Talk:Dialectical materialism

Science and philosophy
Aside from a rudimentary understanding of the philosophy of science and its history, I'm no student of philosophy in general. Would someone who has a bit more understanding of such things mind telling me what the actual philosophical approach of dialectical materialism actually is? The Wikipedia article on the subject is quite vague, and I'm trying to determined whether the issues with dialectical materialism in science are related primarily to a flawed philosophy, or people (especially from the former Soviet Union) saying and/or doing stupid things. - Grant (Talk) 17:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I minored in philosophy as an undergrad, and though I'm not familiar with this topic from my studies, I'm pretty sure my professors would be nauseated by the idea of judging scientific principles' validity by how well they conform to some author's philosophical preconceptions. One of my profs had a saying along the lines of "Philosophy that isn't useful in the real world is garbage."  This would certainly qualify in my book.   03:22, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * It's good that this view isn't widespread. I'm still curious whether this is an underlying property of dialectical materialism. From Googling and other such searching, it's somewhat difficult to find concrete statements on the subject. Some good scientists did good things while espousing this philosophy, and some crazy people said some crazy things about science while espousing this philosophy. I wonder where the dividing line is. At the very least, it certainly seems there's plenty of stuff we could write about here, at least about the people who applied this philosophy to create dubious science. - Grant (Talk) 17:42, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
 * You're confused because the article is garbage. Dialectical materialism is not some pseudo-religious cult groupthink espoused by dirty commies to undermine the great, God-given glory of Capitalism™. It's a reconciliation of Hegel's idealist views ("the mind makes it real" is a VERY simplistic gloss) with Marx's materialist conception of history ("the real makes the mind" - again, very simplistic). So the result is a materialism mediated by the dialectic - rational inquiry, debate, and rhetoric. The serfs were content with their lives because the material conditions basically enforced such a lifestyle - but once city-dwelling merchants and artisans began to leverage private property they laid the foundation for modern capitalism (that is, while material conditions - enclosure and recovering population - predicated the increasing city populations, people had to rationally "figure out" how organize wealth and property in this novel merchant class). The new generation takes the trappings of the old (the material) and transforms it to suit their purposes (via the dialectic). The "issues" with science stem mostly from Soviet-era thinking by people like Mao and Lysenko, who denounced things like Mendelian genetics and metallurgy as "bourgeois" (and wondered why their crops failed and their scrap-metal "foundries" produced worthless pig iron). I don't know a single socialist thinker today who rejects mainstream scientific discourse. Science itself is not a utopian solution to all the world's problems, but by engaging in the dialectic we can tease out the contradictions inherent in our current society (the material conditions), and plan for a more prosperous future society in a rational and scientifically-informed manner. Anonymous 23:18, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

The problem with the dialectics is that it is unfalsifiable. Marx thought that socialism would come first to Germany or England but this did not happen and instead socialism came to Russia and latin America and parts of Asia- nations with little capitalist history. There is little empirical data that DM is true and more evidence that it is false and post hoc in rationale. In logical form the argument (Modus tollens)is as follows, if dialectical materialism is true then socialism should come to advance capitalist nations before feudal nations. Socialism does not come to advance capitalist nations before feudal nations. Therefore, dialectical materialism is false. There is no way to save DM without some ad hoc hypothesis, thus making the theory unfalsifiable.

This article is just shitty anti-communist propaganda and nothing more
What does Marxism to do with denying the big bang or denying sub-atomic particles? When Karl Marx died, J.J. Thompson was finishing his studies at University, Marx never wrote nothing on something that he couldn't even know.

Every, every, every footnote is just a link to the same book of just one guy, but the whole article is presented as a general description of "this is what marxists actually believe". Really? Because of a book, of some British guy? In fact, Pablo Rieznik (a militant marxist, professor at Buenos Aires' University, and father of an astronomer and a physical who vindicate dialectical materialism) wrote a book (called, in Spanish, "The world did NOT born in 4004 before christ") where he openly says that that British guy says nonsenses. And, of course, Trotsky's private secretary was later famous because of his work as mathematical logician.

So, we need to replace this 'article' with actual content... or delete it. Ivan, the historian (Talk) 00:44, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I can't find that Rieznik book. Which?
 * And I think you should note: the article isn't saying that Marx was dumb -- but that his followers have the unfortunate habit of pulling the same damn sound science trick as right-wingers. 04:46, 15 May 2016 (UTC)