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Why is Marxist thought interested in dialectics?
This week, the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY describes why Marxist dialectics is a way to understand how the world works
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OUR last article looked at materialism. This week we’ll move on to look at the “dialectical” part of dialectical materialism.
The term “dialectics” originates from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. To him dialectics involved a discourse between two or more individuals who seek to understand a problem through careful, reasoned argument from different perspectives or disciplines.
Later philosophers, in particular G W Hegel, developed dialectics but in an abstract, idealist way. Marx turned Hegel “right side up,” rescuing “the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”
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