Let's say we live in a communist society, would people accidentally (or deliberately) use dialectics to convince others to go back to the old ways in order to please a select few, i.e. creating the private sector? Would a totalitarian dictatorship be required to uphold the communist status quo, defending it from the people who may want to destroy the people's well-being for the sake of a select few's profit and gain? Take care, comrades.

[@Arhatu]

I think dialectical materialism is oversimplification but this was a very educative and precious video, thank you.

[@kerycktotebag8164]

Diamat > Tiamat..? Or maybe..?

[@CripplingDuality]

Tiamat has four good albums. Diamat has more than 4 good revolutions.

[@Christina-rq3ed]

Christina Dixon present

[@minerbroEDI]

Communists should learn basic philosophy.

[@papichulo4171]

This tbh

[@minerbroEDI]

@@papichulo4171 it should be a requirement.

[@Wealthforthe99Percent]

Excellent video! Sharing this with baby leftists everywhere! 👏

[@twilliams2558]

This video made the concept finally click for me, thank

[@5driedgrams]

Watching this awesome video once again.

[@Fanon1916]

What would quantitative change within society be?

[@null8295]

quantitative changes in the power relations between classes, development of the productive forces, etc.

[@kyosantofu]

Solid video.

[@nestorespaillat9204]

Thank you for your explanation 👏👏👏👍

[@jongya]

As a physicist who is a blossoming ML (I only hold off on the final M for now as I do not yet know enough about Mao and what he said to adequately identify as MLM) I’m a bit hesitant on dialectics being a LAW rather than just a useful lens. I absolutely can see dialectics as a method which will be illuminating in many cases, but claiming that everything fundamentally consists of two opposites strikes me a very metaphysical. To use Lenin’s example of physics, electromagnetism may consist of positive and negative charge, but the strong force has three charges we call red blue and green and has a totally different mathematical group structure. It doesn’t seem correct to me to impose a structure of duality on every topic and assume that it is not only the best model to use, but also fundamental to the topic itself.

[@JulianH-co7qg]

I wouldn't call anything explained here as it relates to communism , a LAW.

[@Evolcun]

I suppose that's true, you can't apply dialectical materialism to EVERYTHING and expect to get results.

[@franzupet4406]

Great video and thanks for resources I dropped right into them :)

[@al-wk7gb]

concise and explained in a very understandable way. thank you!

[@eurique7303]

Great video camarada!

[@LonewolfeSlayer]

Does anyone have any resources on whether one can be metaphysical Idealist but still a marxist

[@null8295]

marxism is literally dialectical materialism applied to social science

[@Evolcun]

That's literally the exact opposite of Dialectical materialism

[@camking8817]

This was very well done, comrade. Thank you.

[@Fictionalre]

Love the video

[@raymondjensen4603]

It really doesn't matter what it means as dialectical materialism is a meaningless dead end. Marx is so esoteric that a life studying his writings will do no more then to obfuscate your understanding of his ideas..., you will come out with what you came in with. What is true is Marx/Engels focused on the necessary environment for these societies to spring organically from unleashed human potential, powered by the release of surplus labor..., in other words..., after the revolution, you're on your own. For Mao, Lenin, Castro, Stalin, Pol Pot, that is their "Oh, Shit" moment. All this dialectical materialism doesn't initiate an organic egalitarian system, it all just winds up as an authoritarian dystopian blunder.

[@HongQiMin]

translation: I read Marx and didn't understand him so now I'm pissed 😡

[@pjorgen]

This is a good series. I think dialectics is a bit silly though. It’s more it’s own philosophy. Not necessary for explaining socialism. The argument for socialism and class struggle stands on its own. Dialectics is more like the idea of Yin and Yang, the opposing forces from Taoism. It’s more mystical than scientific. As someone who studies physics I think duality is very relevant but it’s simplicity and elegance makes you think everything must have a dualistic nature, but that’s not true. Electrons move between quantized energy states, and have a continuous electric field. It’s not very pretty and elegant to explain though, like positive and negative charge. No one compares life to quantized energy states. But you hear comparisons of yin/yang, good/evil to electrical charge all the time.

[@atticusosullivan9332]

Marx's dialectical view of human society explicitly argues against dualism of the kind you're rightly questioning. Take "society" and "nature." For Marx they aren't ontologically separate entities. Human society/capitalism, which he calls "social metabolism" aka the uniquely human, is simply an emergent property of an underlying substance, what he calls "the universal metabolism of nature." It's a unity, not separation.

