︎ Why was Marx’s Materialism ‘Dialectical’ ?

June 15, 2021

Karl Marx's thought is widely understood to be 'materialist', and as such, a critical rejection of idealism. What is less understood, if recognized at all, is that Marx took up materialism, as he later did socialism and communism, as a symptomatic phenomenon of his historical moment, submitting it to an immanent dialectical critique: grasping the self-contradiction of this phenomenon as indicative of a crisis of society, and hence, of the possibility and necessity of social transformation. This presentation will clarify the sense in which Marx was a critic of materialism, grasping it dialectically as an ideological reflection and hence necessary form of appearance of an ongoing crisis of historical change.

(Reid Kotlas)