DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM. – Dialectical materialism is a form of materialism that asserts, in contrast to mechanistic materialism, the specific difference of the higher spheres of reality (life, consciousness) from the lower ones (physical and chemical phenomena) and the formal impossibility of reducing the former to the latter, even though, as materialism, it maintains the derivation of the higher from the lower. The philosophical justification for the derivation of higher phenomena from lower ones in the course of the evolutionary process should be provided by the adoption and the “materialist reversal” of Hegel’s dialectic. Dialectical materialism is the official Weltanschauung of the Soviet State and the philosophical foundation of Marxism-Leninism.
I. Historical Notes
Given that Marx contributed to completing the materialist reversal of Hegel begun by Feuerbach and regarded Nature (and man as part of it) as the primary reality and spirit as derived, while at the same time preserving the Hegelian legacy of dialectic, he may be considered the father of dialectical materialism (v. historical m). Yet one would be disappointed if one expected to find in Marx’s philosophical writings (belonging to his early period) the individual theses as they are formulated in the present system of dialectical materialism.The true creator of the system must be considered Engels, who extended the unification of materialism and dialectic, accomplished by Marx in the historical field, to Nature and, with this, to all reality. He also formulated the three “laws of materialist dialectic”: the law of the transformation of quantity into quality, the law of the unity and struggle of opposites, and the law of the negation of the negation; and he also laid the foundation for the gnoseological theory of dialectical materialism, the so-called “theory of the image.” Lenin adopted dialectical materialism in the form given it by Engels and defended it against revisionism, especially against Russian revisionism. After his death, a return to mechanism (v.) first took place in the Soviet Union, which sought to reduce all higher phenomena simply to philosophical laws and often even denied the very right of philosophy to exist, intending to replace it with the “latest conclusions of science.” However, from 1925 onward, especially due to the dissemination of Engels’s fragments on the “Dialectic of Nature” and the influence of Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks (Moscow 1933), an opposing view began to emerge that grew ever stronger and, under the leadership of A. M. Deborin, vigorously defended dialectical materialism.
The struggle between the two tendencies continued violently until 1931 and ended with the condemnation of both currents by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. (25 January 1931). Mechanism was condemned as the philosophical basis of “right-wing revisionism” (opposition to forced collectivization of the countryside; V. BOLSHEVISM); Deborinism, which was branded as “Menshevising idealism,” as the philosophical basis of “left-wing revisionism” (Trotskyism). The new philosophical current that succeeded them, in which M. Mitin especially stood out, was required to adhere strictly to the political struggle of the Party; it became the first philosophy of Soviet philosophy and to support the Party in its struggle against deviations to the right and left and to wage, even in the philosophical field, a two-front battle against mechanism and “Menshevising idealism.” After this, the most important event in the life of Soviet philosophy was the publication of the History of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Soviet Union, a brief manual with a 27-page chapter personally written by Stalin: On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, which constitutes a dense exposition of the principal theses of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and social doctrine and is today regarded in the communist world as the most decisive philosophical work in history, which “elevates dialectical materialism to a new, higher stage and represents the true pinnacle of Marxist-Leninist philosophical thought.” As for its content, however, this work brings nothing new compared to Engels and Lenin.
A considerable revival of Soviet philosophy must be noted after the end of the Second World War, not in the sense of a further creative elaboration of Soviet dialectical materialism, but rather of a quantitative increase in philosophical production. Of decisive importance in this regard was the Philosophical Discussion of June 1947, in which, on the initiative of the Central Committee of the Party, a critique was launched, particularly by Zhdanov, against G. E. Aleksandrov’s History of Western European Philosophy, which had already been awarded the Stalin Prize. The errors of Aleksandrov, like those of all “philosophical workers,” consisted mainly in “formal objectivity,” that is, in Aleksandrov’s treating the opponents too courteously and subjecting their systems to criticism that was too tepid; in the lack of a militant Party spirit; in a servile attitude toward bourgeois culture, and the like. Similar attacks by the highest directive organ of the Party have also been recorded (v. BOLSHEVISM) in recent years in other fields of ideological work: specifically in the biological field (v. MICHURIN) and in linguistics (“discussion” of July 1950, with Stalin’s personal intervention, in which N. Y. Marr [1864–1934], until then the unchallenged authority of Soviet linguistics, was demolished). The 1947 philosophical discussion gave rise to the quarterly journal Problems of Philosophy.
