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Description
In this pamphlet, Maurice Cornforth lays down a basic understanding of the materialist dialectical method and conception of both society and nature. The language used here is especially conducive to beginners, as volume one of a three-volume introduction on dialectical materialism. It mentions the Marxist position on the class character of philosophy, continuous self-motion of society, negation of the negation, mechanical materialism and metaphysics, idealism, unity and struggle of interconnected opposites, criticism and self-criticism as a method of qualitative advancements, dialectics in the natural sciences, etc. One aspect of greater note that is touched on is the development of ideas, proving that what was once positive and scientific, bourgeois philosophy and science, has turned into its opposite, has become a monstrosity, a barrier to progress. For the first time in history, scientific socialism, the materialist dialectic, has been freed from these historical limitations; it has no exploitative system to protect and no antagonistic contradictions, thus the progress of philosophy and science is only limited in so far as human life is limited. Overall, it is an excellent text for beginners and all those new to Marxism-Leninism.