The Science of Reality
By: Comrade Hippolyta
Tags: Marxism, Dialectical Materialism, Politics, Communism

The Science of Reality

Marxism-Leninism upholds something called dialectical materialism as its worldview. This concept can be explained rather succinctly.

Materialism vs. Idealism

Materialism is the view of the world as one made up of matter, forming an objective reality. Climate change is real, the Earth revolves around the Sun, plants use photosynthesis to process sunlight into energy — these may sound like basic facts of biology and general science, which is kind of the point. Science has shown, and (if tested enough) proven, that there are bona-fide truths about our environment, planet, and universe. This is the materialist view, that there exists an objective reality.

This is opposed to idealism, which advocates the opposite. Idealism holds that there is no objective reality, and that “reality” is just what each individual perceives it to be. This is dangerous because it upholds every individual’s view of the world to be equally valid, which not only leads to dangerous contradictions but also that scientific analysis is “just another opinion”. Idealism is “all opinions are valid” taken to its most extreme, ranging from the climate denier who doesn’t believe in climate change because the snow fell that weekend, to the more insidious and dangerous conspiracy theorist who believes in openly antisemitic conspiracies a la Rothschilds, to the outright reactionary who believes in white supremacy because they perceive that the white race is dying in America, even if that is objectively false. All of these are examples of idealism.

Take the current debate around homelessness, which is a crisis for many cities in Washington right now. An idealist’s opinion on the matter will be formed by personal perceptions, opinions, biases, and value judgments, rather than a careful study of the material conditions. A materialist, meanwhile, will look at the material conditions surrounding homelessness and, as we’ll soon explore, use the dialectic to study how different factors affect each other to create the crisis we see today.

Metaphysics vs. Dialectics

The other half of dialectical materialism, the dialectic, comes from the Greek διαλεκτική, or dialogue. The basic fundamental of the dialectic is a conversation or argument between two opposing views with the desire to reach a common ground, or synthesis. From Stalin:

In ancient times dialectics was the art of arriving at the truth by disclosing the contradictions in the argument of an opponent and overcoming these contradictions. There were philosophers in ancient times who believed that the disclosure of contradictions in thought and the clash of opposite opinions was the best method of arriving at the truth. This dialectical method of thought, later extended to the phenomena of nature, developed into the dialectical method of apprehending nature, which regards the phenomena of nature as being in constant movement and undergoing constant change, and the development of nature as the result of the development of the contradictions in nature, as the result of the interaction of opposed forces in nature.

- Dialectical and Historical Materialism

Marxist dialectics study how everything is interconnected to each other, and how everything and everyone interacts and affects everything and everyone else. Nothing is static or accidental; the world of the Marxist dialectic is one where nature is regarded as (according to Stalin) “a connected and integral whole, in which things, phenomena are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other.”

And just as materialism’s opposite is idealism, the opposite of the dialectic is metaphysics.

Metaphysics holds that the “way things are” is basically a happy accident or the work of an unseen, unknowable force. It posits that interconnectedness isn’t a thing, that things can and do act independently of each other without commonality.