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DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
Training Handout
An Early Theory of Change
The notions of Karl Marx about change
were built on the writing of a philosopher, GWF Hegel, who developed the
concept of the dialect.
This notion was based on the idea that everything
had within itself the seeds of its own destruction, but that a new form
would rise from the ashes of the resulting destruction. The cycle
was described as thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
Some people see this as having resemblance
to classical Greek and Latin myths about the Phoenix Bird, who flies too
close to the sun and burns, and creation myths of Athapaskan people of
the Great Plains of North America.
Marx took this idea of the dialectic
and applied it to society, saying that the origins of change are all materialistic.
In our terms that means they belong to the cultural dimensions of technology
and economy.
As technology of people developed from gatherer/hunters,
to agriculture (horticulture/ herding) to the Industrial revolution, changes
in the technology led to changes in social organisation and to beliefs
and values.
Simple gathering and hunting societies,
he said, had “primitive communism.” In agrarian societies, which
he called feudal, the main conflict was between the owners of land (or
aristocracy) and those who worked on the land (or serfs).
The major source of conflict in the industrial age was between:
the workers, whom he called the proletariat,
from Latin, who survived by selling their labour, and
the owners of factories, whom he called the
bourgeoisie, a word having the same origin as burgh and burger, who needed
the labour to make a profit.
The exploited class favoured and
would benefit from change towards more equality, while the exploiting class
resisted such change. As society had the seeds of destruction within
itself, simple communism fell apart and was replaced by feudalism, then
feudalism fell apart and was replaced by capitalism.
Marx expected capitalism to fall apart because
of the dynamic tension between workers and owners, and the resulting revolution
would result in communism, where the state would wither away and the economy
would be based on the slogan, “From each according to his ability; to
each according to his need.”
This approach is called dialectical materialism.
Marx, who died in 1883, expected
a communist revolution to take place as a result of the tension between
workers and factory owners. Ironically, the two major communist revolutions
took place in Russia (1917) and China (1949), both feudal agrarian societies
at the time.
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See:
Dead Sociologists Society.
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2011.08.15
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