I’m really trying to commit myself to getting a better understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of Marxism. I’m starting with the Vietnamese textbook on dialectical materialism that Luna Oi translated, before moving on to The Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Duhring.
My problem is I really struggle with philosophy. Marxian economics I can vibe with all day, but philosophy is something I’ve never been able to really get a hold of (but wanting to fix that).
So my first big struggle is understanding the difference between dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics. Is the former more of the worldview or viewpoint, and the later is more for explaining and analyzing specific processes? And if that understanding is correct, isn’t materialist dialectics the things we should be committing ourselves to as it’s what helps us better understand material reality (rather than dialectical materialism, which I guess would be more of a “belief statement?)? I don’t know I probably have a lot of this mixed up, just looking for any help on this I can get.
It is similar to the difference between rice porridge and porridge rice.
Dialectical materialism is the kind of materialist understanding of reality you need to do Marxist dialectics, and materialist dialectics is the kind of dialectics you can do from that materialist standpoint. They do not exist separately from each other, so you can’t really only do one of them. Even worse, the whole the two make up is often called dialectical materialism, which in this use of the word contains materialist dialectics.
This is helpful, thanks.