| (I no longer fully agree with all the points in this video, I may make some adjustments in the future but if you really want to understand it fully it would take many pages of Kant, Hegel and Marx and not just a 9 minute video) Dialectics and Materialism were quite separate ideas until Marx applied the two of them in union in his early writings. Dialectical Materialism in general may function as merely a synonym for Natural Science. However, after investigating the way in which humans relate to the natural world, it becomes clear that society is a clear product of material conditions. Not only does society result from human relations to material conditions and the exploitation thereof, but society also appears to follow the same dialectic process which Hegel had pointed out, albeit only in relation to ideas. Although Marx and Engels never used the term Dialectical Materialism, it will be evident that it is a useful way of summarizing and analysing Marx's work and applying it ourselves to an analysis of the world. Some of Marx's works suggestive of Dialectical Materialism are the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the German Ideology, and a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right... amongst others. This is not a model of historical determinism, it is merely an analysis. This is not a law of history or society, but a pattern which follows the same patterns that nature does. |
