Studying Communist Philosophy Helps Us Understand the Class Struggle
Pictured: Kaiser mental health workers on strike, Los Angeles (USA), October 2024
LOS ANGELES (USA), March 29— Our collective met to begin our study of Dialectical Materialism. As communists we understand the importance of having a scientific understanding of our world and how to change it. Dialectical Materialism is the scientific study of how things change, so we started our meeting series with a discussion on the difference between idealism and materialism. We read and discussed a Red Flag article (see first link below) that said that “Hegel maintained that contradictions could be resolved in ways that preserved both opposite sides in a ‘higher unity,’ a synthesis that made them no longer contradictory.”
The next day, a friend who participated in the meeting told me he was still thinking about our discussion and said he finally understood why capitalism cannot be reformed.
Hegel said it was possible for a legislature to keep the contradiction between a king and the population he ruled from breaking out into a fight. Marx rejected this idea. He said that contradictions can only end by one or both sides being destroyed. Marx later realized that most of the time Hegel looked at contradictions that way, too, but Hegel was an intellectual defender of the monarchy.
My friend realized that the belief that two opposing forces could work in harmony if balance was maintained would also lead workers to think they didn’t have to resolve the contradiction between workers and bosses. Rather, they could learn to balance out their differences through reform struggles. While this was not typical of Hegel’s view on contradiction, Marx pointing out and correcting Hegel’s inaccuracy was crucial.
This friend recognized that capitalism, by design, is not a sustainable system for the workers. He more fully understood that democrats and republicans in the USA are not actually in contradiction. Both are defenders of capitalism. He understood that the increased concentration of wealth and the super-exploitation of workers was the nature of capitalism.
It’s not that some capitalists are greedy or not being nice, but that the bosses are in dog-eat-dog competition to produce as cheaply as possible while trying to make the most profits possible, leaving the workers with only breadcrumbs.
Capitalist production for profit destroys the environment due to overproduction and limited earth resources. For bosses, it doesn’t make sense to produce something that will last a lifetime. If an iPhone was produced to last thirty years it would be less profitable than if the iPhone had to be upgraded or replaced within three years. What’s good for the bosses is bad for the workers and vice versa. The contradiction is constant and apparent harmony is temporary.
Communism will eliminate the contradiction between exploiters and exploited by ending the existence of social classes. As new contradictions emerge, it seems that the primary contradiction will become humanity vs nature. We will be challenged to overcome things such as disease and global warming.
Our small study group learned a lot by discussing and then writing about these ideas. At our next meeting we’ll look closer at the main Marx-Hegel disagreement, which was about idealism vs materialism.
Dialectical thinking before Marxism
Brief introduction to communist philosophy