In the following columns, dialectical materialism will be presented in its Soviet formulation, which represents the obligatory and fundamental Weltanschauung of world communism. Outside the Soviet Union, there exist other forms of this philosophy in the communist sphere, which, however, more or less constitute personal systems (e.g., Max Raphael, H. Lefebvre, Banfi, the recent philosophical group expressing itself in Italy in the journal Il costume) and would be regarded by official Soviet philosophy as idealistic deviations.
II. CONCEPT OF PHILOSOPHY
The struggle against mechanism has resulted in the conviction that philosophy must be recognized as a science in its own right, alongside the other sciences. It constitutes the foundation on which alone it is possible to elaborate the individual sciences; it resolves the problem of the specific object with which each science deals: a world that exists independently of the thinking subject or the products of thought. Philosophy must therefore be considered not merely as pure methodology but also as a Weltanschauung, as a theory of reality.Hence arises the problem of the relationship between philosophy and science. For dialectical materialism, the object of philosophy is “the general laws of the motion and evolution of Nature, of human society, and of thought” (Engels, Anti-Dühring, Moscow 1946, p. 173), thus above all the most general laws of reality; whereas each particular science considers the laws and structure of a specific section of reality. While in Engels there persisted a tendency to limit the object of philosophy, increasingly reserving numerous fields for particular sciences, in contemporary Soviet philosophy one can observe, on the contrary, a tendency to restore to their rights disciplines that Engels had excluded from the field of philosophy. New sections have arisen in the Philosophical Institute of the U.S.S.R.: logic, philosophy of the natural sciences, psychology; the establishment of special chairs of aesthetics and pedagogy in the Faculties of Philosophy is being demanded; great attention is being paid to problems of ethics, etc.
The distinctive character of Soviet philosophy is best revealed, more than anywhere else, in its method, which is governed by two principles that give it a particular aspect: the demand for the unity of theory and practice and that of the “Party spirit” in philosophical work. The unity of theory and practice arises automatically from the Marxist concept of “praxis” (cf. M. STORICO), which is nothing other than the extension of philosophy into practical activity, the “realization” of philosophy. Theory—Stalin says—becomes devoid of object if it is not linked to revolutionary practice, just as practice becomes blind if the path is not illuminated by revolutionary theory. It is thus understandable why Bolshevism values philosophy: only theory can give “to the movement security, the capacity for orientation” and demonstrates “not only how and in what direction the classes are moving at the present moment, but also how and in what direction they must move in the near future” (Questions of Leninism, p. 22).
The demand for Party spirit goes back to Lenin: “Marxism includes, so to speak, Party spirit, since it obliges us, for every evaluation of an event, to place ourselves directly and openly from the standpoint of a certain social group” (Works, 4th ed., I, 380 ff.). This demand of Lenin is in reality nothing other than a logical deduction from the historical materialism of Marx: if one shares his faith that the proletarian class will lead society to healing, it follows clearly that consciousness functions correctly (and philosophy correctly comprehends the real) only when it takes the subjective standpoint of the proletariat. The objective evolutionary process of the real and the subjective class interest of the proletariat thus come to coincide. With these premises, the further characteristics particularly dominant in the current ideological production of the Soviet Union become readily comprehensible: the struggle against “objectivity,” against “servility toward bourgeois culture,” even the battle for Soviet patriotism and against “cosmopolitanism.”
