I don't really like how religion is framed at the end. Yes, the real material impacts it has on the world and the social needs that made it possible should be analyzed, but that doesn't mean that religion's central idea of God is compatible with materialism as it's literally impossible in that framework where matter reign supreme. Religion (at least the abrahamic ones) declares that this spiritual being actually made matter, but which itself isn't subject to those same laws but independent of them and their maker, which is clearly just bullshit.
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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Also a valid point. I don't mean to yuck anyone's yum if they believe in some other kind of religion and Marxism at the same time, but Abrahamic religions in general are a bit philosophically incompatible with materialism. But I can also speak as a Catholic and say that I like dialectical materialism because it's a useful model; I don't need it to be true in some ontological sense, it can be wrong about the nature of sublime things, as long as it works well enough at describing social reality and the movements in history. In fact, this is the Catholic Church's stated position on Marxism:^[More or less, there have been more expressly anticommunist sentiments from popes like Pius XII and St JPII] it's incorrect but it can be used to help the poor so they let the Liberation Theology people chill.
I think what they said can be amended if you can recognize that religious truths don't completely preclude the usage of the dialectical materialist method (no more than an atheist's belief in mathematics or any other system of ideas existing as a thing-in-itself would stop them from using materialism despite those beliefs being incompatible). From a purely functional perspective, how would a vanguard party object to one of its members utilizing the dialectical materialist method without fully believing in its ontology?
Abrahamic religions in general are a bit philosophically incompatible with materialism.
They are also philosophically incompatible with dialectics. Not all religions are undialectical like the Abrahamic religions. The nature of God is essentially that of a static entity that cannot and will not change. This is anathema to the idea of internal contradictions driving development because by virtue of being a perfect entity, God cannot have internal contradictions and has no direction to go to because he is already there.
You can see the undialectical conception of God spill over to other parts of the theology. There's a belief that certain early Christians held that Jesus started out as an ordinary man and through facing and overcoming trials ends up as the Son of God. This is a dialectical understanding of Jesus because his nature changes from man to godly through external contradictions (being tempted by Satan, being crucified) and internal contradictions (praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before being betrayed by Judas).
But of course, this was seen as heretical and what we have instead is a Jesus that is already godly the moment he was born. He started out as the Son of God and he ended up as the Son of God. But the static treatment of Jesus in most (almost all?) branches of Christianity makes his entire journey pointless. Satan offering the world to Jesus if he would worship Satan means absolutely nothing if Jesus is already the Son of God. Why would someone who has a throne in Heaven reserved for him be remotely tempted by the crowns of various shitty Earthly kingdoms?
Crowley, and some Zionist Kabbalist (the one who declared antizionists as the erev rav, "mixed multitude" that must be converted or "weeded out") helped me resolve the contradiction. I mainly see it more akin to Crowley, with a lot of help from Don Milo Duquette, and Carl Jung's archetypes (I know!) but this is a personal interest that has spanned several decades, but I really only got to the actual meat of the matter the last few years. You can compare the kabbalism tree of life and listen to some of those podcasts, for a shortcut. I've also listened to a lot of Manly Palmer Hall along the way. Like most religions or philosophy, it doesn't require belief, merely the suspension of disbelief. I've also listened/read some unsavory websites and podcasts to learn a little bit of Torah, so there's that. And I've mostly enjoyed it, once I got over closing the reading material or podcast as soon as vile supremacist garbage appeared. I know myself and I know what I will and won't accept, and I'm working on bettering myself. But I also think it's good to ponder dangerous ideas and learn how to refute them. That doesn't mean mindless consumption, as much as pausing and reflecting. But that doesn't mean endless consumption, either, same as doomscrolling, eating, drinking, or anything else.
What about the dialectics of the history of (Christian) salvation, with the contradictions present in the nature of man and the fall of man becoming inverted by grace? The original sin is born out of a tree, given to a woman, and becomes part of the first man. Then this is inverted in the form of a woman, immaculate in conception (well, for the papists), who gives birth to a new Man, who goes to a painful tree to undo humanity's fall. Isn't that dialectical? Isn't it dialectical that, to achieve this, the king of kings becomes a lowly carpenter in a Roman colony, a friend of prostitutes and taxmen? A man greater than time and the cosmos who comes to the evildoers who pray in his name incarnated in a piece of bread and wine?
I see your point about God's perfection and eternal nature and you're definitely 100% correct about that part. But it takes two to tango and theology is just as much about humans' relation to the divine as it is about the divine in itself! That other part is temporal and I think there's definitely a dialectical way to see it. I'm gonna call @Mardoniush@hexbear.net because I think she's probably thought and read about this 10x more than I have.
