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From the standpoint of dialectical materialism, the source of movement. Dialectical materialism - the worldview of the Marxist-Leninist party

Dialectical materialism as the worldview of the Marxist-Leninist party represents the unity of two inextricably linked sides: the dialectical method and materialist theory.

The materialistic theory of K. Marx and F. Engels is the only scientific philosophical theory that gives the correct interpretation of the phenomena of nature and society, the correct understanding of these phenomena.

The limitations of previous materialism consisted primarily in the fact that he was not able to understand the world as a process of development, which was alien to him, dialectics. For a number of representatives of the materialism that preceded K. Marx and F. Engels, especially the materialists of the 17th and 18th centuries, materialism took on a one-sided mechanistic character, since they, reflecting the state of science of their time, tried to interpret all phenomena in the world as the result of mechanical movement particles of matter. The fundamental defect of all old materialism was its inability to extend the materialist view to the interpretation of the phenomena of social life; in this area, the representatives of pre-Marxist materialism left the soil of materialism and slid into positions of idealism. K. Marx and F. Engels for the first time in the history of materialistic philosophy overcame these shortcomings of the former materialism.

K. Marx and F. Engels worked out their materialist theory in the struggle against idealism, primarily against the idealism of Hegel and the Young Hegelians. In the joint works of K. Marx and F. Engels "The Holy Family" and "German Ideology", in the "Theses on Feuerbach" by Marx, the foundations of their dialectical-materialist worldview were first set forth. Later, for almost half a century, Marx and Engels developed materialism, moved it further forward, mercilessly sweeping aside, in the words of V.I. "new" direction, etc. In all the works of Marx and Engels, the main motive invariably appears: the consistent implementation of materialism and the merciless criticism of any retreat to idealism. “Marx and Engels from beginning to end were party in philosophy, they were able to discover deviations from materialism and concessions to idealism and fideism in all and sundry “recent” directions,” wrote V.I. Lenin.

The main provisions of dialectical materialism are developed in the works of F. Engels “Anti-Dühring” (1877-78), “The Dialectics of Nature (1873-1878), “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy” (1886). In these works, F. Engels gave a profound description of the foundations of materialist theory and a materialist interpretation of the diverse data of the natural sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, etc.

The materialist theory develops on the basis of a generalization of new scientific discoveries. After the death of F. Engels, natural science made the greatest discoveries: it was found that atoms are not indivisible particles of matter, as natural scientists had imagined them before, electrons were discovered and an electronic theory of the structure of matter was created, radioactivity and the possibility of transformation of atoms, etc. were discovered. the need for a philosophical generalization of these latest discoveries in natural science. This task was carried out by V.I. Lenin in his book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908). The appearance of Lenin's book during the period of reaction that followed the defeat of the Russian revolution of 1905-1907 was connected with the need to repulse the offensive of the bourgeoisie on the ideological front and to criticize the idealistic philosophy of Mach and Avenarius, hostile to Marxism, under whose banner the revision of Marxism was carried out. Vladimir Ilyich not only defended the theoretical, philosophical foundations of Marxism and gave a crushing rebuff to all kinds of opponents and "critics" of Marxism, but at the same time developed all the most important aspects of dialectical and historical materialism. In his work, he gave a materialistic generalization of everything important and essential that was acquired by science, and above all by natural science, over the entire historical period after the death of Engels. Thus, V.I. Lenin completed the task of further development of materialistic philosophy in accordance with the new achievements of science.

In the book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, the principle of partisanship in philosophy is comprehensively substantiated, it is shown that the fighting parties in philosophy are materialism and idealism, the struggle of which in the last analysis expresses the tendencies and ideology of the hostile classes of bourgeois society. These thoughts were further developed by Lenin in his article "On the Significance of Militant Materialism" (1922), in which a program was given for the struggle for materialism in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In this article, he showed that without a solid philosophical foundation, no natural sciences, no materialism can withstand the struggle against the onslaught of bourgeois ideas. The natural scientist can carry out this struggle to the end with complete success only on the condition that he is a conscious supporter of Marx's philosophical materialism.

The opposition between materialism and idealism is determined primarily by the solution of the fundamental question of philosophy - the question of the relation of thinking to being, of spirit to nature. Idealism considers the world as the embodiment of the "absolute idea", "world spirit", consciousness. In contrast, dialectical materialism claims that the world is inherently material; its initial position is the recognition of the materiality of the world, and consequently, its unity. In the fight against the idealistic tricks of Dühring, Engels showed that the unity of the world does not lie in its being, but in its materiality, which is proved by the long development of philosophy and natural science. All the diverse phenomena in the world - both in inorganic nature and in the organic world, as well as in human society - represent different types, forms, manifestations of moving matter. At the same time, unlike metaphysical materialism, Marxist philosophical materialism not only consistently extends the proposition of the unity of the world to all phenomena, including social life, but also recognizes their qualitative diversity. Many representatives of metaphysical materialism understood the recognition of the unity of the world as the reduction of all diverse phenomena to the simplest mechanical motion of qualitatively homogeneous particles of matter. On the contrary, Marxist philosophical materialism sees in the world an infinite number of qualitatively diverse phenomena, which, however, are united in the sense that they are all material.

Matter moves in space and time, which are forms of existence of the material world. In contrast to idealism, which considered, for example, space and time as a priori forms of human contemplation (I. Kant), dialectical materialism affirms the objectivity of space and time. At the same time, space and time are inextricably linked with moving matter, and do not represent "empty forms" of being, as they were understood by many natural scientists and materialist philosophers of the 17th-18th centuries.

Movement and matter are considered by dialectical materialism in their inseparable unity. Unlike metaphysical materialism, many representatives of which recognized the existence of matter, even if it is temporary, without movement, dialectical materialism considers movement as a form of existence of matter. In the book “Anti-Dühring”, F. Engels comprehensively showed the inseparability of matter and motion and criticized the metaphysics of Dühring, who claimed that matter was originally in an unchanged, equal state to itself. In its understanding of movement, Marxist dialectical materialism also differs from previous, mechanical materialism in that it considers movement as a change in general, having qualitatively diverse forms: mechanical, physical, chemical, biological, social. “Movement, considered in the most general sense of the word, i.e., understood as a form of being of matter, as an attribute inherent in matter, embraces all the changes in the universe occurring in the processes, starting from simple movement and ending with thinking” (Engels F., Dialectics nature). The higher forms of movement always include the lower ones, but are not reduced to them, but have their own qualitative characteristics and, in this regard, are subject to their own specific laws.

Further development of these provisions of Marxist philosophical materialism was given by V.I. Lenin in his work “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism”. Having criticized various directions of the so-called. physical idealism, he showed the inconsistency of the idealists' assertions that "matter has disappeared." The latest discoveries in natural science, Lenin pointed out, do not refute, but, on the contrary, confirm the propositions of Marxist philosophical materialism about matter, motion, space and time. Only metaphysical materialism, which recognizes the existence of the last unchanging particles of matter, turned out to be refuted. But dialectical materialism has never stood and never stands on the position of recognizing such immutable particles. “The electron is as inexhaustible as the atom, nature is infinite, but it exists infinitely, and this is the only categorical, the only unconditional recognition of its existence outside the consciousness and sensation of man and distinguishes dialectical materialism from relativistic agnosticism and idealism.”

Strongly objecting to the identification of the philosophical concept of matter with certain natural scientific views on the structure of matter, Lenin emphasized that the only "property" of matter, with which the recognition of materialism is connected, is its objective existence. In the fight against the Machists, Vladimir Ilyich formulated the definition of matter as an objective reality that, acting on our sense organs, causes sensations in us. He emphasized that the concept of matter is an extremely broad concept, which covers everything that exists outside and independently of our consciousness. Idealistic attempts to tear motion away from matter, to think motion without matter, were subjected to devastating criticism by Lenin. Just as matter is inconceivable without motion, so motion is impossible without matter.

From the recognition of the materiality of the world, its objective existence, dialectical materialism concludes that the regularities of phenomena in the world also have an objective character. Dialectical materialism stands on the positions of the strictest determinism and rejects the intervention of any kind of supernatural forces, proving that the world develops according to the laws of motion of matter. Marxist materialism also rejects the fictions of the idealists that human mind allegedly introduces regularity into nature and establishes the laws of science. Since the laws of science reflect objective processes that occur independently of the will of people, people do not have the power to cancel or create these laws. Mutual connection and mutual conditionality of phenomena, established by the dialectical method, represent the laws of development of moving matter.

Having shown that the world is material in nature, dialectical materialism also gave a scientific answer to the question of how human consciousness relates to the material world. The materialistic solution of this question lies in the fact that being, nature, is recognized as primary, and thinking, consciousness are secondary. In contrast to idealism, dialectical materialism proves that matter is primary in relation to consciousness, because:

1) it exists independently of consciousness, while consciousness, thinking cannot exist independently of matter;

2) matter precedes in its existence consciousness, which is a product of the development of matter;

3) matter is a source of sensations, ideas, consciousness, and consciousness is a reflection of matter, a reflection of being.

Unlike many representatives of pre-Marxist materialism, dialectical materialism considers consciousness as a property inherent not in all matter, but only in highly organized matter, which is the result of a higher development of matter. At the same time, consciousness is not identified with matter. Dialectical materialism rejects the assertions of vulgar materialists (Buchner, Moleschott, and others), who considered thought to be material.

Considering consciousness as a reflection of matter, being, dialectical materialism also resolved the question of whether consciousness is capable of correctly, adequately reflecting the world, whether it is capable of knowing the world. This, as F. Engels noted, is the other side of the fundamental question of philosophy.

K. Marx and F. Engels sharply criticized the positions of Kant and other idealists about the impossibility of knowing the world, emphasizing that social practice is the decisive refutation of these fictions. Even in the "Theses on Feuerbach" Marx showed that the question of whether human thinking has objective truth is not at all a question of theory, but a practical question. "All the mysteries that lure theory into mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the understanding of that practice." For the first time in the history of philosophy, Marx and Engels introduced the criterion of practice into the theory of knowledge and thereby resolved the fundamental questions of the theory of knowledge, over which the preceding philosophical thought struggled. It is practice that proves the unlimited ability of a person to know the world. At the same time, Marx and Engels rejected the claims of the dogmatists to complete knowledge of the truth. Cognition they considered as a process of endless improvement and deepening of human knowledge.

The main provisions of the Marxist theory of knowledge were developed further by V.I. Lenin in the book "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" and in his other works. Citing the position of Engels, who confirms the cognizability of the world by referring to the practical activity of a person who has learned to extract alizarin from coal tar, Lenin made three important epistemological conclusions from this:

“1) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our sensation, outside of us, for it is certain that alizarin existed yesterday in coal tar, and it is just as certain that yesterday we did not know anything about this existence, there are no sensations from this alizarin received.

2) There is absolutely no fundamental difference between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there cannot be. The difference is simply between what is known and what is not yet known, but philosophical fabrications about the special boundaries between the one and the other, about the fact that the thing in itself is “beyond” phenomena (Kant), or that it is possible and we must fence ourselves off with some kind of philosophical barrier from the question of a world that is still unknown in one part or another, but exists outside of us (Hume), - all this is empty nonsense, Schrulle, a twist, an invention.

3) In the theory of knowledge, as in all other areas of science, one should reason dialectically, i.e., not to assume that our knowledge is ready and unchanged, but to analyze how knowledge comes from ignorance, how incomplete, inaccurate knowledge becomes more complete and more accurate."

The Marxist theory of knowledge, comprehensively developed by Lenin, is a theory of reflection, considering concepts, ideas, sensations as a more or less correct reflection of the objective world that exists independently of man. This theory unconditionally recognizes the existence of objective truth, i.e. the presence in cognition of a content that does not depend either on man or on humanity. People's knowledge of the laws of nature, verified by experience and practice, is reliable knowledge that has the value of objective truths. Recognizing the existence of objective truth, the Marxist theory of knowledge, however, does not consider that human ideas express objective truth at once, entirely, unconditionally and absolutely. The question of the relationship between absolute and relative truth, like all other questions, is solved dialectically by Marxist philosophical materialism. Developing Engels' thesis on this question, Lenin showed that absolute truth is made up of the sum of relative truths, that cognition is a process of closer and closer approximation of thought to reality. In this connection, Vladimir Ilyich substantiated the proposition that dialectics is the theory of knowledge of Marxism. In the Philosophical Notebooks, he emphasized that the reflection of reality in the mind of a person is a process in which contradictions arise and are resolved.

The position of dialectical materialism on the knowability of the world means that there are no unknowable things in the world, but there are things not yet known, which will be revealed and known by the forces of science and practice. This position affirms the boundless power of the human mind, its ability to cognize the world indefinitely, it liberates the human mind from the shackles with which idealism and religion are trying to bind it. Recognizing the possibility of knowing the laws of nature, dialectical materialism proves the ability of people to use these laws in their practical activities. Dialectical materialism does not consider objective regularity, necessity in nature fatalistically, as did most of the materialists who preceded Marx and Engels. K. Marx and F. Engels for the first time in the history of philosophy resolved the problem of freedom and necessity, showed that the knowledge of necessity and the use of this knowledge in the practical activity of a person makes him free. “...People, having learned the laws of nature, taking them into account and relying on them, skillfully applying and using them, can limit their scope, give the destructive forces of nature a different direction, turn destructive forces nature for the benefit of society,” wrote I.V. Stalin in the article "Economic problems of socialism in the USSR".

Being extended to the knowledge of the history of society, to the study of social life, the provisions of dialectical materialism lead to the conclusion that social life, like nature, is subject to objective laws that can be known by people and used by them in the interests of society. Marxism-Leninism proved that the development of society is a natural-historical process, subject to objective laws that exist outside of us, regardless of the will and consciousness of people. The laws of social science are a reflection in the minds of people of the laws of development of society that exist outside of us. The discovery of the objective regularity of the development of society made it possible for the founders of Marxism-Leninism to turn the study of the history of society into the same exact science as, for example, biology. In its practical activity, the party of the proletariat is guided not by any random, subjective motives, but by the laws of the development of society, by practical conclusions from these laws.

