Eli5 what exactly is dialectical materialism
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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.*
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