I'd also point out the nature of the trinity and the Holy Spirits existence as a result of the inherent dialectic present between the static Father and the dynamic Logos of the Son.
The Trinity was heretical, originally.
While its true binatarian conceptions are mostly dominant in the pre pauline church, after the fall of Jerusalem the divinity of the holy spirit becomes fairly standard, though the formal doctrine takes another century to develop.
Iraneus already inherits proto trinitarian views from the Joannines, as does Justin Martyr from the mostly separate Paulines. It's hard to describe how orthodox those church fathers are, since in many ways Iraneus was the first to define heresy
But as AssortedBiscuits said, God's perfection implies that there can't ever be change, so what dialectical relationship can exist between the persons of the trinity? Usually both parts of a dialectic need to be able to move for there to be transformation. Also, since the three different persons still have the same nature, it seems strange to me to say they have any kind of contradiction between them, beyond the fact that each one is not the other two.
Ah, I forgot to mention the Zionist kabbalist asserts the tetragrammaton means, "I am becoming what I am becoming," which makes more sense. As are all of us.
The fact that creation has change implies an inherent contradiction, which is why the Son is even distinct from the Father. Contradiction as a form doesn't inherently mean an inconsistency of nature or of will, any more than a rock falling to the ground has an inconsistency between gravity and intertia. They're both in contradiction in the sense of imbalance, and in accord, in that both are smoothly working according to their nature.
As for the lack of change in one part of the dialectic, that's the contradiction that results in the Spirit, the mediating force that allows modification of the action of the static upon the dynamic. The static cannot change, the dynamic is in action, so something new must occur.
does historical materialism actually assert anything about the ultimate metaphysical nature of reality though? i’d argue no. it just asserts itself as the most useful/coherent model for analyzing history under a certain set of common sense presuppositions.
like i think there’s an ambient belief in metaphysical materialism in Marx and Lenin’s work, sure, but i don’t think it really depends on any metaphysical belief to operate. you can be a religious dualist or a metaphysical idealist or whatever, and not think history is most predominately driven by great men and internally manifested first principles. (there’s probably a more vigorous philosophical way of expressing this argument i’m too lazy to express rn in a shitpost)
Much of Marx, Engels, Stalin, Mao, and other diamat theorists' writing is specifically written to attack the idealist/metaphysical world outlook. I think that it's clear that they are making claims about the nature of reality, because the point of the philosophy falls a bit flat otherwise. But they're also committed to ruthless criticism of their own ideas and (at least in the best case) improve the theory when new contradictions appear; I don't think that it's likely that revolutionary movements in the near future will change their philosophical positions to accommodate religious people, but I guess you're also right that the usefulness of the model is really the only thing that has to be constant about it.
i see your point, i do think the Abrahamic idea of an omnibenevolent god runs into some contradictions and tensions with historical materialism. broader metaphysical questions about the ultimate nature of things i do still see as beyond its purview (even if the theorists themselves didn't) but that's a larger conversation.
Yeah, I understand. I was agnostic/very lightly religious a while ago, but reading and learning about dialectical materialism has made me accept that that it's just impossible for such things to be true. Although religion as a social force cannot be eliminated overnight by just eliminating it's organized branches, I do think many socialist nations made a mistake of having a policy of cohabitation with it. With proper education of the masses and illuminating how parasitic the organized institutions of religion are (especially in my country where they leech off the state's budget), I think it's possible to come to a point where you can just phase it out. A time where you outright ban them and everyone is just rather apathetic about it.
According to my favourite Georgian philosopher and activist
Pretty interesting mix of Stalin and Mao's texts on dialectical materialism with cognitive science. They always make something worth paying attention to.
I found the argument against Cartesian dualism to be a bit facile here, though. They stated that Cartesian mind-body dualism asserts that the mind exists in a separate kind of existence that's detached from the physical world (correct), but argued against it by stating that the mind and the physical brain are codependent (and they imply that the mind's dependence on the body means the mind must also be material). Then they later go on to characterize ideas as a non-physical, non-material thing that is codependent from reality. So which is it, can something that isn't material be codependent with a physical thing or system, or is that a contradiction?
Do you mean to say that an idea is portrayed as a non-physical, non-material thing that is independent from reality? If both are codependent on reality, idk if there really is a contradiction there, unless there are actually saying that the mind is a material, physical thing.
That said, I don't think the nature of 'the mind' outside of it's still kinda undetermined relationship to the body has been determined well enough to speak on it outside of the purely philosophical.
Well the philosophical position of physicalism (as opposed to Cartesian mind-body dualism) holds that the mind is fundamentally just as much of a physical thing as anything else in the world.