If the materialist theory of Marx and Engels gave a correct interpretation of the phenomena of nature and social life, then their dialectical method indicated the correct paths for the knowledge and revolutionary transformation of the world. F. Engels noted that K. Marx husked out of Hegelian dialectics its "rational grain" and restored the dialectical method, freed from its idealistic shells, in the simple form in which it only becomes correct form development of thoughts.

The dialectical method of Marx is fundamentally opposed to the dialectical method of Hegel. If for Hegel the self-development of ideas acts as the creator of reality, then for Marx, on the contrary, the development of thinking is considered as a reflection of the development of the objective world itself. Hegel's idealism forced him to limit dialectical development, to turn his dialectics exclusively to the past. In contrast, materialistic dialectics applies not only to the past, but also to the present and future development of human society. As noted by V.I. Lenin, it teaches not only an explanation of the past, but a fearless foresight of the future and bold practical activity aimed at its realization. The attempts of the enemies of Marxism (for example, the Menshevik idealists) to blur the opposition between Hegel’s dialectics and Marx’s dialectics, to identify them, were resolutely rebuffed in the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the journal “Under the banner of Marxism” of January 25, 1931. The relapses of such identification were condemned in the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On shortcomings and errors in the coverage of the history of German philosophy at the end of the 18th and early XIX centuries,” adopted in 1944. This resolution emphasized that the opposition between Hegel’s idealist dialectic and the Marxist dialectical method reflects the opposition between the bourgeois and proletarian world outlook.

The creative spirit of Marxism-Leninism is inextricably linked with its method - materialistic dialectics, which requires considering things and phenomena in their continuous movement and development, in their concrete originality and, therefore, excludes the rigidity of concepts and ideas characteristic of dogmatists. In the afterword to the second edition of the first volume of Capital (1873), K. Marx noted: “In its rational form, dialectics inspires only anger and horror in the bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire ideologists, since it includes at the same time understanding of its negation, its necessary death, it considers each realized form in motion, therefore also from its transient side, it does not bow to anything and is critical and revolutionary in its very essence.

Dialectics is the soul of Marxism; it enables the working class and its party to take the most impregnable fortresses. The application of the dialectical method to the analysis of new experience leads to the enrichment and development of the theory. At the same time, not only the theory, but also the method develops and improves in the process of its application.

In contrast to idealism, Marxism-Leninism considers scientific method as a reflection of the objective laws of the development of reality itself. Dialectics is the science of the most general laws of any movement; its laws are valid both for movement in nature and in human history, and for the process of thinking. Precisely because Marxist dialectics equips people with knowledge of the general laws of motion and development in nature, society and thought, and correctly reflects the objective laws that exist independently of the will and consciousness of people, it represents the only scientific method of cognizing reality. “The so-called objective dialectics,” wrote F. Engels in his work “Dialectics of Nature”, “reigns in all nature, and the so-called subjective dialectics, dialectical thinking, is only a reflection of the movement that dominates all nature through opposites, which determine the life of nature by their own constant struggle and their final transition into each other or into higher forms.

A brilliant example of Marx's application of the dialectical method to the analysis of the economic system of his contemporary society was Capital, in which the laws of the emergence, development and death of capitalism are revealed. In the preface to this work, K. Marx gave classic characteristic his dialectical method as opposed to the idealist dialectic of Hegel.

The historical emergence of Marxist dialectics is covered in F. Engels' brochure "Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy", and its basic laws are characterized in his works "Anti-Dühring" and "Dialectics of Nature". Marx and Engels pointed to three basic laws of dialectics: the law of the transition of quantity into quality, the law of mutual penetration (unity) and the struggle of opposites, and the law of negation of negation.

The main principles of materialist dialectics, discovered by Marx and Engels, were further developed in Lenin's heaps. The problems of materialist dialectics were developed by him in close connection with the analysis of the new historical era- the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. Having applied materialist dialectics to the analysis of this epoch, Lenin developed his own theory of imperialism and created a new theory of the proletarian revolution. The notes and sketches of V.I. Lenin, published after his death under the title "Philosophical Notebooks", belong to the period of the First World War. In these notes, especially in the fragment "On the Question of Dialectics", he set the task of developing dialectics as a philosophical science. Describing dialectics as a multifaceted doctrine of development and as a method of cognizing reality, he pointed to 16 elements of dialectics (objectivity of considering things, phenomena, the study of the totality of the many different relations of this thing to others, its development, its inherent internal contradictory tendencies, their struggle, etc. .). Vladimir Ilyich showed with particular force that the law of knowledge and the law of the objective world is the law of the unity and struggle of opposites.

Further development of the Marxist dialectical method is given in the works of I.V. Stalin on the basis of generalizing the richest experience of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and socialist construction in the USSR, generalizing the achievements of modern science. In his work "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism" (1938), the mutual connection between all the main features of the Marxist dialectical method is deeply shown, the enormous importance of applying the provisions of the dialectical method to the history of society, to the practical activity of the revolutionary party of the working class, is shown.

The starting point of the Marxist dialectical method is that, in contrast to metaphysics, which considers objects and phenomena separately, without connection with each other, nature should be considered as a connected, unified whole, where objects, phenomena are organically connected with each other, depend on each other and condition each other. Accordingly, the dialectical method requires that the phenomena of nature be studied in their inseparable connection with the surrounding phenomena, in their conditionality from the surrounding phenomena.

The requirement to study phenomena in their mutual connection has always been considered by the classics of Marxism as the first requirement of Marxist dialectics.

In a sketch of the general plan for the Dialectics of Nature, F. Engels defined dialectics as the science of universal connection. “The first thing that catches our eye when considering a moving matter,” F. Engels wrote, “is the mutual connection of the individual movements of individual bodies with each other, their conditionality with each other.” IN AND. Lenin also emphasized the importance of studying phenomena in their interconnection, bearing in mind that without this, concrete knowledge of phenomena is impossible. The main requirements of the dialectical method are formulated by him as follows: “In order to really know an object, one must embrace, study all its aspects, all connections and “mediations”. We will never achieve this completely, but the demand for comprehensiveness will warn us against mistakes and from deadness. It's in the 1st, in the 2nd, dialectical logic demands to take an object in its development, "self-movement" ..., change ... In-3-x, all human practice must enter into a complete "definition" of an object both as a criterion of truth and as a practical determinant of the connection of an object with what a person needs. Fourthly, dialectical logic teaches that "there is no abstract truth, truth is always concrete" ... ".

All these requirements of the dialectical method proceed from the fact that in reality objects and phenomena are interconnected and interdependent. At the same time, the Marxist dialectical method emphasizes the existence of an organic, i.e. the necessary interconnection of phenomena in the world, forming a single natural process of development.

This position of the Marxist dialectical method is of inestimable importance in the struggle against modern bourgeois idealist philosophy, which is trying to undermine the idea, the regularities in nature and society. Dragging idealism into science, bourgeois scientists deny the causality of intra-atomic processes and proclaim the “free will” of the atom, consider the development of species in biology as the result of random mutations not subject to any regularity, and so on. Such an approach leads, in essence, to the elimination of science, which cannot develop without the recognition of objective laws. The task of science is to discover, behind the chaos of accidents that appear on the surface of phenomena, the internal regularity to which they obey. Therefore, science is the enemy of chance. Knowledge of the patterns of the world makes it possible to foresee the course of events, to actively overcome unfavorable accidents, to subordinate the elemental forces of nature to the active transforming activity of man.

The study of phenomena in their mutual connection shows that they act on each other, therefore, they change. Therefore, the Marxist dialectical method rejects the dogmas of metaphysics, which, considering phenomena in isolation from each other, takes them in a state of rest and immobility, stagnation and immutability. Marxist dialectics, on the other hand, views nature as a process in which all phenomena undergo continuous change. “... All nature,” Engels wrote in “Dialectics of Nature,” “from its smallest particles to the greatest bodies, from a grain of sand to the sun, from the protist to man, is in eternal emergence and destruction, in a continuous flow, in relentless movement and change.

Change, development, the Marxist dialectical method regards as renewal, as the birth of the new and the withering away of the old. Such an understanding of development, Lenin emphasized, is incomparably richer in content than the current idea of evolution, which reduces development to a simple growth, increase or decrease of what exists. Constant creation and destruction, the withering away of the old and the growth of the new is the law of development.

This proposition of Marxist dialectics leads to the conclusion, extremely important in theoretical and practical respects, that the new is invincible. This conclusion summarizes the great experience of historical development, showing that, despite all the attempts of capitalist reaction to reverse the course of history, the progressive forces, the forces of socialism and democracy, are growing and strengthening, the new is victorious.

Having established that nature is in a state of constant movement, change and development, Marxist dialectics also gave an answer to the question of how this movement occurs, how the new arises and the old dies off. Marxist dialectics rejected the conjectures of metaphysicians that development is reduced only to growth, to a quantitative increase or decrease, allegedly occurring exclusively gradually. In reality, as Marx and Engels showed, there is a natural connection between quantitative and qualitative changes. This connection is expressed by the law of the transition of quantity into quality, which establishes that gradual quantitative changes lead at a certain stage of development to spasmodic qualitative changes. Engels showed that this law operates throughout nature: thus, for example, in physics, changes in the aggregate states of bodies represent the result of a quantitative change in their inherent motion; Engels called chemistry the science of the qualitative changes in bodies that occur under the influence of changes in the quantitative composition. The creation by the great Russian chemist D.I. Mendeleev of the periodic system of elements and his prediction of the discovery of new, hitherto unknown elements, F. Engels assessed as a scientific feat, resulting from the unconscious application of the law of the transition of quantity into quality. In "Capital" K. Marx showed the operation of this universal law in the economic development of capitalist society (for example, the transformation of money into capital).

The Marxist dialectical method reveals the connection between gradual changes and leaps, between evolution and revolution. The movement has a twofold form - evolutionary and revolutionary. These forms of movement are naturally interconnected, because. evolutionary development prepares the revolution, and the latter completes the evolution and contributes to its further work.

“... Development is spasmodic, catastrophic, revolutionary; - "breaks of gradualness"; the transformation of quantity into quality,” this is how V.I. Lenin in the article "Karl Marx". Development moves from minor and hidden quantitative changes to open, fundamental, qualitative changes; at the same time, qualitative changes occur in the form of an abrupt transition from one state to another state not by chance, but naturally, as a result of the accumulation of imperceptible and gradual quantitative changes. It follows from this that the jump transition represents:

1) a fundamental qualitative change that changes the structure of an object, its essential features and properties;

2) an open, explicit change that resolves contradictions that gradually, imperceptibly accumulated during the period of evolutionary development;

3) a rapid change compared to the previous period of evolutionary preparation, which signifies a radical turn in the course of development.

A jump-like transition from one state to another can have a different form. The transition from the old quality to the new in a society divided into hostile classes inevitably takes the form of an explosion. But this form of transition from the old to the new is by no means obligatory for a society without hostile classes. Thus, for example, the transition from the bourgeois, individual-peasant system to the socialist, collective-farm system in agriculture The USSR represented a revolutionary upheaval, which, however, took place not in the order of an explosion, but in the order of a gradual transition. Such a transition became possible “because it was a revolution from above, that the coup was carried out on the initiative of the existing government with the support of the main masses of the peasantry,” Stalin wrote in his work Marxism and Linguistics. This provision reveals the features of the operation of the considered law of dialectics in the conditions of the socialist system. (The collapse of the USSR was a counter-revolutionary coup, which took place not as an explosion, but as a gradual transition, because it was a counter-revolution from above - a coup carried out on the initiative of some representatives of the leadership of the USSR).

In contrast to metaphysics, which considers the process of development as a movement in a circle, as a repetition of the past, dialectics considers that the process of development is a progressive movement, movement along an ascending line, from simple to complex, from lower to higher. This proposition on progressive development expresses the main content of the law of dialectics, which Marx and Engels called the law of "the negation of negation."

The transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state can be explained only on the basis of studying those internal contradictions that are characteristic of developing phenomena. Marxist dialectics elucidated the inner content of the process of development, made it possible to understand the source of development, its driving force. The law of mutual penetration and struggle of opposites, formulated by Marx and Engels, reveals the source of development. According to this law, all processes in nature are determined by the interaction and struggle of opposing forces and tendencies. As Engels noted, in physics we are dealing with such opposites as, for example, positive and negative electricity; all chemical processes are reduced to the phenomena of chemical attraction and repulsion; in organic life, starting from a simple cell, every step forward to the most complex plant, on the one hand, and to man, on the other, is made through a constant struggle of heredity and adaptation; in the history of society, movement through the struggle of opposites appears especially clearly in all critical epochs, when the contradictions between the new productive forces and the obsolete production relations are resolved.

The significance of the dialectical law of the unity and struggle of opposites was thoroughly clarified by Lenin. Creatively developing the issues of materialistic dialectics, he emphasized that the essence of dialectics, its core is the recognition of an internal source of development of the struggle of opposites: or devil) of dialectics” (Lenin V.I., Philosophical Notebooks).

IN AND. Lenin opposed two concepts of development to each other - the evolutionist one, which considers development as a simple increase or decrease, as a repetition, and the dialectical one, which considers development as a struggle of opposites. The first concept does not make it possible to understand the source of development, its driving forces, it leaves this source in the shade or transfers it to the outside, attributing the driving force to God, the subject. The second concept reveals the deepest source of movement, development. “The first concept is dead, poor, dry. The second is vital. Only the second gives the key to the "self-movement" of all things; only it gives the key to the "leaps", to the "break in gradualness", to the "transformation into the opposite", to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.

