Some good responses, here, already, but I may be able to add something useful.
To apply dialectical materialism, it helps to consider everything in the world as a relation or a process rather than a static thing. Each ‘thing’ comprises a series of relationships.
A country, for example, is its government, its people, its laws, its economy, its international trade deals, its agriculture, geography, and climate. DiaMat requires us to see the country as all these relations combined. We cannot fully understand, e.g. a country, by isolating just one of these parts. Of course, we do not all have the time to consider every side of a relation (afellowkid’s response gives some excellent on this point), so we may, for convenience, have to pick a particular ‘moment’.
In a ‘moment’, we kind of pause time and focus on one or two relations. Then we can look at a couple more relations in the same time period. And eventually we build up a fuller picture of what is really going on. As you have discussed in other posts, you also know that DiaMat involves internal contradictions. It may be helpful to look at a couple of examples.
Capital, Vol 1
In Capital, Marx begins his presentation with an explanation of the ‘commodity’, which is a value. Next, he explains value is a combination of use-value (a coat to be worn, for example) and exchange-value (a coat to be sold). One cannot wear a coat and sell it to someone else. Thus, every commodity involves a contradiction.
Marx then proceeds to consider the commodity from different perspectives. He looks at the different relations involved in their production and circulation. This includes, in later chapters, an analysis of workers struggling over the working day (as it is workers who create commodities; the more they work, the more they create; but the more they work, the more exhausted they become (another contradiction: exhausted workers are less productive). It is only when we get to the end of Capital (volume 1, at the least) that we see fully understand what a commodity is, what commodity production (capitalism) entails, and what it may lead to (revolution or barbarism, although this is not necessarily explicit in Capital).
A Modern example of a strike
Bourgeois methods of thinking tend to treat the world as a collection of neatly defined topics / places / events, with clear boundaries, starting points, and end-points. Frequently time is even isolated from space (it’s a diversion for now, but if you’re interested, see Henri Lefebvre or David Harvey for a Marxist view on the connection between time and space). According to DiaMat, this is wrong.
For example, a strike is not an isolated event, but a culmination of poor working conditions, and an organised workforce. The ‘strike’ days, on which the workers put down their tools is a clearly identifiable event, but to fully understand it, we must ask, why did the workers call for industrial action? What actions of the employer (or in the wider economy) tipped the workers over the edge? Why now and not last year or in ten days or a month’s time?
Referring back to Marx, workers go on strike because capital involves paying the worker less than the value they produce, and the workers want a bigger portion of the fruits of their labour while the capitalist wants a bigger portion of that surplus as profit. Once we see this struggle between labour and capital as based in commodity production, we can see that a strike is not an isolated event, but the bubbling up of tensions that are always present in capitalism.
DiaMat involves prediction, too. Here’s one: unless we resolve the contradictions of capitalism (by revolution), there will continue to be strikes.
Mainstream media will often isolate a strike from the working process, from the political economy (of commodity production), and from time itself, as if a strike just happens and finishes in a defined period. But the underlying tensions between employees and their employer existed before, during, and will exist after the strike because the employee and employer have competing interests.
Reporters, etc, will claim that the workers in this instant are being greedy or disrupting ‘ordinary workers’. But a strike is a response to the employer’s greed. A successful strike now will have on affect on wages in the future for the strikers and for other workers. (Also, what are striking workers but ‘ordinary workers’? – bourgeois thinkers like to separate certain workers from others because this is necessary for treating the one group of workers as an isolated group.)
By isolating a strike and striking workers from other workers and capitalism, the journalist, for example, can imply or argue that strikes are an aberration of capitalism. Seeing a strike as a relation (between worker, employer, capitalism, etc) reveals that strikes are a feature of capitalism.
Applying DiaMat means looking backwards to consider, e.g. what relations led to the strike, and looking forwards to see, e.g. where it might lead.
Quantity and Quality
Another aspect of DiaMat is the ‘transformation of quantity into quality’. As afellowkid wrote, following Mao, development is not even. For example, one person or ten people stood outside the factory is not industrial action. But at some point, the addition of individual workers (increasing in quantity) entails a transformative leap in quality – an organised workforce on strike. Then, when lots of industries go on strike (increasing in quantity), at some point there appears a general strike (a qualitative change).
Helpful Sources
Bertell Ollman’s, Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method is a good book on this topic. It is written for students so it explains DiaMat and how to apply it.
And the first lecture in David Harvey’s series on reading Capital explains how Marx used DiaMat to analyse political economy. I think it’s this video: https://youtu.be/gBazR59SZXk.