[@Letstalklakecounty]

Umm...your description of Idealism is drastically fallacious.

[@LAFC.]

Ok? Did you forget to say why or how or are you just gonna drop a useless statement and run away?

[@estevaoosoriodearagaogomes9753]

Not quite right! Marx established what is called as "Materialist Idealism". Marxism does not understand, in fact, material dinamics. Material dinamics, on an ontological realistic stance, does not need human intervention (by definition). As soon as Marxists need human intervention to restore materialist dinamics, it becomes materialist idealism. (By ontological definition) So... Marxism is not realistic, but idealistic. Liberalism is, so on and so far, the most approximate philosophy on what we can call as materialist realism.

[@suddencucumber5994]

if i did not misunderstand this video, the fact that there is newton's third law with an equal and opposite reaction for every action means that there is also a similar law in social sciences where the ruling and the working classes are struggling against each other. I do not see these two circumstances as inherently connected because Newton's third law describes a mechanical system, while the law of social sciences describes a complex conflict of interests. it seems that this notion of seeing various areas of knowledge (natural sciences, social sciences, and math) as somehow analogous and interconnected presents the class struggle as an oversimplified "good" and "bad" dichotomy. moreover, it implies that by studying natural sciences, social sciences can be better understood, even though there is no inherent connection between the two areas of knowledge.

[@emanuelneagu14]

You did misunderstand this video. It is material, be it energy, atoms etc. that interact with each other in all sorts of ways which most of them probably science hasn't even discovered, everything is one interconnected Universe that we don't see that connected due to our pace of perceiving but it's all material, it's the same thing from the same unknown source. The dichotomy is never moral and it is only found in tendencies, not in our perceived reality, since other things interact with both sides and nuance the relation.

[@anonymouseovermouse1960]

@@emanuelneagu14 Obviously all physical things are interconnected since they are physical, and thus interact with eachother. The point the OP was making was something like "How can we know that the law of action and reaction is in any way categorically comparable to the dubious claim that the struggle between the ruling class and the working class is a fundamental truth about the physical world in the same way as the law of action and reaction is considered a fundamental truth in some branches of physics" Indeed, these normative claims made by outdated laws of physics have become increasingly fragile and inadequate in light of new discoveries in the realm of physics. So if even Newton's laws have been proved to be nothing but incorrect and inadequate claims about physical matter, what hope does the markedly less concrete claim about the struggle of the "ruling class" and the "working class" have of being in any way correct either?

[@emanuelneagu14]

@@anonymouseovermouse1960 I'm a bit disconnected from the discussion right now after half a year, sorry, I might miss some points but from what I've reread, I think I was unclear af. The OP made a good point but I think what I wanted to say is that the way people function and their position and interactions with society makes them tend towards having certain interests which are in conflict with each other, which can be grouped in multiple classes and ofc that simplifies things and ignores certain cases but it's very useful for analysis. It's the same thing as when you declare an organism as alive, in reality there's nothing about it that classifies it as alive, there's just matter interacting in specific ways and patterns, and ofc there's gonna be things right on the border between alive and dead like viruses, BUT imagine how much more complicated certain work especially in medicine and certain studies would be if we didn't make this inaccurate classification of things as alive or dead regardless. We just see how certain organisms tend to behave in certain ways and we classify them as alive, and similarly we see certain people having an interest in preserving the status quo and exploiting workers so we classify them as bourgeoisie. Similarly Newton assumed for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and although proven wrong, for his time and much after and even today in some fields, it was a very useful assumption. Also obviously this doesn't have anything to do with morality, there's no "good" proletariat and "bad" bourgeoisie, it's just people and their interests or maybe even simply wishes. Maybe a capitalist just wants to use its resources to help proletarian struggle, that's not a "good" thing from them, it's just their wish, maybe they just like red aesthetics too much or whatever but still it's nothing of a moral character.