“The condition for the cognition of all the processes of the world in their “self-movement”, in their spontaneous development, in their living life, is their cognition as a unity of opposites,” Lenin pointed out.
Marxist dialectics proceeds from the fact that all phenomena of nature and society are characterized by internal contradictions, that they all have their own negative and positive side, their past and future, their own dying and developing. The struggle of these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between the dying and the emerging, between the developing ego, which is becoming obsolete, constitutes the inner content of the process of development, the inner content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative ones. Therefore, the process of development from the lowest to the highest proceeds not in the order of the harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but in the order of the disclosure of contradictions inherent in objects, phenomena, in the order of the “struggle” of opposing tendencies acting on the basis of these contradictions.

The Marxist dialectical method requires a concrete analysis of the form and nature of the contradictions. It is necessary to distinguish between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions. In a society divided into hostile classes, contradictions inevitably turn into opposites, leading to social conflicts and explosions. In a society that does not know hostile classes, for example, in a socialist society, contradictions also arise. But with a correct policy of the governing bodies, these contradictions will not turn into opposites, things will not come to a conflict between the relations of production and the productive forces of society. The correct policy of the Communist Parties and the Soviet state makes it possible to reveal and overcome these contradictions in a timely manner, preventing them from aggravating to the point of conflict. Criticism and self-criticism are the most important means of revealing and resolving the contradictions that arise in socialist society; it helps the Party to discover them in a timely manner, outline the necessary practical measures, and mobilize the masses to overcome contradictions. (This is with the right policy. And with the wrong one, social contradictions are quite capable of reaching the level of conflict, the development of which can be the restoration of capitalist production relations).

The Marxist dialectical method is of tremendous importance for the practical activity of the Communist Party. Lenin noted that Marx defined the main task of the tactics of the proletariat in strict accordance with the basic premises of his materialist-dialectical worldview. Marxist tactics require an objective account of the correlation of class forces, the relationships of all classes, and, consequently, an account of the objective stage of development of a given society and its relations with other societies. At the same time, as Lenin emphasized, all classes and all countries are considered not in an immobile state, but in their movement, in their dialectical development.

Guided by the Marxist dialectical method, the proletarian party examines social life and social movements not from the point of view of some abstract, preconceived idea, but from the point of view of the conditions that gave rise to them. It all depends on the conditions, place and time. The Marxist dialectical method equips the party of the proletariat with an understanding of the need to orient itself in politics to those strata of society that are developing and have a future, even if they do not represent the prevailing force at the given moment. In order not to err in politics, one must look forward, not backward.

The Marxist dialectical method substantiates the revolutionary policy of the proletarian party and reveals the inconsistency of the reformist policy. In order not to err in politics, one must be a revolutionary, not a reformist. The requirement of the Marxist dialectical method to consider the process of development as a process of revealing internal contradictions leads to the same conclusion, as a result of overcoming which there is a transition from the lower to the higher. It follows from this that the contradictions of the capitalist order cannot be glossed over, as the reformists do, but they must be opened up and unwound, not to put out the class struggle, but to carry it through to the end. The exposure of the hostile essence of reformist theories raises the mobilization readiness of the working people against their class enemies, teaches them to be irreconcilable and firm in the struggle against enemies, educating the working people in the spirit of high political vigilance.

Questions seemed to him insignificant without connection with a specific surrounding world. Marx expressed his attitude to philosophy with his inherent sharpness in the work "German Ideology" with the words: "Philosophy and the study of the real world are related to each other, like onanism and sexual love." At the same time, Marx not only knew perfectly well, but also masterfully applied dialectical approaches in his works, including Capital. Marx spoke of "materialist dialectics" and "materialist understanding of history", which Friedrich Engels later referred to as "historical materialism". The term "dialectical materialism" was introduced into Marxist literature by the Russian Marxist Georgy Plekhanov. Vladimir Lenin actively used this term in his works.

The next stage in the development of materialist dialectics was the work of G. Lukacs History and class consciousness, where he defined the orthodoxy of Marxism on the basis of loyalty to the Marxist method, and not to dogmas. For this book, together with the work of Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy became the subject of condemnation at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern by Grigory Zinoviev. In biology and other sciences, the promoters of dialectical materialism were Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin.

Popper notes that the vagueness of the basic concepts of dialectics (“contradiction”, “struggle”, “denial”) leads to the degeneration of dialectical materialism into pure sophistry, making any criticism meaningless under the pretext of “misunderstanding” of the dialectical method by critics, which further serves as a prerequisite for the development "dialectical" dogmatism and the cessation of all development of philosophical thought.

- Popper K. Logic and the growth of scientific knowledge. - M ., 1983. - S. 246.

At the same time, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences Metlov V.I. believes that Popper's criticism of dialectics is untenable, justifying it as follows:

It is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that the inconsistency of the proper dialectical order arises in Hegel in fact in the course and on the basis of the relationship between the subject and object levels as a form of development of the relationship between the "I" and the "thing" and that, consequently, the possibility of a collision of this kind inconsistency with rational thinking, at the level of which linguistic and logical activity is described, subject to the action of the well-known law of formal logic - logic, as already noted, of the same level, is completely excluded here, and Popper's criticism of dialectics misses the mark. ... Dialectical contradiction is ultimately a certain type of relationship between subject and object and, further, material and ideal, it is not something completed once and for all, it has its own history, unfolding from initial forms, antinomy, to more developed forms in which the removal of inconsistency is carried out, the acquisition by the subject of a thing in itself, overcoming alienation, both epistemological (I. Kant) and social (A. Smith). This two-dimensionality of the dialectical contradiction, which is realized in the relationship between the named levels, excludes the very possibility of correlating it with a formal-logical contradiction, and therefore makes criticism of Popper's type of dialectics irrelevant.

Dogmatism

A clear confirmation of Popper's words was the fate of dialectical materialism in the USSR and other socialist countries. The tough and brutal struggle for power, the desire to introduce unanimity and suppress any intellectual competition led to the fact that dialectical materialism became a quasi-religious cult with its own “ scripture"- the works of the "classics of Marxism-Leninism" considered infallible, quotes from which were absolute arguments in any discussion. The dogmatism of dialectical materialism found its extreme expression in the Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which became the catechism of this cult.

Notes

Literature

Ai Si-chi. Lectures on Dialectical Materialism. M., 1959.
Cassidy F. H. Heraclitus and Dialectical Materialism // Questions of Philosophy. 2009. No. 3. P.142-146.
Oizerman T. I. Dialectical materialism and the history of philosophy (historical and philosophical essays). Moscow: Thought, 1979 (2nd edition - 1982, on English language- Dialectical Materialism and the History of Philosophy: Essays on the History of Philosophy, Moscow: Progress, 1984).
Rutkevich M. N. Dialectical materialism. M., 1973.

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Dialectical materialism in the philosophy of Marxism is scientific outlook, a general method of knowing the world, the science of the most general laws of motion and development of nature, society and thinking. Dialectical materialism is based on the achievements of science and advanced social practice, constantly developing and enriching along with their progress. The philosophy of Marxism is materialistic, since it proceeds from the recognition of matter as the only basis of the world, considers consciousness as a property of a highly organized form of matter, a function of the brain, a reflection of the objective world. This philosophy is called dialectical, since it recognizes the universal interconnection of objects and phenomena of the world, the movement and development of the world as a result of internal contradictions operating in it. Dialectical materialism is a form of materialism, which is the result of the entire previous history of the development of philosophical thought.

The emergence of this new form of materialistic philosophy in the middle of the XIX century. associated with the name of K. Marx and F. Engels. The philosophy of Marxism, preserving the traditions and achievements of former materialism, overcomes its historical limitations. This concerns, first of all, the fundamental problems of ontology.

Dialectical materialism is based on the conclusions of science, is a theoretical generalization of the experience of the development of human civilization and culture. In this philosophy, dialectics and materialism are merged into a single worldview, which acquired the necessary integrity by extending it to an understanding of the history of society.

So, let's consider some aspects of the concept of dialectics in the work of Marx and Engels. Marx, like Feuerbach, was critical of the Hegelian dialectic. Feuerbach was the first of Hegel's students to become disillusioned with his method and criticize it. This was one of highlights Feuerbach's transition from idealism to materialism. But he criticized the idealistic foundation, the foundation of Hegelian dialectics, but did not investigate the dialectical method itself.

The main question of Marx's critical analysis was the question of the research effectiveness of the dialectical methodology discovered by Hegel. Together with the acquisition of a communist worldview, Marx more and more turns to the study of real phenomena and processes of past and present history. To understand practical problems - production, political events, etc. - Hegelian methodology proved unsuitable.

As Marx noted, Hegel simultaneously discovered dialectics and mystified it, presenting it as a sphere independent of reality, pure laws of absolute reason. Marx called his direction of using the foundations of Hegelian dialectics “turning over” on its feet, while in Hegel it “stands on its head”. Marx, and then Engels, drew attention to the fact that the fundamental dialectical dependencies and relationships (indicated and logically analyzed by Hegel) are also present in the real life processes of nature, society, and in everyday practical reality. Marx formulated this conclusion as follows: “My dialectical method is fundamentally not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he transforms even under the name of an idea into an independent subject, is the demiurge of the real, which constitutes only its external manifestation. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing but the material, transplanted into the human head and transformed in it.

In the book “Anti-Dühring” (1876-1878), F. Engels systematically and popularly explained how the laws and categories of dialectics manifest themselves in inanimate and living nature, social development, and spiritual creativity, and showed what great importance they have for the Marxist worldview. In particular, he pointed out the great importance of the dialectical understanding of the world as anti-dogmatism, the fundamental rejection of any results of knowledge and practice as absolute, completing history.

Dialectics is also defined by Engels as the science “about the universal laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought”. Engels also emphasizes this idea in his notes on the dialectic of nature, pointing out that the laws of dialectics "should be valid both for movement in nature and human history, and for the movement of thought." Marxist philosophy is a dialectical unity of worldview and method as a doctrine of the universal laws of being and cognition based on a materialistic solution to the fundamental question of philosophy. Therefore, it is necessary for the sciences, because. supplies them general concepts and categories for correct worldview and methodological assessments of scientific hypotheses and theories, develops the theoretical thinking of scientists and gives them a scientific philosophical method of cognition.

Only when armed with the dialectical method, natural science is able, F. Engels wrote, to get rid of, “on the one hand, from any special natural philosophy standing outside and above it, on the other hand, from its own limited method of thinking inherited from English empiricism” . Ideas about the relationship between dialectical materialism and natural science were further developed by Engels in Dialectics of Nature, work on which, interrupted in connection with the writing of another philosophical work, Anti-Dühring, he continued later.

The main task that Engels set himself when working on the “Dialectics of Nature” was to “be convinced of the truth ... that in nature, through the chaos of countless changes, the same dialectical laws of motion make their way, which in history dominate the apparent coincidence of events…” This theoretical task was innovative, since in Hegelian philosophy nature was understood as not developing in time, but passing through countless cycles of the same changes.

In Dialectics of Nature, Engels substantiates the idea that the development of the natural sciences, starting from the Renaissance, proceeded in such a way that by the middle of the 19th century, science itself, without realizing this, approaches a dialectical understanding of nature. Engels considered three great discoveries in the natural sciences of the 19th century as evidence and proof of this - the discovery of the organic cell, the law of conservation and transformation of energy and the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin. In them Engels sees scientific proof the dialectics of nature itself (objective dialectics), which consists in the interconnection of all levels of the material world, in the variability and inconsistency of nature.

Engels tried to classify the forms of motion of matter (and, accordingly, the sciences that study certain forms of motion). In fact, he hypothesized the general connection and development of the material world and tried to draw a schematic sketch of the general picture of nature. He received a hierarchical system in which every “higher” contains, as a subordinate and particular moment, its “lower”, but it is no longer reduced to it. (The same dialectical train of thought was used by Marx and Engels to reproduce the historical movement of social formations). The highest form of the motion of matter, according to Engels, is social. The lowest is simple spatial movement. The main forms, each of which is investigated by a certain natural science, are mechanical, physical, chemical and biological. The transition from the biological form of the movement of matter to the social, that is, from nature to human society, Engels explains in the labor theory of the origin of man.

Engels criticizes Dühring in relation to the problem of the relationship between matter and motion. Dühring not only did not advance here in comparison with the metaphysical materialists of the eighteenth century, but even remained behind them, having initially taken the position of vulgar materialism. He reduced movement to its supposedly "basic form," mechanical movement, which manifests itself as a result of an initial state of equilibrium. Engels also explains that absolute rest is an idealization, for "all rest, all equilibrium is only relative, they make sense only in relation to one or another definite form of motion." Movement is “a way of being (DASEINSWEISE) of matter”, and not some kind of mechanical “force” (mechanical movement) introduced from the outside, as the materialists of the 17th - 18th centuries believed. .

The development of natural science already in the 19th and 20th centuries introduced so many new things that Engels' ideas about the specific forms of the motion of matter became outdated. But the general dialectical approach to understanding the results of the development of science, to the interpretation of nature, retains its significance in our time.

The essence and main features of the revolutionary revolution accomplished by Marx and Engels in philosophy lie in the spread of materialism to the understanding of the history of society, in substantiating the role of social practice in cognition, in the organic combination and creative development of materialism and dialectics. Therefore, the philosophy of Marxism is called dialectical and historical materialism.

Development philosophical foundations Marxism in the radically changed historical conditions of the beginning of the 20th century was carried out by V.I. Lenin (1870-1924).

Already in the early works of V.I. Lenin, in polemics with populists, legal Marxists, etc. some general philosophical questions. However, he began to conduct special studies in the field of philosophy somewhat later. The first significant contribution to the philosophical theory of Marxism was the ideas of his work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

In this book, Lenin gives the following definition of matter: “Matter is philosophical category to designate objective reality, which is given to a person in his sensations, which is copied, photographed, displayed by our sensations, existing independently of them. In this definition, the idea that had already been outlined by Holbach and was developed by some other thinkers (in particular, N.G. Chernyshevsky and G.V. Plekhanov) was completed.