From the above concept of philosophy it follows that Soviet theory cannot be conceived as separate from historical materialism, nor can it accept the attempt made by certain theoreticians of the Second International (cf. M. STORICO) to build Marxism, as an economic and social doctrine, upon any other philosophical foundation. For this reason, when such opinions are heard within non-Russian communist circles, they are regarded from the standpoint of Soviet theory as “deviationism” or tendentious maneuvering.
III. MATTER
The problem of the essence of matter did not present itself in the time of Marx and Engels with the urgency it has assumed in more recent times. At that time matter was thought to be composed of atoms that were not further divisible, and the nature of the material world seemed perfectly clear and comprehensible. The progress of atomic physics, the discovery that the atom in turn is composed of smaller units, produced a great change in this field and provoked a serious crisis for historical materialism. Since now even the atom had been shown to be divisible, many physicists found it not contradictory to hypothesize that in the process of subdividing matter one would never encounter ultimate limits, and that, in short, there no longer existed a final constituent of the universe; indeed, that one was moving toward the “dissolution of matter,” the “materialization of the atom.”To save historical materialism, Lenin distinguished between the philosophical and the scientific concept of matter. The latter takes into consideration the intimate structure of matter, its composition of molecules, atoms, electrons, and its properties such as impenetrability, inertia, and the like. It is changeable according to the stage of development of science. This, however, does not affect historical materialism, since it derives from the philosophical concept of matter: “The only property of matter to whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound is that of being objective reality and of existing outside our knowledge” (Works, XIV, p. 247). Lenin does not notice that the definition cited applies not only to matter but to any reality, even to a possible spiritual being. Later, however, he defines his philosophical concept unambiguously, limiting it to material being: matter is “what, acting upon our senses, produces sensation,” it is “objective reality given to us in sensation” (op. cit., p. 133). Lenin’s attempt to deepen the philosophical concept of matter by distinguishing between the philosophical and the scientific concept of matter itself, while to be appreciated, cannot be said to have been completely successful. He conceives matter, in fact, solely from the epistemological standpoint, not from the ontological. Historical materialism has not yet given an answer to the fundamental question whether matter must be conceived as substance. Some propositions of Lenin seem to affirm it, e.g., when he holds, against energism, that motion is impossible without something that moves. Elsewhere, however, when he speaks of the “infinite depth of matter” (Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, p. 112), he seems to admit the possibility that in the process of resolving the atom into ever smaller units one would never reach a final term, which would certainly be contrary to the substantiality of matter.
Matter, according to the thought of historical materialism, is eternal and has been in motion from eternity. Motion is an “attribute of matter,” i.e., an inseparable characteristic that necessarily belongs to II. A merit of historical materialism in comparison with mechanism is that motion is not understood merely in a mechanical sense, but also in an Aristotelian sense, as “change,” which thus manifests itself in various orders, in essentially and qualitatively different forms. Heat, light, electricity and magnetism, chemical processes, and finally life and consciousness are, for Engels, different forms of motion. For historical materialism every being necessarily exists in space and time. Space and time, however, are not independent realities nor do they have merely subjective significance, but are modes of existence of matter. Modern Soviet philosophy concerns itself greatly with the problems raised by atomic physics. In general it adopts, particularly in the face of certain hasty philosophical conclusions drawn from Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy, a very clear position and in several points an exact one. It vigorously defends the universal validity of the principle of causality and the substantial knowability of all reality.
IV. MATERIALISTIC DIALECTICS
With the term “dialectics” (cf.) historical materialism designates the evolution that takes place with the constitution and the resolution of contraries, of “conflicts.” It is contrasted with “metaphysics,” understood, with Engels, as the assumption of invariable and stable essences. For this reason “dialectics” often means nothing other than “dynamic vision” and not infrequently even “historical” in contrast to “static vision.”In place of the three English laws of dialectical materialism, Stalin distinguishes in it four fundamental traits. The first is that all things and phenomena of nature and society form a unity, “a coherently single whole,” “are interdependent and mutually condition one another.” Hence individual phenomena can be understood only if they are not considered in isolation, outside the connection with the phenomena that surround them (cf. Quest. of Lenin, p. 581). The second imposes the consideration of “nature not as a state of rest and immobility, of stagnation and immutability, but as a state of perpetual motion and change, of uninterrupted renewal and development”; hence one must always pay the closest attention to distinguishing between what is disappearing and what is arising; for the dialectical method, indeed, only “what is born and develops” is important and not negligible (ibid., p. 582).
