Historical materialism
[Edit this paragraph] The source of the term
The word "dialectical materialism" first appeared in J. Dietzgan's book "A Socialist Wandering in the Field of Philosophy" published in 1886, and Dietzgan used this concept to express the Marxist worldview. Later, I ... Plekhanov also expressed it in this way. Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong also used the concepts of "complete materialism" and "materialist dialectics" when talking about Marxist world outlook. The essence of these concepts is exactly the same, but the emphasis is different. In the Marxist world outlook, materialism and dialectics are inseparable, and their organic unity constitutes the philosophical theoretical basis of Marxism. Dialectical materialism is thorough materialism and a conscious reflection of the most universal laws in the objective world. The reason why it sees matter is the basis of all phenomena in nature and human society, and the unity of the world lies in its materiality. It is believed that consciousness is the product of the long-term development of the material world, the function of highly organized materials in the human brain, and the dynamic reflection of the human brain on the objective world. Dialectical materialism is a thorough dialectics and the most complete and profound theory about development, without one-sided disadvantages. It reveals that the relationship and struggle between the two sides of the internal contradiction of things are the internal reasons for the development of things and the objective truth on which all phenomena move.
Dialectical materialism is a scientific summary of the development history of human cognition, which is based on modern science and advanced social practice and is constantly enriched and developed with the development of science and practice. The emergence of dialectical materialism is a great revolution in the history of human cognition and philosophy, which has given mankind, especially the working class, a huge cognitive tool. It is a sharp weapon for human beings to understand and transform the world.
[Edit this paragraph] Emergence and development
In the history of philosophical development, there are struggles between materialism and idealism, as well as between dialectics and metaphysics. Dialectical materialism is the absorption, development and sublimation of the positive aspects of philosophical development, namely materialism and dialectics.
The scientific summary of the development of philosophy in history Ancient materialism denied that the world was created by God and acknowledged the materiality of the world. However, it attributes the materiality of the world to one or some specific "primitive" substances, which is simple and intuitive and lacks scientific argumentation. Generally speaking, ancient simple materialism is also simple dialectics, which is a spontaneous combination of materialism and dialectics. It holds that the objective world presented to people is a picture interwoven with various connections and interactions, in which everything is moving, changing, producing and disappearing. This is a primitive, simple but essentially correct world view. In the Middle Ages of Europe, the idealism and metaphysics of Catholic theology achieved absolute dominance, and it regarded the feudal hierarchy as an eternal order reflecting the will of God. The germination and development of capitalist economy and the need of production technology have promoted the development of empirical natural science, and people's eyes have turned from God to man, from heaven and hell to nature and human society, thus promoting the revival of materialist philosophy. But at this time, the ancient simple materialism and spontaneous dialectics are not enough. Although this view correctly grasps the general nature of the general picture of phenomena, it is not enough to explain the details that make up this general picture; You can't see the whole picture without knowing these details. Since the second half of15th century, natural science has developed rapidly and entered a stage based on experiments. Scientists divide nature into different parts for classification and study the anatomical structure of objects. This classification research method is the basic condition for mankind to make great progress in understanding nature in the future. However, after F Bacon and J Locke moved from natural science to philosophy, this method of looking at things in isolation and stillness, which put aside extensive general relations, formed the long-term rule of metaphysics and caused the unique limitation of thinking mode for centuries. With the further development of natural science and the accumulation of natural science materials, people gradually realize that all the roots of nature are dialectical rather than metaphysical. The theories of celestial evolution, stratigraphic change and biological evolution, as well as the appearance of embryology, the law of conservation of energy and the discovery of cells, make people feel more and more that to accurately describe the universe, its development and human development, and the reflection of this development in human minds can only be realized by dialectical methods, and only by paying frequent attention to the universal interaction between emergence and disappearance, evolution and degradation. I Kant was the first to break the metaphysical gap with his theory of evolution and began the development of dialectics in modern German philosophy. This development reached its peak in Hegel's system. For the first time, Hegel described the whole natural, historical and spiritual world as a process, that is, it was in constant movement, change, transformation and development, and tried to reveal the internal relationship between this movement and development. This is a great historic achievement of Hegel. However, Hegel was an idealist. He represents the thought of the weak emerging bourgeoisie in Germany, and thinks that his philosophy is the highest embodiment of absolute spirit and the end of the development of objective spirit, while Prussia Kingdom is the secular expression of absolute spirit. He reversed the development of the real world into the development of absolute spirit, so his dialectics is incomplete. Feuerbach restored the due authority of materialism in the process of criticizing Hegel's idealism. But Feuerbach's philosophy is still metaphysical materialism in essence, which is not enough to completely liquidate Hegel's dialectical idealism. On the basis of critically inheriting the outstanding achievements of predecessors' philosophical development, Marx and Engels founded thorough materialism, that is, dialectical materialism, which closely combined dialectics with materialism.
The historical conditions and ideological sources of dialectical materialism are the philosophical basis of Marxist theoretical system. Together with the whole Marxist theory, it was formed in the forties of 19. At that time, the contradiction between socialized large-scale industrial production and private ownership of capitalist means of production in capitalist society, the contradiction between highly planned individual enterprises and anarchy of production in the whole society, and the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie have begun to intensify, resulting in periodic economic crises, such as the workers' uprising in Lyon, France, the Charter Movement in Britain, and the weaver uprising in Silesia, Germany. The working class urgently demands a scientific cognitive tool to reveal the laws of social development and enhance their consciousness of liberation struggle. At that time, the social practice and the development of science increasingly exposed the dialectical nature of the objective world. The intensification of the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has made class relations clear and simple, and clearly exposed the direct relationship between class contradictions and material and economic interests. The development of capitalism has opened the world market, broken the isolation between countries, nationalities and regions, and made the production and consumption of all countries in the world. At the same time, cell theory, the law of conservation and transformation of energy, C.R. Darwin's theory of evolution and other major advances in natural science also clearly show the relationship between various fields and their processes in nature. All these provide objective possibilities for the establishment and development of dialectical materialism.
The direct ideological source of dialectical materialism is German classical philosophy at the end of 18 and the beginning of 2009. Marx and Engels broke the conservative philosophical system of Hegel's idealism, absorbed the revolutionary factors in Hegel's dialectics, that is, the idea of connection and development, and the idea that contradiction is the internal motive force of development, critically inherited the basic core of Feuerbach's materialism, abandoned the idealistic impurities of his social history, religion and ethics, and founded dialectical materialism philosophy. At the same time, Marx and Engels critically inherited British political economy and French utopian socialism, successfully applied the principle of dialectical materialism, scientifically analyzed the history of human social development, especially the development of capitalist political economy, revealed the secret of capitalist mode of production, found that socialism was the inevitable trend of capitalist development, and pointed out that proletarian revolution and dictatorship were the only correct way to socialism, thus establishing scientific political economy and scientific socialist theory. Dialectical materialism philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism theory are three inseparable parts of Marxism. Their formation is a unified process of mutual promotion and mutual demonstration.