Here matter is defined through a comparison of the spiritual and the material. Matter is eternal, exists outside of human consciousness and is completely indifferent to what we think about it. The concept of matter is only an approximate reflection of this objective reality. That is, the concept of matter in general is not a formal designation, not a conventional symbol for a multitude of things, but a reflection of the essence of each of them and their totality, the basis of being that exists in everything and generates everything that exists. This definition of matter expresses the essence of materialism as a doctrine. It is a further development of the fundamental question of philosophy, and this is its ideological significance.

Historical materialism - component Marxist-Leninist philosophy and at the same time a general sociological theory, the science of the general and specific laws of the functioning and development of socio-economic formations.

As a philosophical concept of the historical process, historical materialism is the extension of the principles of dialectical materialism to the realm of social phenomena. This completion of materialism "to the top" meant the creation of a fundamentally new form of materialism and marked the emergence of scientific sociology. In the words of Lenin, "Consciousness of the inconsistency, incompleteness, one-sidedness of the old materialism led Marx to the conviction of the need to 'harmonize the science of society with a materialistic foundation and restructure it in accordance with this foundation'."

The main epistemological principle of Marxist philosophy about the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness is concretized in historical materialism as the recognition of the primacy of social being and the secondary nature of social consciousness. Social being acts as a set of material social processes that exist independently of the will and consciousness of an individual or society as a whole, and social consciousness is a reflection of social being.

Historical materialism was concretized and developed, turning into a rigorous scientific theory in the course of a detailed analysis of social reality. A concise and holistic formulation of the basic principles of historical materialism is given by Marx in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy: “In the social production of their life,” he wrote, “people enter into certain, necessary, relations of production that do not depend on their will, relations of production that correspond to a certain stage of development of their material productive forces. The totality of these productive relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual processes of life in general. Not the consciousness of people determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness.

Historical materialism is a realistic conception of society that can serve as a guide to the knowledge and transformation of society.

materialism idealism knowledge decartes

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM - WORLD VIEW OF THE MARXIST-LENIN PARTY

V. P. CHERTKOV

Marxism, as defined by Comrade Stalin, is "the science of the laws of development of nature and society, the science of the revolution of the oppressed and exploited masses, the science of the victory of socialism in all countries, the science of building a communist society."(I. V. Stalin, Marxism and questions of linguistics, Gospolitizdat, 1952, pp. 54-55)Guided by this great revolutionary science, the Communist Party clearly defined the paths of the working people's struggle to liberate the landowners and capitalists from the power, led the workers and peasants to victory over the exploiters, led the Soviet people onto the broad and bright path of communism, made the Soviet country powerful and invincible, turned it into a bulwark of world peace, a bulwark of democracy and socialism.

Dialectical materialism is the only scientific worldview and constitutes the theoretical foundation of communism.

In his work “On Dialectical and Historical Materialism”, I. V. Stalin gave the following definition of dialectical materialism:

“Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party. It is called dialectical materialism because its approach to natural phenomena, its method of studying natural phenomena, its method of knowing these phenomena is dialectical, and its interpretation of natural phenomena, its understanding of natural phenomena, its theory is materialistic. (JV Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 1952, p. 574).

The creation of dialectical materialism by Marx and Engels was their great scientific feat. Marx and Engels generalized and critically reworked the achievements of philosophical thought, generalized and creatively rethought the achievements of the natural and social sciences, as well as the entire experience of the struggle of the working masses against exploitation and oppression.

Using all the best that has been accumulated by mankind over the previous millennia, Marx and Engels made a revolutionary revolution in philosophy, created a qualitatively new philosophy.

The essence of the revolutionary upheaval carried out in philosophy by the founders of Marxism is that philosophy, for the first time in the history of mankind, has become a science that equips people with knowledge of the laws of development of nature and society, serving as an instrument of struggle for the victory of communism. The philosophical systems of the past were distinguished by the fact that their creators, not being able to give a single coherent picture of the world, lumped together a wide variety of facts, conclusions, hypotheses and just fantasies, claimed to know the absolute truth in the final instance and thereby essentially limited the living process of cognition. human laws of nature and society.

The discovery of Marx and Engels meant the end of the old philosophy, which could not yet be called scientific, and the beginning of a new, scientific period in the history of philosophy. Marxist philosophy is not a science above other sciences. Dialectical materialism is an instrument of scientific research. It permeates all the sciences of nature and society, and is itself constantly enriched by new achievements in the sciences and in the practice of building socialism and communism.

Marxism marked a qualitatively new stage in the development of philosophical thought, and in the sense that only in the person of Marxism did philosophy become the banner of the masses.

JV Stalin points out that Marxism “is not just a philosophical doctrine. It is the teaching of the proletarian masses, their banner, it is revered and the proletarians of the world "bow down" before it. Consequently, Marx and Engels are not just the founders of any philosophical "school" - they are the living leaders of the living proletarian movement, which is growing and getting stronger every day" (JV Stalin, Soch., vol. 1, p. 350).

Therefore, A. A. Zhdanov, criticizing in a philosophical discussion the incorrect understanding of the history of philosophy as a simple change from one philosophical school to another, noted that “with the advent of Marxism as the scientific worldview of the proletariat, the old period in the history of philosophy ends, when philosophy was the occupation of individuals, the property of philosophical schools, consisting of a small number of philosophers and their students, closed, divorced from life, from the people, alien to the people.

Marxism is not such a philosophical school. On the contrary, it is the overcoming of the old philosophy, when philosophy was the property of a select few - the aristocracy of the spirit, and the beginning of a completely new period in the history of philosophy, when it became a scientific weapon in the hands of the proletarian masses fighting for their liberation from capitalism. (A. A. Zhdanov, Speech at a discussion on the book by G. F. Aleksandrov “The History of Western European Philosophy”, Gospolitizdat, 1952, p. 12).

The ideas of Marxist philosophy, taking possession of the masses, themselves become a material force. Pre-Marxist philosophical teachings did not and could not have such power.

The profoundly fundamental difference between dialectical materialism and previous philosophical systems lies in the fact that it serves as a powerful instrument of practical influence on the world, an instrument of knowledge and change of the world.

Marx, at the beginning of his revolutionary activity, said that if in the old days philosophers saw their task only in explaining the world in one way or another, then a new, revolutionary philosophy should teach how to change it. Dialectical materialism, created by Marx and Engels and further developed by Lenin and Stalin, is a formidable theoretical weapon in the hands of the working class fighting against capitalism, for socialism and communism.

Under the banner of Marxism-Leninism Communist Party Soviet Union and the Soviet people radically changed the face of old Russia.

Reflecting the majestic results of the path traversed by the party, the Charter adopted at the 19th Party Congress says: “The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, having organized an alliance of the working class and the working peasantry, achieved, as a result of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, the overthrow of the power of the capitalists and landowners, the organization of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the liquidation capitalism, the destruction of the exploitation of man by man and ensured the construction of a socialist society.

Today, the Charter states further, the main tasks of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union are to build a communist society through a gradual transition from socialism to communism, continuously raise the material and cultural level of society, educate members of society in the spirit of internationalism and establish fraternal ties with working people of all countries, to strengthen in every possible way the active defense of the Soviet Motherland against the aggressive actions of its enemies. (Charter of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Gospolitizdat, 1952, pp. 3-4).

In the face of new tasks, the Party is elevating the role and significance of the Soviet socialist ideology even higher, setting itself the goal of using to the fullest extent the mobilizing, organizing and transforming power of the great ideas of Marxism-Leninism in the interests of communist construction, in the interests of strengthening peace throughout the world.

The 19th Party Congress set the task of intensifying ideological work, systematically raising and improving the scientific and political training of cadres, directing all means of ideological influence on the communist education of the Soviet people.

The ideas of Marxism-Leninism, the ideas of J. V. Stalin's brilliant work "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR", J. V. Stalin's speech at the closing session of the 19th Party Congress, and the decisions of the 19th Party Congress serve as an inspiring guide for all progressive mankind.

Mastering this vast theoretical wealth is the duty of every conscious builder of communist society, of every participant in the world communist movement.

In a report at the 19th Party Congress, Comrade Malenkov said: “The teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin give our Party invincible strength, the ability to pave new paths in history, to clearly see the goal of our forward movement, to win and consolidate victories faster and more firmly.

Leninist-Stalinist ideas illuminate with the bright light of revolutionary theory the tasks and prospects of the struggle of the popular masses of all countries against imperialism, for peace, democracy and socialism. XIXParty Congress on the work of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Gospolitizdat, 1952, pp. 107-108).

* * *

A worldview is a system of views on the world as a whole, those basic principles with which people approach the reality around them and explain it, and by which they are guided in their practical activities.

Whatever great discoveries may have taken place in individual areas of nature, they have not yet given and cannot give a unified understanding of nature, an understanding of it as a whole. Can, for example, this or that discovery in the field of chemical phenomena, this or that chemical laws constitute a worldview, give an understanding of nature as a whole? Of course not, because, however important they may be, they are valid only for narrowly limited limits - for the field of chemical phenomena, and do not reveal the essence of many other phenomena.

The same must be said about all other sciences. None of the so-called concrete sciences can give a complete picture of the world, can not eliminate the need to develop a holistic worldview.

There have been many attempts in history to create a picture of the world as a whole by extending the laws of one of the specific sciences to all phenomena of nature and society. Thus, in the 18th century, philosophers extended the laws of mechanics not only to all natural phenomena, but also tried to interpret social phenomena with the help of them. The transfer of the laws of Darwinism to society became widespread in bourgeois philosophy and sociology in the second half of the 19th century, which served as the theoretical basis for the emergence of such a reactionary trend in sociology as social Darwinism.

Often the opposite also happened: there were attempts to extend social laws to natural phenomena, for example, the life of insects was likened to the activities of the state, it was argued that “animals also work”, etc.

Attempts to transfer the laws inherent in one phenomenon to another are anti-scientific and reactionary. Reactionary theories of this kind flourish especially in the era of imperialism, when the defenders of decaying capitalism deliberately distort science, striving at all costs to justify capitalism, to justify aggressive predatory wars.

To develop a comprehensive and holistic worldview, it is necessary to generalize the laws of nature and society, the discovery of general laws inherent in all phenomena, objects, processes of reality - such laws that could serve as guiding, initial principles when approaching a wide variety of phenomena of reality. The discovery of such laws, the development of a way to approach reality and its interpretation is the task of a special science - philosophy.

Speaking at a philosophical discussion in 1947, A. A. Zhdanov said: “ scientific history philosophy, therefore, is the history of the birth, emergence and development of the scientific materialistic worldview and its laws" (A. A. Zhdanov, Speech at a discussion on the book by G. F. Aleksandrov “The History of Western European Philosophy”, Gospolitizdat, 1952, p. 7).

This history of the birth and development of the scientific worldview does not represent some kind of autonomous process of the development of pure ideas that give rise to each other. In fact, certain discoveries in the field of philosophy always represent a conscious or unconscious generalization of factual knowledge about nature, a conscious or unconscious reflection of certain needs for the further development of social life.

Engels points out that “philosophers were not pushed forward by the force of pure thinking alone, as they imagined. Against. In fact, they were pushed forward mainly by the powerful, more and more rapid and more and more rapid development of natural science and industry. (F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Gopolitizdat, 1952, p. 18).

The process of development of philosophical thought was influenced not only by production, not only by the development of productive forces, but also by the production, social relations of people. Philosophical ideas, being a superstructure over the real basis of this or that society, very often reflected the changes taking place in the sphere of production, and the achievements of the natural sciences in a perverted, put on its head form.

This perversion was due to the nature of social relations in class, antagonistic social formations, the class position of the authors of philosophical systems and teachings. The class struggle, the struggle between progressive and reactionary social forces, was reflected in philosophy in the form of a struggle between opposing ideological trends. Thus, due to the fact that society was split into hostile classes and moved forward by their mutual struggle, the history of philosophical thought appeared as the history of the struggle of ideas, reflecting the history of the struggle of classes.

Materialism arose and developed in a fierce struggle with idealism, with various idealistic currents. The entire history of philosophy is the history of the struggle between the main camps, parties in philosophy, reflecting the struggle of the social classes and the parties representing their interests.

“The latest philosophy,” said Lenin, “is just as partisan as it was two thousand years ago.” (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 14, ed. 4, p. 343).

Thus, the history of philosophy is the history of the struggle between two opposite camps - materialism and idealism. Materialists strove for a correct explanation of reality, based on the objective laws of reality, nature. On the contrary, the idealists tried to explain the world, nature, proceeding not from nature itself, but with the help of fictitious ideal, ultimately divine forces.

The idealistic worldview is just as unscientific and reactionary as the religion with which idealism shares common roots. Idealism considers the world as the embodiment of the "absolute idea", "world mind", "consciousness". From the point of view of idealism, the phenomena and objects of nature surrounding us - the whole world as a whole - do not exist on their own, but are allegedly the product of otherworldly forces that stand above nature.

Idealists, especially of the kind German philosopher Hegel, they talk a lot about the unity of the world, that they supposedly managed to develop a single, integral understanding of reality. But these are just words. In fact, the idealists are unable to find a real unity of all the phenomena of the world and speak of a fictitious, completely fantastic unity.

Any idealism, whether it portrays the world as created by otherworldly, supernatural forces, or takes human consciousness as a primary given, inevitably leads to religion, to priesthood. It is therefore not accidental that the idealist Hegel himself spoke of the "world mind" as the idea of the "world-holder", i.e. God, and that with religion.This is the reactionary essence of the idealistic worldview, hostile to science.

Idealistic, of course, are themselves religious views, also claiming to be a worldview. The religious worldview, which distorts the real picture of the world, is reactionary through and through. Both religion and idealism serve the bourgeoisie as an instrument for the spiritual enslavement of the working people.