Of greater importance are the remaining two “fundamental traits”: the third is the “law of the transition from quantity to quality.” This law is the central point of the entire system of dialectical materialism, inasmuch as it is intended to justify philosophically the qualitative differences, affirmed by it in contrast with mechanism, among the different orders of reality and the emergence of higher phenomena from lower ones in the course of the evolutionary process. This law asserts that evolution presents itself “as a development that passes from insignificant and latent quantitative changes to open and radical changes, to qualitative changes, a development in which qualitative changes do not occur gradually, but rapidly, suddenly, by leaps from one state to another...” (ibid., p. 582). Evolution thus proceeds, first, up to a certain limit, depending on the nature of the given thing, in the direction of purely quantitative, continuous variations; but if the quantitative variation continues beyond the given limit, it is followed by a sudden leap from quantitative variation to qualitative variation; the thing ceases to be what it was and becomes something else, acquires a new “quality.” For example, in nature, up to one hundred degrees there is a purely quantitative increase in the temperature of water; but if heat is increased beyond that point, the water becomes steam; a qualitative variation supervenes. Similarly in the process of the subdivision of matter: up to the molecule it is a matter of a purely quantitative variation; beyond that, subdivision is possible only by resolving the molecule (e.g., of a chemical compound) into its atoms, with which a qualitative variation supervenes. This law “celebrates,” however, “its greatest triumphs” in the field of chemistry, in which to the purely quantitative variation in the number of atoms combined in a chemical compound is linked an altogether essential qualitative difference (e.g.: N2O: laughing gas; N2O3: nitrous anhydride). According to dialectical materialism, chemical compounds and every qualitative difference in the world arose in an analogous way: when inorganic matter, in a process of purely quantitative variation and consequent qualitative leaps, had reached a sufficiently high stage of internal organization, life emerged from it and, subsequently, through a further evolutionary process, again by way of a dialectical leap, consciousness.
The fourth trait has the task of explaining the origin of motion, with the principal intent of overcoming the mechanistic conception that considers motion possible only through an impulse coming from without. Such a conception could ultimately lead to the assumption of a “prime mover” in need itself of an impulse, i.e., to the existence of God, something absolutely unthinkable for dialectical materialism. The origin of motion must therefore be placed, according to dialectical materialism, within each phenomenon as the result of “conflicts” within it, i.e., of real oppositions. Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics starts from the principle that objects and phenomena of nature imply internal contradictions, since they all have a negative side and a positive side, a past and a future, and that the struggle between these opposites, between the old and the new, between what is dying and what is being born... is the inner content of the process of development, the inner content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes (ibid., p. 584). This law—of the unity and struggle of opposites—is nothing other than the extension to all reality of the dialectical norm, originally established by Marx for the sphere of social evolution (class struggles). Stalin speaks here only of the oppositions of old and new in the development of every phenomenon. But by Soviet philosophy, in adherence to the theories of Engels and Lenin, many other pairs of opposites inherent in things are adduced in justification of this law. In the field of physics: the opposition between wave and particle, action and reaction, rest and motion (Engels, with Hegel, saw in simple local motion the verified “real opposition” constituted by the fact that a body, at a given moment, is and is not in a point), positive and negative electricity, north and south magnetic poles; for chemistry: analysis and synthesis; for biology: life and death; for social doctrine: the struggle between antagonistic classes; in general, in every becoming, the synthesis of being and non-being. The existence of such real “oppositions” is therefore the source of all motion and change, which thus assume the character of “Selbstbewegung” in the Hegelian sense. The evolutionary process is a process of continual mutation, in which there is nothing that remains always the same, nothing fixed, no eternal and immutable substance. Every fixity, everything that essentially remains the same is purely relative, temporary, extending only in the interval between two dialectical “leaps.”
