Dialectical Materialism: Marxist Mystification of Scientific Worldview
Sam Ghandchi
http://www.ghandchi.com/3170-marxist-dialectics-english.htm

ماتریالیسم دیالکتیک: سحرآمیزی مارکسیستی جهان بینی علمی

http://www.ghandchi.com/3170-marxist-dialectics.htm

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'Dialectical Materialism' was the official worldview of Communism during Stalin's era although Marxists had always talked of their ideology as a scientific worldview about nature and society which dates back to Descartes and his scientific method in Modern Times, and about two thousand years before him, to Aristotelian Philosophy in Ancient Times, and in fact beginning with Marx and Engels themselves, Marxists approached social development more objectively than most other schools of thought in 19th and 20th centuries. Nonetheless the mystification of scientific worldview in the form of 'Dialectical Materialism' started with Marx and Engels themselves, when Marx claimed that by accepting Ludwig Feuerbach's Materialism, he has turned upside down the Hegel's Dialectics which was standing on its head, now to stand on its feet, thus continued using the term "Dialectics" with a touch of 'Physicalism' in all his works till the the end of his life whereas 'dialectics' is just one of many ways in logic to make conjectures about reality alongside 'trial and error,' 'induction,' 'deduction,' 'heuristics,' etc and there is no special magic associated with 'dialectics'. The mystification of 'dialectics' was especially surprising considering the fact that both Marx and Engles not only were not afraid to acknowledge Darwin's explanation of human evolution but welcomed it, in contrast to the Catholic Church which adopted more of Hegelian philosophy around the end of 19th Century into the 20th Century. I am not sure, but maybe the decision of Marx and Engels in this regard was because they wanted their Marxist creed to become something like a religion, again I need to emphasize that I cannot make this claim with certainty. At any rates, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, we know till the 12th Century they followed Plato in philosophy and after that, followed Aristotle. Even Engels who played a major role in this "dialectical" mystification of Scientific Worldview and creation of the so-called 'Dialectical Materialism' by writing books like 'Dialectics of Nature,' in the fashion of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Nature' while using the latest scientific knowledge of his time, in his second introduction to 'Anti-Duhring' around the end of his life, is pretty much a 'positivist,' and not only is willing to admit the need for philosophical contemplation just in the sphere of logic in future, but he even denies the need for independence of philosophy on the ground that various sciences are capable of approaching different problems of knowledge without the need for any philosophy to embrace it all. Although personally I do not reject Aristotelian ambition of philosophy as a never-ending search for the truth even in the age of science, but basically as far as understanding nature and society is concerned, e.g. our current attempts to understand and cure the Coronavirus Pandemic, positivists are right and philosophical discussions of human fragility and emotions in face of natural disasters is like the era of Buddha in Ancient World, and Spinoza in Modern Times and the real work is done by science. It is unfortunate that many leftists to this day insist on a mystification of scientific worldview by going back to Marxist and even Hegelian Dialectics, which is like a religious worldview for them. I am a futurist and not a leftist but this reality may have more to do with the religious upbringing of those individuals rather than because of them being a leftist, as discussed recently in an article entitled 'Secularism: Main Problem of Former Religious People is not Superstition.'

Hoping for a democratic and secular futurist republic in Iran,

Sam Ghandchi
IRANSCOPE

http://www.ghandchi.com/index2.html
March 11, 2020

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