Religion claims that all the diverse phenomena of nature and society are one, for all of them are allegedly “created by God” and owe all their further existence to God. But this "unity" is not real, but invented by theologians, fantastic. As science and everyday practical activity of people show, objects and phenomena of reality arise and exist due to natural, material causes. Claiming that the world was created by a higher power, religious outlook does not see a really existing connection between various natural phenomena that determine each other, give rise to each other.

A unified view of nature must be sought not in the artificial imposition of laws inherent in one phenomenon on completely different phenomena and not in a fictional, fantastic, divine and other supernatural "unity", but in the real unity of the things themselves, the phenomena of living and inanimate nature. The unity of the world lies in its materiality. Therefore, the only scientific worldview is the materialistic worldview in its modern, highest form - dialectical materialism. Marx's teaching, Lenin wrote, "is full and harmonious, giving people an integral world outlook, irreconcilable with any superstition, with any reaction, with any defense of bourgeois oppression" (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 19, ed. 4, p. 3).

But before it became possible to create a dialectical-materialist worldview, science had to go through a long and winding path of development, to create the necessary prerequisites for such a great discovery.

Comrade Stalin points out that "dialectical materialism is a product of the development of the sciences, including philosophy, over the previous period" (JV Stalin, Marxism and questions of linguistics, p. 34).

On the basis of the development of social life and, above all, the success of the process of production of material goods, more and more new acquisitions of the natural sciences, acquisitions in the field of the dialectical and materialistic understanding of nature and attempts at their philosophical generalization took place.

All the successes of the natural sciences and philosophy were ultimately caused by the needs of production, the needs of social practice. It was the development of social production during the period of the slave-owning system that brought to life, at first, a still undeveloped and undifferentiated science, which also included philosophical ideas.

The first attempts to develop a scientific worldview took place already in ancient times - in ancient China, India, and then in ancient greece. ancient greek philosophers, materialists and dialecticians, considered the world as not created by any of the gods and existing independently of the consciousness of people. The most prominent of them, Heraclitus, taught that the world is one, that everything in nature is in a state of change and development.

Ancient thinkers imagined nature so generally that they did not see the deep differences that exist between its individual phenomena. Their idea of nature was still naive. But the idea that nature exists by itself and is eternally changing was extremely fruitful and progressive, it was not in vain and left a deep mark on the history of science.

A bold attempt to draw a unified picture of the world was made by the French materialist philosophers of the 18th century - Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach and others.

Being the ideologists of the bourgeoisie at that period of its development, when it was a progressive class that moved forward the development of the productive forces of society, the French materialists defended the advanced philosophical ideas: resolutely opposed the religious world outlook and tried to explain all natural phenomena on a scientific basis. However, the level of development of the sciences of that time did not yet make it possible to discover the true interdependence of natural phenomena, did not make it possible to trace complex dialectical transitions from one phenomenon to another, the process of transformation of one phenomenon into another. Therefore, the French materialist philosophers of the 18th century, while remaining metaphysicians on the whole, expressed only a few conjectures about development. In addition, French thinkers, betraying their own intentions to show the world as a whole, when considering social phenomena, switched to positions of idealism, since they were not able to reveal the material foundations of society. It is clear that the worldview that French materialism gave was not and could not be consistent, strictly scientific and integral.

The further development of the natural sciences and social practice gave a new impetus to the development of philosophical thought.

At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, as Engels points out, “geology, embryology, the physiology of plants and animals, and organic chemistry were already sufficiently developed, and ... on the basis of these new sciences, brilliant conjectures were already emerging everywhere, anticipating later theory of development ... " (F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, 1952, p. 21).

Thus, the development of natural science, which reflected the successes in the development of production, invariably and with increasing perseverance put forward the question of a dialectical understanding of nature.

In the first third of the 19th century, Hegel tried to connect all the phenomena of the world with the idea of the commonality of their development. But this attempt was not successful. Idealist philosophy Hegel was a reaction to French materialism. As the ideologist of the German bourgeoisie, who were afraid of the movement from below, Hegel was a conservative thinker. And although Hegel was familiar with the most important achievements of the sciences of his time and drew the very idea of universal development from objective reality, he, due to the reactionary nature of his political views presented all this in a perverted form.

Hegel declared that the unity of the world does not consist in its materiality, but in the fact that everything is a product of the spirit. He declared all natural phenomena to be stages in the development of the “absolute idea” he invented. Thus, according to his system, the world has a beginning and an end, its development “begins” from the moment when the “world spirit” supposedly began the process of its “self-knowledge”, and “ends” when the same “world spirit” in the person of philosophy itself Hegel completes his "self-knowledge".

Because of this, Hegel's idealistic dialectics was not, and could not be, a scientific method of cognition. Hegel's dialectic was directed to the past, not to the future. Hegel denied the development of nature, and sought to put an end to the development of society, wishing to perpetuate the Prussian-Junker estate-monarchist state in Germany.

However, the idea of development, although limited by the metaphysical system and understood by Hegel perversely, idealistically, was the "rational grain" of his philosophy, which was used by philosophy in its further movement forward.

Another German philosopher, Feuerbach, who played a prominent role in the history of philosophical thought as the man who restored materialism to its rights, along with Hegelian idealism rejected the dialectical view of the world. In addition, while explaining the phenomena of nature materialistically, Feuerbach, like all materialists of the pre-Marxian period, still interpreted the phenomena and laws of society idealistically.

Closer than all the thinkers of the past came to the scientific, dialectical-materialist worldview Russian philosophers - Herzen, Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov. These thinkers were revolutionary democrats who called on the masses to fight the serf system. At the same time, they sharply criticized capitalism with its false democracy and equality. All of them considered philosophy as a tool in the fight against social and national inequality.

It is precisely their revolutionary democratism that explains the fact that they subjected Hegelian idealism and its fear of everything advanced, revolutionary, to severe criticism. As materialists and dialecticians, they more fully imagined the movement of nature itself “from stone to man”, emphasized the decisive role of the masses in social progress and expressed a number of brilliant ideas about the internal causes of the development of society.

Having come closer than others to a scientific worldview, Russian philosophers, however, like all other materialists before Marx, failed to materialistically interpret the phenomena of society - they were thus unable to develop a complete and integral scientific worldview.

A truly scientific worldview, embracing all the phenomena of nature and society, was created only by the founders of communism - Marx and Engels. This worldview is dialectical materialism, which could be created only at a certain level of development of natural science and the social sciences, and above all with a certain maturity of the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

The success of the natural sciences was one of the most important prerequisites for the creation of dialectical materialism.

The first half of the 19th century was marked by major discoveries in the field of natural science. Among these discoveries it is necessary first of all to note the discovery of the law of conservation and transformation of energy.

The proposition about the unity of nature, about the indestructibility of matter and motion, was substantiated as early as the 18th century by the founder of Russian science, M.V. Lomonosov, who then formulated the law of conservation of matter and motion. In 1748, in a letter to Euler, Lomonosov wrote that “all the changes that take place in nature occur in such a way that how much is added to something, the same amount is taken away from the other. So, how much matter is added to one body, the same amount will be taken away from another, how many hours I use for sleep, the same amount I take away from vigilance, etc. This law of nature is so universal that it extends to the rules of motion: the body that excites impetus to the movement of another, as much loses its movement as it gives this movement away from itself to another body. (M. V. Lomonosov, Selected philosophical works, Gospolitizdat, 1950, p. 160).

Deepening Lomonosov's provisions on the conservation of matter and motion, the Russian scientist G. G. Hess established in 1840 the basic law connecting thermal phenomena with chemical ones, which was the first formulation of the law of conservation and transformation of energy in relation to these specific processes. In the early 1940s, R. Meyer, Joule, the Russian scientist E. Kh. Lenz, and others formulated the general law of the conservation and transformation of energy, which affirms the natural scientific understanding of the unity of various forms of the motion of matter.

The Russian scientist P. F. Goryaninov in 1827-1834, and then the Czech scientist Purkinje in 1837, laid the foundations of the cellular theory of the structure of living organisms. In 1838-1839, the German scientists Schleiden and Schwann developed the cell theory further, thus substantiating the unity of all phenomena of organic nature.

In 1859, Darwin came up with the theory of the development of the organic world, and in 1869, the great Russian scientist D. I. Mendeleev created a periodic system of chemical elements.

Engels considers the middle of the 19th century to be such a period in the development of natural science, “when the dialectical nature of the processes of nature began to be irresistibly imposed on thought and when, consequently, only dialectics could help natural science get out of theoretical difficulties” (F. Engels, Dialectic of Nature, 1952, p. 160).

Engels also wrote: “Dialectics liberated from mysticism becomes an absolute necessity for natural science, which has left the area where motionless categories were sufficient ...” (ibid., p. 160). In a word, natural science urgently demanded a transition from metaphysics to dialectics, from idealism to materialism, which takes nature in its dialectical development.

However, to create an integral scientific worldview, the discoveries of natural science alone were not enough. This required a certain maturity of social relations, necessary for people to see and understand the internal springs of the development of society.

In contrast to all social formations that preceded capitalism, the productive forces under capitalism develop extremely rapidly, and for the first time it becomes possible to notice the fact that it is production that forms the basis of community development that the changes taking place in production entail changes in all other areas of social life. At the same time, capitalism simplifies and exposes class contradictions. The bourgeois era, Marx and Engels point out in the Communist Manifesto, has replaced exploitation, cloaked in religious and political illusions, with "open, shameless, direct, callous exploitation." This circumstance made it possible to theoretically establish the fact that “social classes fighting each other are at every given moment the product of the relations of production and exchange, in a word, the economic relations of their era ...” (F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1952, p. 26).

The decisive condition for the creation of dialectical materialism was the emergence of a new class - the proletariat and its appearance on the arena of history as an independent political force.

The largest revolutionary actions of the proletariat during this period were the Lyon uprisings of 1831 and 1834 in France, the mass movement of workers in England, which received the name of the Chartist movement and reached its highest point in 1838-1842, the uprising of the Silesian weavers in 1844 in Germany. These historical events, points out Engels, "caused a decisive turn in the understanding of history." Thus, without the appearance of a revolutionary working class on the historical arena, it was impossible to scientifically understand the history of society, and without this understanding it was impossible to develop a scientific worldview.

The working class is the only class in capitalist society that, by virtue of its social position, is interested in creating a scientific world outlook, scientific philosophy. The working class is called upon by history to overthrow capitalism, put an end to all forms of economic, political and spiritual slavery forever, establish its own dictatorship and use it as a lever for building a classless, communist society. The working class is therefore vitally interested in creating a philosophy that would give a correct picture of the world and the opportunity not only to know the history of nature and society and the laws of their development at the present time, but also to foresee the course of events in the future, to master the laws of nature and society, to make them serve the interests of all mankind. This explains the fact that the enormous achievements of the sciences of the first half of the 19th century served precisely the ideologists of the proletariat as material for the development of a scientific worldview. The ideologists of the bourgeoisie, by virtue of their social position, did not and could not draw proper conclusions from the scientific discoveries of this period.

The proletariat sees and finds the only way to deliver itself from capitalist slavery only in a complete, radical change in the foundations of the capitalist system, in the further movement of society towards a new, higher social system. That is why the doctrine of dialectics about development and change, about the victory of the new over the old, is organically perceived by the proletariat as confirmation and illumination of its class aspirations. The revolutionary proletariat, its vanguard - the communist parties - do not see and cannot see any other means of fighting for their goals than the class struggle against the reactionary forces, against the exploiters. For the working class, materialist dialectics appears as a science that illuminates the revolutionary struggle of the masses: in the doctrine of dialectics that development is the result of contradictions, the struggle of opposites, the proletariat finds its natural theoretical weapon in the struggle against capitalism, for socialism.

“Just as philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat,” wrote Marx, “so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy...” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., vol. 1, 1938, p. 398).

Thus, having critically reworked everything advanced and progressive that had already been achieved in the history of human thought, Marx and Engels created an integral scientific worldview, placing it at the service of the interests of the proletariat.

Dialectical materialism, being the only scientific worldview, serves and can serve only the advanced, consistently revolutionary class of modern society - the proletariat, its Marxist party.

This is the essence of class, partisanship of dialectical materialism. The class nature, the partisanship of dialectical materialism lies precisely in the fact that the bearer of this science in our time is the working class, its Marxist party.

The laws of dialectics are just as objective and precise as the laws of chemistry, physics and other sciences are objective and precise. However, if the laws of chemistry, physics and other sciences can be equally used by all classes, can equally serve all classes, then the laws of dialectics can be used not by all classes, but only by the revolutionary class - the proletariat, its party. Dialectical materialism, by its very nature, is the outlook of the proletariat as the only consistently revolutionary class.

In his work Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, Comrade Stalin points out that, unlike the laws of natural science, the use of economic laws in a class society has a class background.

This fully applies to the laws of Marxism as a science and to the laws of the scientific worldview.

The partisan nature of dialectical materialism lies in the fact that it is a method of cognition and revolutionary transformation of society on the basis of socialism and communism. By virtue of the objective laws of social development, primarily by virtue of the law of the obligatory correspondence of production relations to the nature of the productive forces, capitalism is being replaced by socialism. However, at present, of all the classes of modern society, only one working class consciously uses these laws, which is rebuilding society on the basis of socialism and communism.

This is because the working class has a vested interest in using these laws. The bourgeoisie, on the contrary, is vitally interested in hindering the use and knowledge of the laws of social development, hindering the spread of the scientific worldview. Therefore, the essence of the principle of Marxist party membership is that it is impossible in modern society to have a truly scientific worldview without sharing the worldview of the proletariat, its Marxist party.

V. I. Lenin teaches that “materialism includes, so to speak, partisanship, obliging, in any assessment of an event, to directly and openly take the point of view of a certain social group” (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 1, ed. 4, pp. 380-381) to the point of view of the working class.