Further determinations are offered by the doctrine of the categories. Dialectical materialism retains the categories of “essence” and “phenomenon,” but with evident discomfort for its aversion to immutable essences. Essence is what is hidden within the external appearances of things, their “foundation,” their “regular connection,” the “intimately contradictory” connection, the “universal,” the “intimate,” necessary connection of things. Phenomenon, on the other hand, is what is external, appearance, what is not essential, the single, accidental, and external existence of things. Upon the category of essence rests that of “law,” which Lenin defines as “essential phenomenon,” an image of what is essential in the motion of the universe.
In the evolution of the categories of “possibility” and “reality,” Soviet philosophy represents the process of becoming as a passage from possibility to reality, where “reality” is the world as a necessary and internally conditioned process. Stalin emphasizes the fact that “possibility is not yet reality” (Stalin, *Voprosy leninizma*, 9th ed. [in Russian], p. 548), but to become reality it needs, at least in the social sphere, the conscious intervention of man.
The categories of “necessity” and “chance” contribute to the problem of determinism and the true character of the necessity that manifests itself in the world. Dialectical materialism rejects absolute determinism (of mechanism and analogous theories), according to which necessity extends even to the smallest particulars, and opposes to it a “dialectical” determinism in which the two categories form a dialectical unity, with necessity arising from chance. Necessity, regularity, makes its way through an enormous number of chance events in the form of a general tendency, the average behavior of a mass of deviations from the central axis, and thus has the character of statistical regularity. It should be noted that dialectical materialism does not intend to break the absolute dominion of the category “necessity” by limiting it with the category “freedom” (freedom, for Engels, is nothing other than “conscious necessity,” the ability to make decisions with knowledge of the necessary connections), and that for dialectical materialism “chance” does not mean absence of cause: on the contrary, the principle of causality has universal validity. In the domain of nature there reigns causality alone (and not finality); finality exists only in the field of social evolution. Dialectical materialism attempts to give a purely causal explanation of the evident finalism inherent in nature by appealing to Darwin’s law of natural selection and the struggle for survival.
V. THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
With regard to the psychology of knowledge, it is a merit of dialectical materialism to have overcome sensism and to have defended the essential difference between the “logical” level and the sensitive level of knowledge, just as between living and non-living matter. However, in the course of the evolution of the world, consciousness would have arisen from the development of the nervous activity of organisms, and organic matter from inorganic matter. Dialectical materialism rejects spontaneous generation only in the sense that organic matter cannot be produced from inorganic matter at every moment, under present environmental conditions: this requires a span of millions of years and the environmental conditions existing on earth at the time of its cooling. Similarly, it took millions of years more until animal psyche had developed sufficiently so that, through a sudden qualitative leap, human psychic activity could arise from it, and man, in the course of activity aimed at maintaining life, began to use tools of labor, at which moment alone he truly became man.Consciousness is thus not another principle alongside the material one, but a property of matter, acquired as soon as matter had reached a sufficiently high degree of internal organization. It is the capacity to “perceive” the objective processes that take place within it, to “reflect itself within itself.” The physical and the psychic are two aspects of one and the same reality. What, considered from the outside, appears as a physical process (e.g., ether waves) is observed, within the same material substance, as the psychic phenomenon of perception (e.g., the color red), or of volition, etc.
