Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism recognises the evolution of the natural world, and thus the emergence of new qualities of being human and of human existence. Engels used the metaphysical insight that the higher level of human existence emerges from and is rooted in the lower level of human existence. He believed that the higher level of being is a new order with irreducible laws, and that evolution is governed by laws of development, which reflect the basic properties of matter in motion.
Historical background
Marx and Engels each began their adulthood as Young Hegelians, one of several groups of intellectuals inspired by the philosopher Hegel. Marx's doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, was concerned with the atomism of Epicurus and Democritus, which is considered the foundation of materialist philosophy. Marx was also familiar with Lucretius's theory of clinamen.
Historical background
Marx and Engels both concluded that Hegelian philosophy, at least as interpreted by their former colleagues, was too abstract and was being misapplied in attempts to explain the social injustice in recently industrializing countries such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, which was a growing concern in the early 1840s, as exemplified by Dickensian inequity.
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