In philosophy, partisanship consists in not dangling between the trends of idealism and materialism, metaphysics and dialectics, but directly and openly taking the point of view of a particular trend. The revolutionary proletariat, the Marxist party stand openly and directly in the position of dialectical materialism and resolutely defend and develop it.

“The genius of Marx and Engels,” Lenin wrote, “consists precisely in the fact that over a very long period, almost half a century, they developed materialism, advanced one main trend in philosophy, did not stagnate on the repetition of already resolved epistemological questions, but carried out consistently, they showed how the same materialism should be carried out in the field of the social sciences, mercilessly sweeping aside as rubbish, nonsense, pompous pretentious nonsense, countless attempts to "discover" a "new" line in philosophy, invent a "new" direction, etc. » (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 14, ed. 4, p. 321).

Marxist philosophy is irreconcilably hostile to contemplation, bourgeois objectivism, and apoliticality. The party nature of Marxist philosophy requires a resolute, passionate struggle against all enemies of materialism, no matter what flag they use to hide behind.

In our time, the partisanship of Marxist philosophy obliges us to wage a daily struggle against all sorts of new fashionable trends and directions, which are especially widely bred in the USA and England and sow extreme idealism, metaphysics, "obscurantism, expose the servile nature of the activities of bourgeois philosophers, distorting science to please the imperialists, justifying social and national oppression and predatory wars.

A distinctive feature of the partisanship of dialectical materialism also lies in the fact that it coincides with scientific objectivity, for the class interests of the proletariat do not diverge from the general line of development of history, but, on the contrary, are organically consistent with it.

If the entire development of capitalist society, contrary to the interests and will of its ruling classes, prepares the conditions for socialism, makes the victory of socialism inevitable, then it is precisely with this objective process of the development of society that the activity of the proletariat, its struggle for socialism, is consistent. The socialist revolution, the realization of which is the historic mission of the proletariat, abolishes exploitation forever, opens the broad road to communism, and thereby meets the fundamental interests of all working people.

“... The class interests of the proletariat,” Comrade Stalin points out in his work “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR,” “merge with the interests of the overwhelming majority of society, for the revolution of the proletariat does not mean the abolition of this or that form of exploitation, but the abolition of all exploitation, while the revolution other classes, destroying only this or that form of exploitation, were limited by the framework of their narrow class interests, which are in conflict with the interests of the majority of society" (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, Gospolitizdat, 1952, p. 50).

That is why the class point of view of the proletariat, its partisanship, which correctly expresses not only the interests of the proletariat, but also the needs of the development of all human society, is in complete agreement with objective truth. The principle of Marxist party membership requires a resolute struggle for objective truth in science, which not only does not contradict the interests of the proletariat, the Marxist party, but is also a condition for a successful struggle against what has become obsolete in science and social life.

In a word, the partisanship of Marxist philosophy is alien to class limitations and subjectivism, which are organically inherent in the partisanship of the bourgeoisie. And this is understandable. Even at a time when the bourgeoisie was a progressive class, its interests, as an exploiting class, limited the horizons of its ideologists, led them into conflict with reality, into subjectivism. In the epoch of imperialism, which is the last epoch in the life of capitalism, the epoch of its historical downfall, the class interests of the bourgeoisie run counter to the further movement of mankind forward and are irreconcilably hostile to everything advanced and progressive in the life of peoples. That is why the class point of view of the bourgeoisie in philosophy and science is hostile to objective truth, distorts and denies it. It is in the interests of the bourgeois partisanship that all kinds of lackeys of imperialism - bourgeois scientists, philosophers, journalists - distort the truth and lie, proving the eternity of capitalism. In this hostility of bourgeois ideologists to objective, scientific truth, only the doom of capitalism, its inevitable death, is manifested.

* * *

Dialectical materialism, as an integral and scientific worldview, is characterized by the unity of the dialectical method and materialist theory. Created by Marx and Engels and enriched and further developed by Lenin and Stalin, the dialectical method is one of the greatest achievements of science. VI Lenin and JV Stalin teach that dialectics is the soul of Marxism. The working class, its vanguard - the Marxist Party - consciously uses the laws of dialectics, sees it as a weapon in the struggle for further social progress.

The method of cognition is not a manual, artificially created and external in relation to objective reality, it is certain objective laws of reality, open people in the things themselves, phenomena and serving as a means of their knowledge.

On the opposite side are the idealists. For example, representatives of one of the schools of modern bourgeois philosophy in the USA, who call themselves instrumentalists, like many other idealists and reactionaries, interpret the method and theory of knowledge in a subjectivist way. From the point of view of these enemies of science, there are no objective laws of nature and society. The method of cognition, according to them, is artificially constructed by people, it is a “convenient” tool with which a person allegedly forms phenomena and creates his own order in nature.

In reality, however, the method of cognition cannot be artificially created. The method, as it was said, is the very laws of the development of nature, open, correctly understood and consciously applied by people in the process of cognition.

Dialectical-materialistic consideration of the phenomena of nature and society means considering them as they are in themselves, objectively.

Marx wrote that “the dialectical method he created is not only fundamentally different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he transforms even under the name of an idea into an independent subject, is the demiurge [creator, builder] of the real, which is only its external manifestation. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing but the material, transplanted into the human head and transformed in it. (K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 1951, p. 19).

To Hegel, dialectics seemed to be the science of the laws of the absolute spirit, of the idealistically understood laws of consciousness. For Marx, it is primarily the science of the objective laws of nature and society.

The history of philosophy and the sciences in general knows many unsuccessful attempts to create a universal method of cognition. Some bourgeois philosophers tried to declare the laws of mathematics as a method of investigating all natural phenomena. And to this day, many bourgeois scientists adhere to this point of view. However, the failure of such attempts is obvious: none of the special areas of knowledge, no matter how important and thoroughly developed, can in principle claim the role of a general method. All the more untenable and reactionary are all kinds of subjectivist methods of research: the “subjective method in sociology”, subjectivism in psychology and physiology, in chemistry, physics, etc., methods that are especially fashionable among modern representatives of reactionary bourgeois science.

Only Marxism-Leninism discovered the only scientific, universal method of understanding nature and society. This method is the universal laws that are implemented in all objects and phenomena without exception. It is these laws that Marxism-Leninism regards as the universal method of cognition.

In Dialectics of Nature, Engels points out that “dialectics is regarded as the science of the most general laws of any movement. This means that its laws must be valid both for the movement in nature and human history, and for the movement of thought. (F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1952, p. 214). Elsewhere, Engels writes: “Thus, the history of nature and human society is where the laws of dialectics abstract from. They are nothing but the most general laws of these two phases of historical development, as well as of thought itself. (F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1952, p. 38).

Science claims that all phenomena of animate and inanimate nature exist in a certain interdependence, and not in isolation from each other. But it follows from this that it is necessary to study the phenomena of animate and inanimate nature not in isolation from each other, but in their real interconnection.

Science claims that in all phenomena of animate and inanimate nature there are processes of change, renewal, development. Development is the law of all objects and phenomena of animate and inanimate nature. Therefore, this law is universal, universal, occurring everywhere and everywhere. One has only to discover this universal law in the things and phenomena themselves and understand it correctly, which Marx and Engels did for the first time in science, in order to make it possible to use this objective law of nature as a method and consciously be guided by it in the study of all phenomena of nature, society and thinking. .

The same must be said about such a law of dialectics as the law of the struggle of opposites. Marxism comprehensively proved that the internal source of development of all phenomena of living and inanimate nature is the struggle of opposites. This law of dialectics is also general and universal. That is why the knowledge of this law makes it possible in the study of new phenomena not yet known to us to follow the right path: to look for the source of their development not in otherworldly external forces, but in the internal inconsistency of the phenomena themselves.

It turns out, therefore, that thanks to the knowledge of once discovered and correctly understood general laws - the laws of dialectics - the study of specific laws is greatly facilitated, people confidently seek and find them. This is the guiding, methodological significance of the dialectical method, its role as a powerful and true tool of knowledge.

In materialist dialectics, the Marxist party finds not only a method for explaining the phenomena of social life, but also guiding principles for finding ways and means to change it.

The dialectical method is the method of revolutionary action. Guided by the Marxist dialectical method, the party of the proletariat bases its policy, its strategy and tactics on a sober scientific analysis of the economic development of society, taking into account concrete historical conditions, proceeds from the balance of class forces and the real tasks facing the working class in a given situation.

The principles of materialist dialectics give a scientific idea of the regularities in the development of nature and society, arm the working class and all working people with the correct method of understanding and revolutionary change in the world.

Materialist dialectics theoretically substantiates the need for a struggle for a revolutionary change in an exploiting society.

If the transition from gradual, slow quantitative changes to rapid qualitative changes is the law of development, says Comrade Stalin, then it is clear that the revolutionary upheavals carried out by the oppressed classes are a completely natural and inevitable phenomenon. Not a gradual, slow change in the conditions of life of capitalist society through reforms, but a qualitative change in the capitalist system through revolution and the creation of new foundations for social life - this is the practical conclusion that follows from the principles of materialist dialectics.

This conclusion exposes the right-wing Social Democrats, who preach reactionary views, according to which capitalism is supposedly gradually, without jumps and upheavals, developing into socialism. The sworn enemies of the working people, the right-wing socialists, servile to American imperialism, go out of their way to prove the "inconsistency" of Marxist dialectics.

However, life takes its toll. The economic crises periodically experienced by the capitalist states, wars, revolutions, which are increasingly maturing in different countries and have already blown up capitalism in a number of European and Asian countries, speak of the inevitable truth of Marxist dialectics and the inevitable complete defeat of its enemies.

Marxist dialectics deeply substantiates the historical inevitability of the explosion of the old social order in a society divided into hostile classes. Revealing the general laws of development of all natural and social phenomena, Marxist dialectics shows the regularity of social revolutions carried out by the oppressed classes and, thus, deals a serious blow to all sorts of perverts of science who defend the obsolete capitalist order.

Marxism considers the development of nature and society as a process of their self-development, because nature and society change according to their inherent laws. The root causes of any development lie in the inconsistency of all phenomena of nature and society: all of them are characterized by the struggle of the new with the old, of the emerging with the obsolete.

From the point of view of Marxist dialectics, the contradictions existing in the material world are infinitely diverse. This extremely important position was emphasized by V. I. Lenin. In his letter to Maxim Gorky, he wrote: "... life goes forward with contradictions, and living contradictions are many times richer, more versatile, more meaningful than it first seems to the mind of a person." (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 34, ed. 4, p. 353).

In a society divided into antagonistic classes, the contradictory development is expressed in the class struggle. The history of exploiting society is therefore the history of the class struggle.

If the struggle of opposing forces, the struggle of antagonistic classes, drives the development of exploiting society forward, then the conclusion follows: we must not gloss over the contradictions of capitalist society, but expose them, not extinguish the class struggle, but carry it through to the end.

The Bolshevik Party has always built its tactics, looking for ways and methods of struggle for a new social system, in full accordance with this law of materialist dialectics. The Party mobilized the working people of Russia for a decisive struggle against the capitalists and landowners, for the victorious implementation of the Great October Socialist Revolution, for the liquidation of the capitalist elements in town and countryside and the building of a socialist society, and is now confidently leading our people forward to communism. These historic victories won under the banner of Lenin and Stalin speak of the great organizing, mobilizing and transforming power of Marxist-Leninist science.

Today, millions of working people in the people's democracies, led by communist and workers' parties, are successfully building the foundations of socialism. Dialectical and historical materialism, Marxist-Leninist theory, like a mighty searchlight, illuminates the way forward for them.

Contradictions are the source of all development. They also take place under socialism. The elucidation of their features under socialist conditions is of exceptionally great importance for the practical activity of the Communist Party and the Soviet people.

In a socialist society where there are no hostile classes, contradictions do not assume the character of a struggle between opposing classes. But there is also the new and the old and the contradictions and struggle between them. However, contradictions and struggle between the new and the old exist in the new conditions. "... Under our socialist conditions," I.V. Stalin teaches, "economic development takes place not in the order of upheavals, but in the order of gradual changes ...". (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, p. 53).

The transition from the old quality to the new takes place in socialist society without explosions, because in this society there are no antagonistic classes. The development of society is carried out under socialism on the basis of new driving forces: moral and political unity of Soviet society, friendship of peoples, Soviet patriotism. The struggle of the new against the old in the economic, political and spiritual life of Soviet society does not require breaking the foundations of society, but is carried out on the basis of the further strengthening of the principles of socialism, on the basis of the further rallying of the workers, peasants, and Soviet intelligentsia around the tasks of building communism, around the Communist Party. The peculiarity of the struggle between the new and the old, the conflicts between them, is that in socialist society the absolute majority of the people, led by the Communist Party, takes the side of the new. Because of this, Soviet society is in a position to overcome lagging inert forces without bringing matters to a conflict between the productive forces of society and the relations of production. Criticism and self-criticism play a decisive role in overcoming such inert forces that defend the old.

The contradictions between the new and the old in the development of socialism are revealed and resolved through the development of criticism and self-criticism. Criticism and self-criticism are an inalienable and permanent weapon of the Communist Party. Criticism and self-criticism is the key with which the Soviet people reveal and eliminate shortcomings and move society forward.

In his report at the 19th Party Congress, Comrade Malenkov pointed out that in order to successfully advance the cause of building communism, it is necessary to wage a resolute struggle against shortcomings and negative phenomena, and for this it is necessary to develop self-criticism, and especially criticism from below.

“The active participation of the broad masses of working people in the struggle against shortcomings in work and negative phenomena in the life of our society,” says G. M. Malenkov, “is a clear evidence of the genuine democracy of the Soviet system and the high political consciousness of Soviet people. Criticism from below expresses the creative initiative and self-activity of millions of working people, their concern for the strengthening of the Soviet state. The more self-criticism and criticism from below is deployed, the more fully the creative forces and energy of our people will be revealed, the stronger the feeling of the master of the country will grow and strengthen in the masses. (G. Malenkov, Report reportXIXParty Congress on the work of the Central Committee).