Some good responses, here, already, but I may be able to add something useful.
To apply dialectical materialism, it helps to consider everything in the world as a relation or a process rather than a static thing. Each ‘thing’ comprises a series of relationships.
A country, for example, is its government, its people, its laws, its economy, its international trade deals, its agriculture, geography, and climate. DiaMat requires us to see the country as all these relations combined. We cannot fully understand, e.g. a country, by isolating just one of these parts. Of course, we do not all have the time to consider every side of a relation (afellowkid’s response gives some excellent on this point), so we may, for convenience, have to pick a particular ‘moment’.
In a ‘moment’, we kind of pause time and focus on one or two relations. Then we can look at a couple more relations in the same time period. And eventually we build up a fuller picture of what is really going on. As you have discussed in other posts, you also know that DiaMat involves internal contradictions. It may be helpful to look at a couple of examples.
In Capital, Marx begins his presentation with an explanation of the ‘commodity’, which is a value. Next, he explains value is a combination of use-value (a coat to be worn, for example) and exchange-value (a coat to be sold). One cannot wear a coat and sell it to someone else. Thus, every commodity involves a contradiction.
Marx then proceeds to consider the commodity from different perspectives. He looks at the different relations involved in their production and circulation. This includes, in later chapters, an analysis of workers struggling over the working day (as it is workers who create commodities; the more they work, the more they create; but the more they work, the more exhausted they become (another contradiction: exhausted workers are less productive). It is only when we get to the end of Capital (volume 1, at the least) that we see fully understand what a commodity is, what commodity production (capitalism) entails, and what it may lead to (revolution or barbarism, although this is not necessarily explicit in Capital).
Bourgeois methods of thinking tend to treat the world as a collection of neatly defined topics / places / events, with clear boundaries, starting points, and end-points. Frequently time is even isolated from space (it’s a diversion for now, but if you’re interested, see Henri Lefebvre or David Harvey for a Marxist view on the connection between time and space). According to DiaMat, this is wrong.
For example, a strike is not an isolated event, but a culmination of poor working conditions, and an organised workforce. The ‘strike’ days, on which the workers put down their tools is a clearly identifiable event, but to fully understand it, we must ask, why did the workers call for industrial action? What actions of the employer (or in the wider economy) tipped the workers over the edge? Why now and not last year or in ten days or a month’s time?
Referring back to Marx, workers go on strike because capital involves paying the worker less than the value they produce, and the workers want a bigger portion of the fruits of their labour while the capitalist wants a bigger portion of that surplus as profit. Once we see this struggle between labour and capital as based in commodity production, we can see that a strike is not an isolated event, but the bubbling up of tensions that are always present in capitalism.
DiaMat involves prediction, too. Here’s one: unless we resolve the contradictions of capitalism (by revolution), there will continue to be strikes.
Mainstream media will often isolate a strike from the working process, from the political economy (of commodity production), and from time itself, as if a strike just happens and finishes in a defined period. But the underlying tensions between employees and their employer existed before, during, and will exist after the strike because the employee and employer have competing interests.
Reporters, etc, will claim that the workers in this instant are being greedy or disrupting ‘ordinary workers’. But a strike is a response to the employer’s greed. A successful strike now will have on affect on wages in the future for the strikers and for other workers. (Also, what are striking workers but ‘ordinary workers’? – bourgeois thinkers like to separate certain workers from others because this is necessary for treating the one group of workers as an isolated group.)
By isolating a strike and striking workers from other workers and capitalism, the journalist, for example, can imply or argue that strikes are an aberration of capitalism. Seeing a strike as a relation (between worker, employer, capitalism, etc) reveals that strikes are a feature of capitalism.
Applying DiaMat means looking backwards to consider, e.g. what relations led to the strike, and looking forwards to see, e.g. where it might lead.
Quantity and Quality
Another aspect of DiaMat is the ‘transformation of quantity into quality’. As afellowkid wrote, following Mao, development is not even. For example, one person or ten people stood outside the factory is not industrial action. But at some point, the addition of individual workers (increasing in quantity) entails a transformative leap in quality – an organised workforce on strike. Then, when lots of industries go on strike (increasing in quantity), at some point there appears a general strike (a qualitative change).
Helpful Sources
Bertell Ollman’s, Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method is a good book on this topic. It is written for students so it explains DiaMat and how to apply it.
This short video by Richard Wolff may be useful: https://youtu.be/bGPSKZgFH70.
And the first lecture in David Harvey’s series on reading Capital explains how Marx used DiaMat to analyse political economy. I think it’s this video: https://youtu.be/gBazR59SZXk.