[@anonymouseovermouse1960]

@@emanuelneagu14 That's fair, i'd feel disconnected from a year-long discussion too, no worries. Thank you for the response though :) I see your point. Still, i feel obligated to point out that: Even if such a macro-scale (and, i'd argue, quite reductionistic) prescription of class struggle as a "fundamental" or "primary" conflict within society is useful for analysis, that doesn't mean that such a perscription is actually true. Again, it might be useful for analysis, fair, but that certainly doesn't provr it to be one of the primary, fundamental forces of reality alongside physics or mathematics or somesuch - as if it was intellectually valid to haphazardly impose that kind of an abstract, descriptive maxim onto the behaviors of complex organisms in the first place, when we do not even understand enough about the realm of physics to have a factual, unified theory of relativity, that is, if we ever will be able to understand the laws of physics in their totality at all. So, given how Lenin's quote was presented in this video (and it is ofc fully possible that i simply misunderstood the message of the video and the quote itself), and given that i'm too lazy to research if Lenin meant something different by that quote than what it was presented as meaning here, i'm gonna maintain that his arbitrary assertion of class struggle being as self-evident and fundamental of a physical force as certain (in part now-refuted) laws of physics, is fallacious. Thought experiments should not be categorized alongside laws of physics, and neither thought experiments, nor laws of physics, nor any other abstract ideas should be dogmatically held up as the fundamental truth of the world. Granted, that's not necessarily what Lenin might've meant to say by describing class struggle as the fundamental force of reality alongside laws of physics, but to me, given his apparent choice of words, that's the only coherent interpretation of the ideas of his that were thusly presented in this video. And yeah, i agree that such a conflict in interests and actions of social classes is, obviously, a thing that happens - but that confict of tendencies cannot be framed as simply a primary "law of the universe", more worthy to be equivocated with seemingly universal laws of physics than any other single sociolgical idea.

[@emanuelneagu14]

@@anonymouseovermouse1960 I don't remember what was said in this video and it's quite long, it might've given too much credit to Leninist ideas in a way that comes too close to authority of fundamentals in science than it was appropriate? Maybe, tbh Marxist Paul does get a bit overexcited about marxist theory (the reason for that is a great mystery lol) and forgets about nuance, for example calling any collaboration of a socialist country with today's Russian Federation the equivalent of gulf monarchies' collaboration with British Empire because "both are capitalist bourgeois states, it's opportunism" which is ofc stupid, so I wouldn't be surprised if some weird claim was made here. Or maybe Lenin was talking to a certain audience he was trying to persuade. Or maybe, I'm sorry to be that guy, it's probably not the case, but maybe there was more context to it, since that was quite a weird choice of words. That's not to say I don't think class struggle is a major factor shaping society, along with national identity struggles, various major technological discoveries and other factors, but although it's a pattern of smaller and bigger conflicts that repeats itself all the time quite a lot, it's indeed reductionistic to assume every conflict has to be part of it. It's like that saying "nothing is apolitical", I mean yes, everything is shaped in some form by politics, but not all aspects of everything are. Anyway I agree with all you've said. I guess to conclude, science always gets outdated so it's important not to be dogmatic about anything, not to hold anything as irrefutable fundamental laws, not to classify any criticism or maybe even evolution as "revisionism", but also never to completely abandon outdated science and never underestimate its usefulness, "the truth in it".

[@aganib4506]

Wow. This explanation makes sense! However, the analogy of progress or change seems similar to Spiral Dynamics. Awesome video, Comrade!

[@nikolaskalman9640]

The next video title would be : What is Gonzalo Thought?

[@prljaviroker]

Still don't get it

[@brimantas]

then when dialectic became dialectical materialism it lost its philosophical essence, its movement between materialism and idealism. The perception of the world is divided when many people cannot understand that the perception of the world is subjective, logically we can put that subjectivity in the first place, because until there is no perception, there is no world (subjectively). Therefore, we cannot understand subjective (idealistic) worldviews - religions.

[@raymondfranklin348]

Spirit and Matter is a unity of opposites with sentience being a synthetic singularity

[@TheBoglodite]

I think there are some pretty glaring misunderstandings of Dialectical Materialism here, in all honesty. First, Marx plainly rejected Fichte's language of "thesis, antithesis, synthesis". The idea of "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" are not what either dialectics nor dialectical materialism are. That is a misreading of Kant by German reactionary Fichte which in the present is meaningless. It is at least harmless because it is so vacuous, unlike claims that dialectical materialism is adding "grey" to "black and white thinking" which is a crude step towards postmodernism. If we wanna get down to it, I would say that a basic definition of it is "The Philosophy of Change". Dialectics = reality is always changing. Materialism = reality is stuff. Dialectical Materialism = reality is stuff that is always changing. This doesn't tell you about the mechanisms at play, of course. I'd recommend others to start by reading 'The German Ideology' as a good intro read on Dialectical Materialism, and go from there. Or an audiobook.

[@ishmen1998]

Im communist❤❤

[@rhiana8867]

thank you!

[@fm56001]

This series is not just useful for new mls, its also useful for anarkiddies like me