Definition of dialectical materialism in US English:
dialectical materialism
nounˌdīəˈlektəkəl məˈtirēəˌlizəmˌdaɪəˈlɛktəkəl məˈtɪriəˌlɪzəm
The Marxist theory (adopted as the official philosophy of the Soviet communists) that political and historical events result from the conflict of social forces and are interpretable as a series of contradictions and their solutions. The conflict is believed to be caused by material needs.
Example sentencesExamples
- Mills was a democratic populist whose vision also encouraged ‘plain Marxism,’ in which he sought to revive the humanistic values of the early Marx that preceded dialectical materialism.
- Historically the main spur to Marxists seeking such an alternative to the reductionist and the scientistic conception of dialectical materialism came from Max Weber.
- Marx wants to combine the active, dialectical side of idealist thought with the materialism of Feuerbach: hence dialectical materialism as later Marxists called it (though Marx himself never used this phrase).
- Gray describes it as a legitimate successor to that other secular utopian project, the Marxist version of dialectical materialism.