The 19th Party Congress paid great attention to the task of developing criticism and self-criticism in every way and to removing the obstacles that hinder the operation of this important dialectical regularity in the development of Soviet society. The new Party Rules, adopted at the 19th Congress, oblige each member of the Party to develop self-criticism and criticism from below, to identify and eliminate shortcomings in work, to fight against ceremonial well-being and ecstasy of success. The Rules declare it incompatible with being in the ranks of the Party to clamp down on criticism, to replace it with showiness and praise.

Such are the practical conclusions from the laws of materialist dialectics.

All this suggests that Marxist dialectics is not only the only scientific method of cognition, but also a method of revolutionary action.

The great transforming power of the dialectical-materialist worldview lies in the fact that, being the only scientific one, it provides the principles for understanding the world as a whole and at the same time points out the ways and means of changing this world. Thus, Marxism-Leninism is an integral, harmonious and practically effective worldview.

* * *

Dialectical materialism is the only scientific interpretation of the phenomena of nature and society, a tool for understanding and changing the world.

The materialistic theory, like the dialectical method, is also not artificially created, invented. materialistic understanding phenomena of animate and inanimate nature is an understanding of them as they are in themselves, without any extraneous additions.

The materialist theory not only makes it possible to scientifically interpret all the phenomena of nature and society, but also serves as a powerful means of transforming reality.

Marxist materialistic theory, or Marxist philosophical materialism, proceeds from the fact that the world is material, that the diverse phenomena in the world are different types of moving matter, that the world develops according to the laws of matter and does not need either God, or spirit, or other idealistic fiction.

Considering consciousness as a reflection of the laws of nature and society, materialistic theory correctly interprets the origin of ideas, views, and social institutions. In this way, the materialist theory also correctly points to the real role of people's ideas and views in social life.

Interpreting the ideas and views of people as a reflection of the objectively existing laws of nature and society, Marxist theory affirms the cognizability of the world and its laws.

These provisions of the materialistic theory are the most important principles of the worldview. They are of great importance for scientific understanding all phenomena of animate and inanimate nature.

In extending the principles of dialectical materialism to society, Marxism for the first time saw in society not an accumulation of accidents, but the realization of certain laws inherent in the development of society. This allowed the advanced social forces, the Communist Party, to base their activities not on the demands of "reason", "universal morality" and other principles put forward by all kinds of idealists, but, as I. V. Stalin says, "... on the laws of development of society, on the study of these patterns. (JV Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 1952, p. 583).

Marxism-Leninism teaches that not only the phenomena of nature occur according to objective laws independent of the will of people. The processes taking place in public life are also subject to objective laws. History, political economy and other social sciences study the objective laws governing the development of society, equip people with the knowledge of these laws and the ability to use them in the interests of society. “Marxism,” I.V. Stalin points out in his work “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR,” understands the laws of science, whether it is about the laws of natural science or the laws of political economy, as a reflection of objective processes that occur independently of will of people. People can discover these laws, know them, study them, take them into account in their actions, use them in the interests of society, but they cannot change or cancel them. Moreover, they cannot form or create new laws of science.” (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, p. 4).

In affirming and creatively developing the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism on the objective character of the laws of science, JV Stalin crushed subjectivist, voluntarist views. Before the appearance of J. V. Stalin's work "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR", these subjectivist views on the economic laws of socialism were quite widespread among Soviet economists, philosophers, historians, jurists, bringing great harm to ideological work. Exposing subjectivism, I. V. Stalin points out that “the laws of political economy under socialism are objective laws that reflect the regularity of the processes of economic life that occur independently of our will. People who deny this proposition essentially deny science, while denying science, they thereby deny the possibility of any foresight, and therefore deny the possibility of directing economic life. (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, pp. 9-10).

Recognition of the objectivity of the laws of economic development should by no means lead to their fetishization. Society is not powerless in the face of objective economic laws. Knowing them, people can master the objective laws, "saddle" them.

While obliging us to carefully study the objective laws of social development, Marxism-Leninism at the same time assigns an enormous role to the revolutionary transforming activity of people, the activity of the advanced classes and parties. Marxism-Leninism teaches that history is always made by people, that in the history of society development does not come about by itself, not automatically, but only as a result of the activity of people, through the struggle and labor of millions. Lenin and Stalin teach that the death of capitalism does not come automatically, but as a result of a stubborn struggle against it by all working people under the leadership of the working class and its revolutionary party.

While noting the decisive role of material production in the development of society, historical materialism in no way denies the significance of ideas. On the contrary, dialectical materialism, in contrast to vulgar materialism, emphasizes the active role of ideas in the life of society. In his brilliant work On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Comrade Stalin pointed out the enormous role of progressive ideas, their mobilizing, organizing and transforming significance. In Marxism and Questions of Linguistics, Comrade Stalin shows what the greatest active force in the development of society is the social superstructure over the economic basis, that is, social ideas and institutions.

In his work The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, I. V. Stalin again emphasizes the importance of the activity of the advanced social classes, who use the objective laws of the development of society.

Particularly great is the role of people's vigorous activity, the role of progressive ideas and public institutions under socialism.

The ever-increasing activity of the Soviet people, organizing the activities of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, testifies to the great significance of advanced ideas and institutions in the conditions of Soviet reality. Of great importance for accelerating the advance of Soviet society towards communism is the economic-organizational and cultural-educational function of the Soviet state, which is completely unknown to the bourgeois state. The Soviet state, relying on the basic economic law of socialism and the law of planned, proportional development of the national economy, plans the development of all branches of the economy and culture, mobilizes the Soviet people to fight for new successes in the steady movement towards communism.

The thesis of historical materialism, that under socialism the role of people's conscious activity increases immeasurably, is most fully confirmed by the leading and guiding activity of the Communist Party. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, armed with the most advanced theory, Marxism-Leninism, determines, on the basis of knowledge of the objective laws of historical development, the way forward for Soviet society. By studying the laws of the development of society and summarizing the experience of the labor and struggle of the masses, the Party sets specific tasks for the Soviet people at each individual stage in the construction of communism. The Communist Party plays a decisive role in organizing and mobilizing the working people of our Motherland for the struggle for further progress communist construction.

The great all-conquering force of dialectical materialism lies in the fact that it gives the only true picture of the development of nature and society.

One of the most important, decisive conditions for the correctness of the conclusions and propositions of dialectical materialism is that it itself is always improving, assimilating new achievements in the natural and social sciences and generalizing the achievements of the practice of the struggle of the working people against capitalism, for socialism, for communism.

Dialectical materialism is not a collection of forever unchanging rules and regulations. Dialectical materialism is constantly developing and enriching itself. He is an enemy of all teaching, dogmatism and Talmudism.

The very nature of dialectical materialism requires this creative attitude towards Marxist science.

If dialectics are the most general laws of the development of nature and society, then it follows from this that the laws of dialectics never and nowhere manifest themselves in the same way. Being the most general and eternal, the laws of dialectics manifest themselves each time in one or another specific area and are always implemented only in a concrete historical form.

So, the position of dialectics that everything in nature is in a state of change, development, is universal and eternal, because the change and development of nature, matter is eternal. However, it has always been different in its content: in the distant past on our planet there were some changes, some processes of development; the appearance of the first living organisms marked the emergence of new processes of change and development; the emergence of human society meant the emergence of new, hitherto unseen processes of change and development. And at every given moment in the life of nature, the eternal laws of dialectics are implemented in different ways: at the same time, the process of movement, change manifests itself both as the movement of the planets around the Sun, and as the oxidation of metal, and as the process of formation of a new biological species, and as the creation people of the new social order etc.

This suggests that one cannot metaphysically understand the universality and eternity of the laws of dialectics: the laws of dialectics, being universal, always manifest themselves in a new way. The laws of dialectics are eternal in their universality and historical in their concrete manifestation.

Marxism-Leninism not only found general laws in things themselves, not only succeeded in separating them from concrete and particular laws, but also showed how these general laws manifest themselves in nature.

The laws of dialectics, as universal, says Marxism, are manifested in things not next to specific laws, not apart from them, but in themselves - in specific laws. “The general,” says V.I. Lenin, “exists only in the individual, through the individual.” (V. I. Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, 1947, p. 329).

In that area of nature, which is studied, for example, by physics, the laws of dialectics are manifested not in addition to and not next to physical laws, but in themselves - in physical laws. The same takes place in all other phenomena of nature and society, where universal laws - the laws of dialectics - are manifested only in the specific laws inherent in these phenomena. That is why it is absurd to look for change and development as such, apart from specific processes of change and development.

In a word, dialectics, by its very nature, requires a creative attitude towards itself: not to “adjust” facts to one or another position of dialectics, but, on the contrary, to find dialectics in the facts themselves, in which it always manifests itself in a peculiar way.

K. Marx in his famous work "Capital" showed how the laws of materialist dialectics manifest themselves in a historically specific period of social development - in the conditions of a capitalist society. While the bourgeois sociologists and metaphysicians were looking for the eternal principles of morality, law, eternal laws development of society, Marx dialectically, concretely studied a certain society - capitalist - and thereby for the first time and only correctly indicated the real laws of social development.

Engels, in his work Dialectics of Nature, showed how the laws of dialectics manifest themselves in a peculiar way in the phenomena of organic and inorganic nature.

It is precisely this feature of dialectics, which always manifests itself only historically concretely, that determines the fact that the principles of Marxism can never and nowhere be put into practice according to a template, but, on the contrary, are and can be put into practice only taking into account the peculiarities of the economic, political , cultural development given country, taking into account the peculiarities of the current moment of domestic and international life.

Lenin says that Marx's theory "...gives only general guidelines, which apply in particular to England differently than to France, to France differently than to Germany, to Germany differently than to Russia." (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 4, ed. 4, p. 192).

Reality, especially social life, is constantly changing and developing. It is precisely because of this constant emergence of the new in the most material reality that the conclusions and provisions of science cannot be unchanged, but, on the contrary, are always improved, changed.

JV Stalin says: “Scholars and Talmudists consider Marxism, individual conclusions and formulas of Marxism, as a collection of dogmas that “never” change, despite changes in the conditions for the development of society. They think that if they memorize these conclusions and formulas and start quoting them at random, then they will be able to solve any problems, in the expectation that the conclusions and formulas learned by heart will be useful to them for all times and countries, for all occasions in life. . But only people who see the letter of Marxism, but do not see its essence, memorize the texts of the conclusions and formulas of Marxism, but do not understand their content, can think like that ... Marxism, as a science, - says J. V. Stalin further, - does not can stand in one place - it develops and improves. In its development, Marxism cannot but be enriched by new experience, new knowledge, and consequently, its individual formulas and conclusions cannot but change with the passage of time, cannot but be replaced by new formulas and conclusions corresponding to new historical tasks. Marxism does not recognize immutable conclusions and formulas that are obligatory for all epochs and periods. Marxism is the enemy of all dogmatism." (JV Stalin, Marxism and questions of linguistics, pp. 54-55).

At that period in the development of society, when the exploitation of man by man took place everywhere, science knew the struggle between the new and the old only in the form of a class struggle; when a socialist society was born that knew no antagonistic classes, then the doctrine of dialectics about the struggle of opposites was enriched: science now knows that, in addition to clashes between classes, the struggle of the new with the old can also be expressed in the form of criticism and self-criticism.

JV Stalin, generalizing the experience of the life of Soviet society, revealed the enormous significance of criticism and self-criticism as a new dialectical regularity, as a special form of struggle between the new and the old under the conditions of the socialist system. Thus, dialectical materialism was enriched and developed further, in relation to new phenomena of social life.

Not only this example, but all the most important phenomena of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, the era of building socialism and communism in the USSR testify to how life itself requires constant enrichment of the principles of dialectical materialism.

The successors of the teachings and the whole cause of Marx and Engels - Lenin and Stalin - developed dialectical materialism further, in relation to new historical conditions - to the conditions of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution, the era of building socialism in the USSR. The founders and leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the creators of the world's first Soviet state enriched dialectical materialism with new experience in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, with new theoretical propositions and conclusions, and raised Marxist philosophy to a new, higher level.

Lenin and Stalin raised dialectical materialism to a higher level, generalizing not only the experience of social life, but also the achievements of the natural sciences.

In his remarkable work "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism", V. I. Lenin analyzed the most important discoveries of natural science in the period after the death of Engels.

Lenin's book, writes I. V. Stalin, is "... a materialistic generalization of everything important and essential from what science and, above all, natural science has acquired over a whole historical period, from the death of Engels to the publication of Lenin's book" Materialism and empirio-criticism. (“History of the CPSU(b). A short course”, p. 98).

The works Anarchism or Socialism?, On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Marxism and Questions of Linguistics, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, and all other works of JV Stalin are remarkable examples of creative Marxism.

Such laws and categories of materialist dialectics as the interdependence of objects and phenomena, the invincibility of the new, the possibility and reality, the forms of transition from one qualitative state to another, the law of the struggle of opposites, etc., were enriched and developed by I. V. Stalin in relation to the latest achievements of all branches knowledge.

In his work On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, JV Stalin, for the first time in Marxist literature, gave a coherent, integral exposition of the main features of the Marxist dialectical method and Marxist philosophical materialism. JV Stalin speaks of four main features of the dialectical method: 1) the universal connection and interdependence of phenomena; 2) about movement, change, development; 3) about the transition from one qualitative state to another; 4) about the struggle of opposites as an internal source of development.

JV Stalin showed the organic interdependence of all the features of the Marxist dialectical method. The law of the struggle of opposites, which is the essence of the last, fourth, feature of the dialectical method, is considered by I. V. Stalin as the inner content of the development process, the inner content of the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones, that is, it inextricably links the fourth feature of the Marxist dialectical method with the third feature that precedes it. .

