Editing Dialectic (section)

=== Marxist dialectic ===
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'''Marxist dialectic'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> is a form of Hegelian dialectic which applies to the study of [[historical materialism]].  Marxist dialectic is thus a method by which one can examine social and economic behaviors. It is the foundation of the philosophy of [[dialectical materialism]], which forms the basis of historical materialism.

In the Marxist tradition, "dialectic" refers to regular and mutual relationships, interactions, and processes in nature, society, and human thought.<ref name="Ministry of Education and Training (Vietnam)-2023">{{Cite book |last=Ministry of Education and Training (Vietnam) |title=Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism |publisher=Banyan House |year=2023 |isbn=9798987931608 |volume=1 |translator-last=Nguyen |translator-first=Luna}}</ref>{{Rp|page=257}}

A dialectical relationship is a relationship in which two phenomena or ideas mutually impact each other, leading to development and negation. Development refers to the change and motion of phenomena and ideas from less advanced to more advanced or from less complete to more complete. Dialectical negation refers to a stage of development in which a contradiction between two previous subjects gives rise to a new subject. In the Marxist view, dialectical negation is never an endpoint, but instead creates new conditions for further development and negation.<ref name="Ministry of Education and Training (Vietnam)-2023" />{{Rp|page=257}}

[[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels]], writing several decades after Hegel's death, proposed that Hegel's dialectic is too abstract.<ref name="Capital-Afterword-1873"/> Against this, Marx presented his own dialectic method, which he claimed to be "direct opposite" of Hegel's method.<ref name="Capital-Afterword-1873">{{cite book |last1=Marx |first1=Karl |author1-link=Karl Marx |date=1887 |chapter=Afterword to the second German edition, 1873 |title=Das Kapital |trans-title=Capital |title-link=Das Kapital |volume=1 |edition=1st English |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm |access-date=28 December 2014 |translator1-first=Samuel |translator1-last=Moore |translator2-first=Edward |translator2-last=Aveling |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

Marxist dialectics is exemplified in ''[[Das Kapital]]''. As Marx explained,
{{blockquote|it includes in its comprehension an affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time, also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.<ref name="Capital-Afterword-1873"/>}}

[[Class struggle]] is the primary contradiction to be resolved by Marxist dialectics because of its central role in the social and political lives of a society. Nonetheless, Marx and Marxists developed the concept of class struggle to comprehend the dialectical contradictions between mental and manual labor and between town and country. Hence, philosophic contradiction is central to the development of dialectics: the progress from quantity to quality, the acceleration of gradual social change; the negation of the initial development of the status quo; the negation of that negation; and the high-level recurrence of features of the original status quo.

Friedrich Engels further proposed that nature itself is dialectical, and that this is "a very simple process, which is taking place everywhere and every day".<ref>Engels, Frederick, (1877) ''Anti-Dühring,'' [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch11.htm Part I: Philosophy, XIII. Dialectics. Negation of the Negation].</ref> His dialectical "law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa"<ref>{{Cite web |last=Engels |first=Friedrich |date=1883 |title=Dialectics of Nature, chapter 3 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch02.htm |access-date=2024-08-25 |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}</ref> corresponds, according to [[Christian Fuchs (sociologist)|Christian Fuchs]], to the concept of [[phase transition]] and anticipated the concept of [[emergence]] "a hundred years ahead of his time".<ref name="Wan-2013" /> Stalin and Mao interpreted the transformation of quantity into quality not as a separate law, but as a special instance of the unity and struggle of opposites.<ref name=":23">{{Cite book |title=Mao's Little Red Book: A Global History |date=2013 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-107-05722-7 |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Alexander C. |location=Cambridge |pages= |chapter=Introduction}}</ref>{{Rp|page=6}}

For [[Vladimir Lenin]], the primary feature of Marx's "dialectical materialism" (Lenin's term) is its application of materialist philosophy to history and social sciences. Lenin's main contribution to the philosophy of dialectical materialism is his theory of reflection, which presents human consciousness as a dynamic reflection of the objective material world that fully shapes its contents and structure.

Later, Stalin's works on the subject established a rigid and formalistic division of [[Marxist–Leninist]] theory into dialectical materialism and historical materialism. While the first was supposed to be the key method and theory of the philosophy of nature, the second was the Soviet version of the philosophy of history.

Soviet [[systems theory]] pioneer [[Alexander Bogdanov]] viewed Hegelian and materialist dialectic as progressive, albeit inexact and diffuse, attempts at achieving what he called [[tektology]], or a universal science of organization.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bogdanov |first=Alexander A. |title=Bogdanov's Tektology. Book 1. |date=1996 |location=Hull, UK |publisher=Centre for Systems Studies Press |isbn=0-85958-876-9 |oclc=36991138 |pages=x, 62–63}}</ref>