This is the first part of the theory of knowledge, which explains the derivation of consciousness from matter. Second part: consciousness is capable of faithfully expressing the external world. This is affirmed on the basis of the “theory of the image,” according to which our perceptions, and even the concepts that result from them, must be considered as “specific images,” “copies,” “reproductions” of the external world. Just as the world is a process in continual evolution (“objective dialectic”) in which there exist no external and immutable essences, so our knowledge is also a process, the “subjective dialectic” (an image of the objective process) in which there likewise exist no “external truths” or ultimate solutions. This process contains two stages: the first consists in the transformation of the external stimulus into the fact of conscious perception; the second in the transition from sensitive knowledge to “logical” knowledge in the formation of the concept. With this, a qualitative, i.e., essential, difference is asserted between sensitive knowledge and conceptual knowledge. The concept arises through abstraction of the common and essential elements from sensitive perception, which apprehends only the individual and the external. The elimination of individual and concrete characteristics represents, it is true, an apparent distancing from the object; in reality, however, abstraction thereby obtains a more exact and deeper view of II.
The gnoseological criterion of truth for dialectical materialism, already from Marx, is practice. “In practice man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the practicality of his thought” (Marx, in reference to Feuerbach; cf. Engels, *Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie*, Berlin 1946, p. 54). For Engels, followed here by Lenin, experiment and industry are proof that man is capable of correctly knowing reality. With regard to logic, Soviet philosophers demand, in addition to the restored formal logic, the creation of a “dialectical logic.”
VI. THE “IDEOLOGIES.” – Ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion belong, according to the systematic of Marxism-Leninism, not to dialectical materialism, but to historical materialism (v.). Nevertheless, given their generally acknowledged philosophical character and the limits of treatment of the entry HISTORICAL MATERIALISM, a few remarks regarding them are indispensable here.
The fundamental concept is that law, philosophy, morality, art, religion, etc., must be considered “ideologies,” i.e., superstructures of the economic social base (v. HISTORICAL MATERIALISM). Marxism-Leninism consequently maintains the mutability of all ethical norms and their dependence on class interests. In class society, the dominant class is always concerned to render its own ethical views universally binding, appealing either to laws and forms and manifestations of divine will (feudalism), or to absolute, ideal, universal ethical laws in the manner of Kant’s categorical imperative (capitalism). For Marxist thought there do not exist immutable ethical norms: “Our morality is, in every respect, subordinate to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat” (Lenin, *Works*, 3rd ed., XXV, Moscow 1933, p. 391). The first law of such morality is the struggle for the future realization of the communist order. Proletarian virtues are: love for one’s own people and for the masses of workers, a sense of honor, truthfulness, propriety, courage, comradeship, love of labor, discipline...
Just as morality, so art also has a class character. It is likewise one of the forms of social consciousness; its task is, analogously to science, to provide a faithful picture of reality, not in the conceptual forms proper to science, but in artistic expression. A true work of art always implies this or that social idea. For this reason art has an important function in the life of society: arising from it, it reacts upon it in turn, determining the feelings, thoughts, will, and moral principles of man. The distinctive traits of socialist art should be: socialist popular character, Soviet patriotism, national form, optimism, realism.
Religion is the most devalued of all ideologies; whereas the other ideological forms of social consciousness are vitiated only in class society, in classless communist society they attain full flowering and complete development, religion is presented as a form of social consciousness that is erroneous in itself and per se, and such that, in communism, it must disappear entirely. Of all ideologies, it is the furthest removed from the socio-scientific basis, whence its fantastic character. Religion is “nothing else than the fantastic reflection in the minds of men of those external forces that dominate their everyday life,” a reflection in which the forces of nature assume the aspect of supernatural forces (Engels, *Anti-Dühring*, Moscow 1946, p. 393). The fantastic character of religion makes it the “opium of the people,” in that, through faith in the hereafter, it enchants the masses with an illusory happiness and thus diverts them from the struggle for their real and earthly happiness. Religion thus becomes a particularly suitable instrument for their exploitation.
