Karl Marx- Dialectical Materialism

Introduction
Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883), was a famous German economist and social
philosopher of the 19th century. He was a brilliant agitator and polemicist, a profound
economist, a great sociologist, an incomparable historian and a revolutionary who
undertook a critical analysis of capitalist society, propounded materialist interpretation
of history and showed the way for transition to communism. Marx and his close friend
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) sought to replace utopian socialism by scientific socialism
for the analysis of social problems and finding their solution. The solution came in the
form of an elaborate philosophy which is now recognized as Marxism. His most
important works, apart from his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,
include: Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, The Poverty of Philosophy, The Class
Struggle in France and A contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Like Hegel, for
Marx, the study of history was of crucial significance. He borrowed his dialectical
method from Hegel’s dialectical idealism but modified it in a fundamental way. Marx
applied the Dialectics to explain the material conditions of life. In the process of doing
so he denounced the Hegelian philosophy of dialectical idealism and gave the Marxian
theory of society and history called as the Dialectical Materialism.

Dialectical Materialism
The most important influence on Marx’s work was of Hegel’s philosophy, which
pervaded the intellectual climate of Germany at the time when Marx came to maturity.
G.W.F.Hegel (1770-1831), was a famous German philosopher, who believed that ‘idea’
or ‘consciousness’ was the essence of the universe. According to Hegel, it was the force
behind all historical development. Dialectics was the key idea in Hegelian philosophy. In
his ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’, Hegel writes about Geist, which is translated as mind or
spirit, to refer to the spiritual side of the universe. He says that there is universal Mind
and all minds are particular and limited manifestations of this universal mind. He argues
that individual minds are not conscious of their unity with the universal Mind, and this
alienates them from reality. For Hegel, human history is the progression of the Mind
towards self-realization and freedom. The development of the Mind is dialectical.
Marx rejected Hegel’s view and postulated that ‘matter’ was the essence of the
universe, which embodied the force behind all manifestations of social change. For Marx
each stage of social development represented the corresponding stage of development
of the material conditions of society. Thus, Marx advanced the theory of ‘materialism’
against Hegel’s theory of ‘idealism’.
Hegel had tried to explain the mechanism of social change through dialectical method.
Marx sought to combine Hegel’s dialectical method with his own philosophy of
materialism. The term dialectical originally referred to the process whereby ideas are
formed and clarified in the course of intellectual debate. A proposition, or ‘thesis’, is
first advanced, and then challenged by a counter-proposition, or ‘antithesis’. Since both
are apt to be partly true, the normal outcome of their encounter is a revised
proposition, or ‘synthesis’, that combines the valid elements of the two.
Hegel believed that social institutions only reflect the ideas behind them, and that it is
the movement of ideas, through the dialectical process, which is responsible for the
development of social institutions. Hegel saw nation-state as the highest state of social
evolution, as the embodiment of the truth, ‘the march of God on earth’ –the perfect
form of social institutions. While Marx adopted Hegel’s mechanism of social change –
the framework of ‘thesis’, ‘antithesis’ and ‘synthesis’ –he refused to recognize the ‘idea’
or consciousness as the real force behind social evolution. Instead, Marx believed, the
social institutions are shaped by the material conditions of human life, which are
determined by the mode of economic production in society. Thus Marx sought to
replace Hegel’s ‘dialectical idealism’ by his own ‘dialectical materialism’. George
H.Sabine has noted that Marx’s philosophy is marked by continuity with Hegel’s
philosophy.

Comparative Study of Hegel and Marx

The issue Hegel’s view Marx’s view
Philosophical Basis Idealism Materialism
Path of development Dialectical Dialectical
Medium of progress War among Nations Class conflict
Final stage of development Supremacy of the Nation Classless and stateless
State society
Engels sought to define dialectics as ‘the science of the general laws of motion and
development of nature, human society and thought’. He identified three laws of
dialectics which can be illustrated with suitable examples from the material world;
hence they exemplify the laws of dialectical materialism:
(i) The transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa- At certain
temperatures (quantity), water is converted into ice or stream (change in quality);
water, ice and stream could be identified as changes in the quality of the same thing
with changes in temperature (quantity).
(ii) The interpenetration of opposites- Hard and soft are opposite of each other,
but in the material world they interpenetrate into each other; iron is hard, but it can be
molded into different shapes which shows that it is also soft; a flower is soft but it can
stay in its shape which shows that it is also hard; and
(iii) The negation of negation- This is the basic principle of progress. Every stage of
social development contains the seeds of its own decay; its decay is followed by a higher
stage of development until a perfect society is evolved. In the material world, when we
sow a seed, it sprouts. In this process, the seed is destroyed. The seed-bud which
appears is the negation of the seed. Then it grows into plant. In this process, the seed-
bud is destroyed. The plant is the negation of the seed-bud. Thereafter ear of corn
grows on it and the plant dries and decays. The ear of corn is the negation of the plant.
It reproduces seed in larger quantity and better quality. This is symptom of progress.
Application of the laws of dialectics in social life is demonstrated through the principle
of historical materialism.

Conclusion
Marx was a revolutionary and a socialist, but above all he was a humanist who believed
in genuine emancipation and liberation of human beings. He registered protest against
every kind of domination. True that many of his predictions did not materialize, but
Marx’s genius lay not merely in his ability to predict, but in the new modes of thinking
about economic and political issues. He applied Dialectics used by Hegel in the domain
of ideas to explain the material conditions of life and held that the material and the
ideal are not only different but opposite and constitutes a unity in which the material is
primary and the mind (idea) secondary. Thus according to him, the ultimate cause which
determines the whole course of human history is the economic development of society.