Marx’s Materialistic Dialectic

In the modern age, the dialectical method was developed by German idealists, and Hegel stood at its apex. Karl Marx (1818-83) held, however, that Hegel’s dialectic was distorted due to its idealism, and reversed Hegel’s idealistic dialectic from the materialist position, thereby reestablishing dialectic. According to Friedrich Engels (1820-95), Marx’s dialectic is “nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought,” ⁴ in which the development of nature and society is regarded as the basis upon which the development of thought is dependent.

Both Hegel’s idealistic dialectic and Marx’s materialistic dialectic are dialectics of contradiction that can be understood as processes of development through the three stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Contradiction is the state in which one element rejects (negates) another, while maintaining a mutual relationship at the same time. In the case of Hegel’s dialectic, the emphasis is placed more on synthesis (unity), while in the case of Marx’s dialectic, the idea of struggle, in which one party overthrows and annihilates the other, is added to the concept of contradiction.

According to Engels, the fundamental laws of the materialist dialectic consist of the following three laws: (1) the law of the transformation of quantity into quality; (2) the law of the unity and struggle of opposites (or the law of the interpenetration of opposites); and (3) the law of the negation of negation. The first law states that qualitative change occurs only through quantitative change, and when quantitative change reaches a certain stage, a sudden qualitative change occurs.

The second law states that all things contain elements that are in an inseparable relationship to each other, yet reject each other, that is, are opposites, and that all things develop through the unity and struggle of these opposites.

The third law states that things develop as the old stage passes to a new stage by being negated, and then passes to the third stage by again being negated. This passing over to the third stage is said to be the return to the initial stage, but on a higher dimension. (This is called “development in a spiral form.”)

When Engels explained these three laws, he referred to Hegel’s Science of Logic and regarded the first law as being discussed in the Doctrine of Being, the second law in the Doctrine of Essence, and the third law in the Doctrine of Notion. Among the three laws, the most central is the second one, namely, the law of the unity and struggle of opposites. It is said that the unity and struggle of opposites is the essence of contradiction; but in actuality, Marxists emphasize struggle more than unity.

In fact, Lenin said, “The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.” ⁵ He even went as far as to say that “development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.” ⁶