Therefore, communism can adopt only one position with regard to religion: struggle, which, however, as Lenin warns, must not be conducted primarily through police measures in the manner of Bismarck’s *Kulturkampf*, but by cutting away its roots through the creation of social conditions that no longer allow it to subsist. Lenin considers the formula valid: religion is a private affair only from the standpoint of the State, but not from that of the Party: “The Party cannot be neutral in the face of religion... because it stands for science while religious prejudices are against science...” (Stalin, *Works*, X, p. 132).
VII. EVALUATION
Despite the positive aspects already noted (overcoming of mechanism and sensism, gnoseological realism), dialectical materialism presents substantial errors and deficiencies. Its fundamental presupposition, that the real is limited to matter in time and space, is an assertion never demonstrated and one that entangles dialectical materialism in continual contradictions. Similarly, the thesis of the eternity of matter must be rejected, as it is also in conflict with the other thesis of ascending evolution.The absence of a beginning and evolution are irreconcilable, for evolution necessarily presupposes both a starting point and an end. The assertion of the eternity of the world is also at odds with physics and astronomy, which not only affirm the existence of a beginning in the evolutionary process of the world, but even speak of a relative “youth” of the universe (ca. 10 billion years).
The central point of the dialectical materialist system consists in the two laws of the transition from quantity to quality and of the unity and struggle of opposites, which are supposed to provide the philosophical justification for the assertion that everything has in some way come into being “of itself.” With regard to the law of the transition from quantity to quality, it must be observed that it overlooks the influence of external causes: an extrinsic cause must act upon the molecule if it is to be dissolved into the atoms of which it is composed, with the acquisition of new essential properties. Moreover, even if in certain cases the emergence of new qualities may occur according to the aforementioned law, it is not thereby demonstrated that essentially higher qualities can likewise arise in an analogous manner (e.g., life, with its evident finalism, from blind inorganic matter). The assertion that the higher forms of reality have arisen “from below,” even if through the transition from quantity to quality, would conflict with the principle of causality, which dialectical materialism itself vigorously defends. With regard to the law of the unity and struggle of opposites as the origin of motion, according to which every physical motion becomes *Selbstbewegung*, it must be said that this is neither a real nor a possible contradiction. Most of the examples adduced present, at best, real oppositions. Dialectical materialism here confuses contraries with contradictories; and as for the Hegelian-Engelsian example of the contradictory nature of local motion, it must be held that a continuous line does not consist of fixed points: only the line and, more vividly, the continuous motion that takes place upon it are real (v. CONTINUOUS MOTION). But even if understood in the sense of real oppositions, the law does not explain the origin of motion. Setting aside unfortunate examples (such as that of the north and south magnetic poles, which in any case are not a source of *Selbstbewegung* but, at best, of extrinsic motion), and adhering only to the best example (the contradiction between being and non-being in becoming), even here there is no real contradiction, for a non-being that is contradictorily opposed to being cannot be real. It is therefore only a real opposition in the ontological constitution of the thing that is becoming, which passes from the non-being of possibility to the being of actuality. But, as Stalin rightly emphasizes, possibility is not yet actuality, does not become actuality of itself, but requires for this the intervention of an active cause, unless one is to reject, once again, the principle of causality. In this sense, the ancient principle holds: *Quidquid movetur, ab alio movetur* (whatever is moved is moved by another).
The intrinsic contradiction of being and non-being in the thing that is becoming renders motion and becoming intrinsically possible, but cannot cause them. There must be another that serves as an active cause. But if this latter, in turn, is not pure actuality but itself becoming or become, it too postulates another beyond itself. Since the process cannot go on to infinity, one must arrive at a first cause that is not itself become, that does not include the opposition of being and non-being, but is pure being, pure actuality. God.