As for the law of “negation of negation”, formulated by Hegel and materialistically interpreted by Marx and Engels, I. V. Stalin rejected this terminology and more fully and correctly expressed the essence of dialectics in this matter, putting forward the position on development “from simple to complex, from lower to the highest."

In Stalin's work "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism" Marxist philosophical materialism is just as harmoniously and fully expounded.

JV Stalin formulates the main features of the Marxist materialist theory: 1) the materiality of the world and the laws of its development, 2) the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness, 3) the cognizability of the world and its laws.

JV Stalin emphasizes the organic connection between the dialectical method and materialist theory, and shows how enormously important the extension of the principles of philosophical materialism to the study of social life, the application of these principles to the history of society, to the practical activity of the party of the proletariat.

In his work On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, I. V. Stalin further developed historical materialism, formulating fundamental propositions demonstrating the concrete application of dialectical materialism to the understanding of the laws of social development.

The works of IV Stalin "Marxism and questions of linguistics" and "Economic problems of socialism in the USSR" open a new stage in the development of Marxist theory.

In the classic work Marxism and Questions of Linguistics, I. V. Stalin enriches and further develops Marxist dialectics, philosophical and historical materialism.

In this work, questions are developed about the logical nature of social development, about the productive forces and production relations, about the basis and superstructure. Comrade Stalin revealed the characteristic features and role of language in public life, pointed out the prospects for the further development of national cultures and languages.

The greatest contribution to the treasury of Marxism-Leninism is JV Stalin's brilliant work, The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR.

The theoretical and practical significance of this work by Comrade Stalin is truly enormous. In it, Comrade Stalin, on the basis of a deep scientific analysis of the objective processes of development of Soviet society, showed the ways of a gradual transition from socialism to communism.

The 19th Party Congress instructed the commission for the revision of the party program to be guided by the main provisions of Comrade Stalin's work "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR".

In his work The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, JV Stalin subjected anti-Marxist "points of view" and erroneous views on questions of the economy of a socialist society to devastating criticism. Comrade Stalin has thoroughly and comprehensively worked out questions about the economic laws of socialism, about the prospects for the development of the socialist economy, about the paths of a gradual transition from socialism to communism.

A major contribution to Marxist theory is JV Stalin's discovery of the basic economic law of modern capitalism and the fundamental economic law of socialism. Comrade Stalin formulates the main features and requirements of the basic economic law of modern capitalism as follows: “... ensuring the maximum capitalist profit by exploiting, ruining and impoverishing the majority of the population of a given country, by enslaving and systematically robbing the peoples of other countries, especially backward countries, and finally, by wars and militarization of the national economy, used to ensure the highest profits. (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, p. 38).

On the contrary, the fundamental law of socialism shows that under a socialist economic system, production develops in the interests of the whole of society, in the interests of the working people who have been liberated from the exploiting classes. I. V. Stalin formulates the main features of the basic economic law of socialism as follows: "... ensuring maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and cultural needs of the whole society through the continuous growth and improvement of socialist production on the basis of higher technology." (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, p. 40).

Thus, if under capitalism a person is subordinate to the ruthless law of extracting maximum profit, then under socialism, on the contrary, production is subordinate to a person, to the satisfaction of his needs. This noble goal has a beneficial effect on production, on the pace of its development. The action of the basic economic law of socialism leads to an upsurge in the productive forces of society, to a rapid growth in production, to a steady rise in the material well-being and cultural level of all members of society. It leads to the strengthening of the socialist system, while the operation of the basic law of modern capitalism leads to a deepening of the general crisis of capitalism, to the growth and sharpening of all the contradictions of capitalism and an inevitable explosion. Comparison of the basic economic law of socialism and the basic economic law of modern capitalism reveals the decisive advantages of the socialist system over the capitalist one, as a system incomparably higher.

Of programmatic importance are Comrade Stalin's propositions on the paths of transition from socialism to communism.

JV Stalin teaches that in order to prepare the transition to communism, at least three basic preconditions must be met:

"1. It is necessary, firstly, to firmly ensure not the mythical "rational organization" of the productive forces, but the continuous growth of all social production, with a predominant growth in the production of means of production. (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, pp. 66-67).

"2. It is necessary, secondly, by means of gradual transitions carried out to the benefit of the collective farms and, consequently, of society as a whole, to raise collective-farm property to the level of public property, and to replace commodity circulation, also by means of gradual transitions, with a system of product exchange, so that the central government or some other socio-economic center could cover all the products of social production in the interests of society. (Ibid., p. 67).

"3. It is necessary, thirdly, to achieve such a cultural growth of society that would ensure to all members of society the comprehensive development of their physical and mental abilities, so that members of society have the opportunity to receive an education sufficient to become active agents of social development, so that they can freely choose a profession, and not be chained for life, by virtue of the existing division of labor, to any one profession. (Ibid., pp. 68-69).

For this, Comrade Stalin points out, it is necessary to reduce the working day to at least 5-6 hours, introduce compulsory polytechnic education, radically improve living conditions and raise the real wages of workers and employees at least twice.

Comrade Stalin teaches that “only after fulfilling all these preconditions, taken together, will it be possible to move from the socialist formula - “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work” to the communist formula - “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”. (Ibid., p. 69).

J. V. Stalin developed such new problems as the question of measures to raise collective-farm property to the level of public property, the gradual transition from commodity circulation to a system of direct product exchange between state industry and collective farms through the "commodification" of collective farm products, as the question of liquidating the remaining socialist society of essential differences between town and countryside, between mental and physical labor.

JV Stalin drew a clear distinction between the question of eliminating the opposition between town and country, between mental and physical labor, and the question of eliminating the essential differences between them. Comrade Stalin showed that the antithesis between town and country, between mental and physical labor, disappeared with the abolition of capitalism and the strengthening of the socialist system. However, under the socialist system there are essential differences between town and country, between mental and physical labor, and the problem of eliminating these differences is a highly serious one.

Along with the development of economic problems and the problems of scientific communism, I. V. Stalin, in his work “The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR”, develops and concretizes dialectical and historical materialism, deepening the understanding of such issues of dialectical and historical materialism as the question of the objective laws of the development of society and their use , about the dialectics of the productive forces and production relations, about the possibility and reality, about the relationship between the old form and the new content, and many others.

The works of I. V. Stalin "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" and "Marxism and Linguistics" deal a crushing blow to the vulgarizers of Marxism-Leninism, enrich and further develop Marxist political economy, dialectical and historical materialism, serve as a guide in practical activities for the construction of communism .

"Comrade Stalin's theoretical discoveries are of world-historical significance, arming all peoples with knowledge of the ways of the revolutionary reorganization of society and with the richest experience of our party's struggle for communism." (G. Malenkov, Report reportXIXParty Congress on the work of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, p. 107).

Comrade Stalin's struggle against a dogmatic approach to theory is of enormous importance.

JV Stalin, in developing and advancing Marxist theory, enriched it with new propositions and conclusions, clarified and concretized certain general propositions of Marxism on the basis of historical experience, and pointed out that individual theses of the classics of Marxism had lost their force due to new historical conditions.

Comrade Stalin sharply criticized those who understand Marxism dogmatically, those who establish the Arakcheev regime in science. The struggle of opinions and freedom of criticism, Comrade Stalin teaches, is a decisive condition for the development of science.

Comrade Stalin made an invaluable contribution to the treasury of Marxist-Leninist science through the creative development of the most important principles of Marxism and the struggle against dogmatism and Talmudism.

The teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin illuminate brightly and far ahead the paths of the peoples' victorious advance towards communism.

The teaching of Marx - Engels - Lenin - Stalin is omnipotent and invincible, because it is true. For more than a hundred years of the existence of the Marxist worldview, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie have repeatedly made attempts to “overthrow” it and each time they have broken their foreheads in the fight against the indestructible, scientifically substantiated and confirmed by socio-historical practice, the provisions and conclusions of Marxism-Leninism. Today, such a campaign against Marxism-Leninism is being undertaken by the contemptible serfs of American-British imperialism, the malicious instigators of a new world war.

However, the same inglorious fate awaits them. The world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party - dialectical materialism - illuminates the road to communism for the communist and workers' parties and all working people more and more brightly every day.

Dialectical materialism (diamat) is a philosophical doctrine that affirms (epistemological) primacy and postulates three basic laws of its movement and development:

The law of unity and struggle of opposites
The Law of the Transition of Quantitative Changes into Qualitative
Law of negation of negation

Story

The beginning of diamat as a systematic doctrine is in the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. However, the formation of this philosophical direction cannot be considered complete.

The central idea of dialectical materialism - the interpenetration and mutual generation of opposites - noticeably echoes the ancient Chinese philosophical concept of yin and yang. Some Chinese philosophers, in fact, adhered to the basic principles of diamat. It is not surprising that modern China easily accepted the philosophy of diamat as the foundation of communist ideology.

A number of theses of dialectical materialism were formulated by Hegel and accepted by Marx as a result of his youthful passion for Hegelianism. Thus, Hegel (and partly Schelling) formulated the principle of the unity and struggle of opposites, which was developed in the philosophical teachings of the 20s of the 19th century (W. Cousin and his "interaction of opposites"). The main merit of Marx was the systematization of the rules already available in the historical and philosophical practice and giving them the form of a holistic teaching.

Article from the "Philosophical Dictionary", published in the USSR

concept

Dialectical- a direction that studies the most general patterns and essence, attitude to the world and historical changes in this attitude in the process of subject-practical and spiritual-theoretical activity. Dialectical materialism was created in the 19th century by Marx and Engels and developed under new historical conditions by Lenin and other Marxist philosophers. The theoretical sources of dialectical materialism were primarily the critically revised idealistic Hegel and the philosophical materialism of Feuerbach. Marxist philosophy is a direct continuation of the best, most progressive teachings of the past. Dialectical materialism absorbs the most significant achievements of modern world philosophical thought, seeking to connect them with the progressive and spiritual searches of our era.

The main backbone principles of dialectical materialism are:

principle unity and wholeness of being as a developing universal system that includes all manifestations, all forms of reality from objective reality () to subjective reality ();
principle materiality of the world, who claims that matter is primary in relation to consciousness, is reflected in it and determines its content; ("It is not the consciousness of people that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness." - K. Marx, "On the Critique of Political Economy")
principle knowability of the world, proceeding from the fact that the world around us is cognizable and that the measure of its cognizance, which determines the degree of correspondence of our knowledge to objective reality, is social production practice;
principle development, summarizing the historical experience of mankind, the achievements of the natural, social and technical sciences and on this basis asserting that all phenomena in the world and the world as a whole are in continuous, constant, dialectical development, the source of which is the emergence and resolution of internal contradictions, leading to the denial of some states and the formation of fundamentally new qualitative phenomena and processes;
principle world transformation, according to which the historical goal of the development of society is to achieve freedom, which ensures the comprehensive harmonious development of each individual, to reveal all his creative abilities on the basis of a radical transformation of society and the achievement of social justice and equality of members of society;
principle partisan philosophy, which establishes the presence of a complex objective relationship between philosophical concepts and a person's worldview, on the one hand, and the social structure of society, on the other.

Without reducing the entire development of philosophy solely to the struggle and, this principle requires a clear definition of the philosophical position and a deep understanding of the cognitive, methodological and social meaning of each philosophy, schools or directions.

Goals

Dialectical materialism strives for a creative combination in a single holistic teaching of all the achievements of philosophical materialism and dialectics as a method of cognition and transformation of reality. It differs from all previous forms of materialism in that it extends the principles of philosophical materialism to the understanding of the development and functioning of society. Thus, for the first time, materialism is completed to the top, embracing not only the relations between nature and thought, but also all forms of social activities, material and spiritual production. Therefore, dialectical materialism and historical materialism are a single philosophical doctrine.

Functions

Dialectical materialism performs a number of important functions.

His ideological function consists in the theoretical substantiation and synthesis on the basis of the achievements of modern science of a unified picture of the world, in the substantiation of the scientific materialistic worldview, which gives an answer to the question of the place of man in the world, his essence, purpose and meaning of life, the prospects for the development of mankind and its relationship with the natural environment.

Its other function is methodological. On the basis of a holistic worldview, dialectical materialism develops and substantiates a system of norms, standards, and rules for cognitive and subject-practical activity in modern conditions in order to achieve the most effective and adequate knowledge of the world.

Dialectical materialism plays an important role methodological And worldview role in the integration of modern scientific knowledge in the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution and the informatization of society.

During the period of radical restructuring, radical economic and political reform, the philosophy of Marxism acts as a theoretical justification for new political thinking. At the same time, the renewal of society and ideology require the renewal of philosophy itself, the rejection of dogmatic formulations and severe restrictions on philosophical research that developed in the era of the cult of personality and stagnation.

Modern tendencies

Further creative development of dialectical and historical materialism as a unified system of philosophical views is possible only in the process of creative and critical analysis of the actual problems put forward by life itself. In difficult modern world in the context of increasing pluralism of opinions in the sphere of philosophical thought, various concepts, schools and trends exist and function. Their diversity reflects the real complexity of the world, the diversity and challenges facing humanity.

The most important task of dialectical materialism in these conditions is the development of methodological foundations, the achievement of consensus, that is, mutual understanding and consent regarding universal, global goals, the essence of being and ways of preserving humanity, culture and as the highest achievements of world development. Actively participating in the process of ideological renewal, dialectical materialism seeks to cleanse itself of the burden of errors and one-sidedness that became widespread during the years of the Stalin personality cult, economic, social and spiritual stagnation in our country. In the sphere of the struggle of ideas, instead of sweeping denial and uncompromising in relation to non-Marxist concepts, he seeks to develop and deepen scientific arguments in favor of theoretical renewal, focused on humanism, democracy, the achievement of social justice and the comprehension of the deepest essential problems of human existence.