Sociology Learners

Dialectical Materialism

“Karl Marx” theory of “Dialectical materialism” was inspired from the concept of social thinker “Hegel” dialectic. The literal meaning of dialectic is change or the process of change. According to “Hegel” change occur in society, because of change in human mind, with the passage of time humans move towards absolute consciousness, by absolute consciousness he meant that they become rational, moreover he believed that, the rationality takes place, due to spiritual or theological force. Therefore, they move towards freedom and progressive change. “Hegel” defined the process of dialect in three steps, thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Karl Marx and Engels believed that the social change does not occur due to an elevation of mind or rationality, but it takes place because of, material. According to them, Object has an impact on the subject rather than, the subject has the impact on the object. By material, they meant that, economic and metaphysical conditions of societies. For example, Hegelians believe that, if a thunderstorm occurs it’s because of some supernatural power, on the other hand, Marxists believe that, it occurred due to the dashing of particles in the cloud. Let’s take another example of idealist and materialist, reason behind poverty, idealist reason that an individual is poor because God made them poor. However, materialist argues that it is because of bourgeoisies’ injustice and suppression of working class.

According to Marx, thesis is the contemporary condition of society or status quo. Moreover, in order to change the contemporary social conditions, there ought to be an opposition that opposes the current social conditions or mechanism, he described it as antithesis. The clash between the thesis and antithesis results in the synthesis, to which he referred to as, social progress and social progressive change. The Readers have to understand that, the dialectic is a continuous process once the process is completed; it starts over again, the synthesis become thesis and there will be a new opposition synthesis, which will result in another synthesis; social change or progress.                   

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