With regard to the doctrine of the categories, and precisely of the category of “essence,” the main error is the denial of essentially constant essences. A stable essence is not, as dialectical materialism holds, opposed to all becoming and change: there may occur in it accidental mutations, or even a profound transformation that involves, in matter, the passage to a new essence (*mutatio substantialis*). It does not follow that one and the same essence can have today these and tomorrow other characteristics. The concrete bearers of an essence may change into others, but the essence as such, wherever it is realized, can only have those determinate characteristics and no others. Moreover, since essence is understood by dialectical materialism as the totality of relations between the thing considered and another, the law, as a necessary relation between essences, becomes a relation between relations. Just as essence is mutable, so, according to dialectical materialism, the law is mutable: there is thus no “eternal” law, everything becomes relative.
This leads to further and fatal consequences with regard to the categories of necessity and chance. Necessity is no longer, in dialectical materialism, the consequence of the relation between immutable essences, but results—in a manner, moreover, inexplicable—from chance, as a statistical law. Necessity is therefore not derived from essence, but essence results from necessary relations that produce themselves from chance.
With regard to “dialectical determinism,” it must be affirmed that it is impossible to delimit determinism by appealing to chance. For even what is chance is casually conditioned and, in this sense, necessary. The necessity of the evolutionary process can be delimited only by freedom, but not by a freedom understood as in dialectical materialism, namely, such that it is freedom insofar as it is conscious necessity.
Regarding, finally, the categories of causality and finality, the explanation of finalism as an illusion is inconsistent since finalism is found not only in the further development of already constituted organisms, but even more so in their original and even primitive constitution, independently of any struggle for existence and prior to II.
The gnoseological theory of dialectical materialism is also vitiated by substantial errors. In the first place, it is a contradiction to ascribe an activity essentially different from the material to a principle declared to be purely material. With the theory of "the image," even if one affirms gnoseological realism, it is not critically justified. The problem remains open as to what properly guarantees that our sensations and our concepts are faithful images of reality. The appeal to the parallelism between the two processes of subjective and objective dialectic is of no avail; the process of subjective dialectic could be a mere reflection of the objective dialectic only on the condition that it ran completely parallel to it in time, which is not the case, since knowledge is established chronologically much later than the becoming of the real. Nor does recourse to praxis as a criterion of truth help; the confirmation of our predictions by praxis may well assure us that we can have exact knowledge of reality, but it does not tell us why this is so or under what conditions this must be the case.
From what has been said, it follows that the fundamental error of the entire system of dialectical materialism lies in the unjustified unification of matter and dialectic. Dialectic essentially signifies spirit, the ability to rise above the hic et nunc, beyond the boundaries of space and time to which matter is always equally bound; it signifies an intentional concern for the future. Dialectical materialism believes it can guarantee this intentional preoccupation with the future and a regular and reasonable progression of the evolutionary process by positing in matter a materialized dialectic tending toward an evolutionary surpassing of matter itself, which overcomes oppositions and contradictions, moving from the lower to the higher. This is impossible: it is not merely blind negation that, in dialectic, ensures ascent toward the higher, toward what is more endowed with thought, but a reason originally inherent in and present to the process. The mere blind negation that brings every determinate A to the non-being of non-A is not capable of elevating it to a determinate B in an upward evolutionary direction, unless the action of negation itself is directed by a spiritual power that stands above the entire process. But in the system of dialectical materialism, spiritual activity intervenes only at a very advanced stage of the evolution of matter; consequently, the entire process that takes place, with its finalistic drive upward, would have to be guided solely by the blind action of negation, which is impossible. Dialectical materialism fails at every step of its philosophical elaboration: it seeks to derive essence from necessity, rather than the reverse; necessity and regularity from chance; finality from blindly operating chance.
In the concrete and particular elaboration of these assumptions, it becomes evident (what may perhaps not appear so clearly at first sight) that matter and dialectic, according to a felicitous expression of N. Losskij, separate from one another "like water and oil."
With Promethean pride, dialectical materialism seeks to reconcile the irreconcilable, with the principal intent of avoiding the recognition of God as the first and ultimate cause of the world. Yet in the end, it radically subverts the concept of matter, understanding it as a reality endowed with spiritual forces, indeed even as a becoming and creative principle.