Dialectical and Historical Materialism

As a sociologist, I was always interested as to how the USSR could morph what Marx considered communalism networked by a shallow, weak, centralized and supposedly representative government into what I would considered an extremest left-wing oligarchy (most fashionably consider it right-wing despite how it was sold and supported by the people that allowed it- so much for cultural relativity and in context social analysis!). If Stalin actually wrote these pieces (or more commonly among dictators farmed it out to a frightened academic ghostwriter) then it could help explain why Marx disassociated himself with much of the Marxist movement toward the end of his life. It is a logically written and well informed book - worth the read if you are into the sociology of politics, philosophy of politics or the history of politics. I'd recommend it, especially at this give-away-price!

This is a supplemental reading to assist with your understanding of dialectical materialism. I strongly suggest you read this with Socialism: Scientific and Utopian by Engels if you wish to have a conceptual understanding of dialectical materialism without going through massive tomes by other authors.Stalin writes fairly straightforward, and he covers a basic introduction of what dialectical and historical materialism are and how they work.

The English language edition of this pamphlet was first published by International Publishers. I first purchased this pamphlet in about 1977. pamphlet was actually printed in 1973.

Accessible though it is in language and statement, Stalin's "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" is *nothing like* a far-reaching -- or even substantially *correct* -- presentation of *real* Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Stalin makes too many embarrassing theoretical mistakes for such a claim to be plausible (for example, he divides dialectical materialism into two parts, the dialectical method and the materialist theory, when in fact [1] the materialist theory is precisely the theorisation of social development as dialectical [i.e., when Marxist-Leninist dialectics is not simply methodological] and [2] the dialectical-materialist theory of Marxism-Leninism is the occasion [after a rigorous drawing-out of its implications] for a critical attitude [or method] towards perceived reality [i.e., when Marxist-Leninist theory and method are not at all separable]). Moreover, and probably building on this initial confusion, he conflates two particular systems of metaphysics (Kantian and Hegelian, which, moreover, he gets mixed up) with metaphysics *per se* (which in Marxism-Leninism is simply ideological investment) and thus fails to see that the dogmatism (i.e., the metaphysics) of his own interpretation of Marxist dialectics dooms that interpretation to hopeless metaphysicality (and reactionarism) itself. (Though in all fairness other Soviet theorists did this too -- witness in particular Lenin before he wrote his great effective self-correction, the "Philosophical Notebooks"; witness also Trotsky, who never managed to write any work of self-correction, and who committed much the same errors as the ones I'm imputing [here] to Stalin in his [Trotsky's] 1937 [?] essay "ABC of Materialist Dialectics".)Nevertheless, Stalin does lend due emphasis to the first and most important point of Marxism-Leninism (to wit, that the historically conditioned is the non-eternal [i.e., the inessential], and that, hence, all viewpoints and interpretations of reality are likewise inessential) ... and this point is certainly in itself capable -- despite the muddle of the rest of "Dialectical and Historical Materialist" -- of leading an appropriately subtle, analogically rigorous and attentive reader to a deeper and more subtle criticality than Stalin himself ever (on the evidence of his Collected Works) managed to achieve. (To demonstrate this, it will be sufficient to note that it is precisely this "most important point" I have implicitly been using to *critique* Stalin.) And isn't this, after all, the point of a pedagogic text? isn't this what a teacher is supposed to do: provide the student with the means to outstrip hir?So if we regard Stalin's "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" as an immediately accessible (because over-simplifying and nuance-fudging) *pedagogic* text of Marxism-Leninism, we can regard it with a kindlier eye than if we approach it as the finest summary of Marxist-Leninist dialectics ever penned.(By the way: "D&HM" was written in 1938. A previous book by Stalin in which most of his 1938 positions were not only anticipated but actually stated can be found in the 1906 work "Anarchism or Socialism?" -- which may say something about Stalin's fertility as a creative thinker, and his fertility as a dialectician.)

This is the definitive and final statement on marxian dialectical materialism. The best concise exposition that has been written on the subject.

If one needs a good summary a good summary of dialetical Materialism then this is your book, and it's cheap and vintage to boot!