Rethinking Materialism in the Current Era

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By Dibyendu Chaudhuri

In dialectical and historical materialism, Karl Marx proposed a framework to understand both the nature and human history as governed by a set of laws shaping their evolution. In dialectical materialism, he explained how the material world evolves, driven by its internal contradictions, and in historical materialism, he argued that history follows a definite path driven by contradictions within society and is not just a sum of accidental events. He also predicted the future of human society based on this framework.

Era of Determinism

This formulation of materialism, both dialectical and historicalwas shaped by the 18th-19^th century paradigm that firm laws govern nature. Newtonian physics dominated the philosophical thinking during that era. The strong deterministic character of Newton’s ” Laws ” influenced both scientific and philosophical determinism, as causes lead to effects, the future of the universe, including every component of it, including human society,has already been determined by its initial condition during the time of formation of the universe. Scientists and mathematicians used to believe that the future of the universe is fully deductible. French mathematician Laplace even claimed that if, at a given point in time, the position and momentum of all the particles in the universe were known, the future of the Universe could be predicted, in principle.

Are there any true universal “Laws”?

At the advent of the 20^th century, the scientific community began to realise that what wasconsidered“universal laws”were not truly universal. For example, by the early 20^th century, followingAlbert Einstein’sformulation of special and general relativity, it became clear that Newton’s law of motion or gravityare approximations for low velocities (with respect to light) orweak gravitational fields. For speedsapproaching the velocity of light or in strong gravitational fields (such as the one experienced by Mercury), one has to use Einstein’sequations.

As a result, the scientific community, thoughthey did not abandon the term “law”,increasingly recognised that such laws are not universal and, in most cases, context-dependent approximations. Instead of laws, science now comes up with ‘theories’that are by nature provisional and are refined or replaced when new observations cannot be explained by the existing theories.

Systems thinking and Emergent Behaviour:limits of linearity

In the latter half of the 20^th century, the development of complexity science showed how interaction among components can produce Emergent Behaviour that is not reducible to properties of individual elements. For example, individual neurons, when networked in millions, give rise to the Brain that behaves very differently from individual neurons. The Chaos theory showed how even a small initial difference between two systems can lead to a large divergence in the long term and how systems adapt themselves through feedback loops.

These perspectivesobviate the idea of a linear pathway of social evolution- primitive communism – slavery – feudalism – capitalism – socialism – as postulated inhistorical materialism. In reality, societies haveevolved differently in different regions depending on initial conditions, institutional arrangements and adaptive processes.And this will be the case in future as well.

The key idea in historical materialism is that social life is grounded in material conditions. In this formulation, ideas and ideologies were considered the superstructure,largely determined by the material base. However,insights from systems thinking suggest a more complex relationship. The same material conditionsmay give rise to different ideas and ideologies, and, in some cases, ideas themselves may reshape material conditions. This indicates a reciprocal rather than a one-directional relationship.

In the light of these developments, how should we understand dialectical and historical materialism today?

The core idea of dialectical materialism, that contradictions are the driving factors in the evolution of the material world, appears overly simplistic in the light of contemporary knowledge.

The quantum field theory describesthe universe as composed of underlying fields (e.g. of electrons, quarks, bosons, etc.) with particles arising asexcitationsof thesefields. Even when there is no real particle, virtual particles continuously emerge and vanish, leaving no true empty space. The universeevolvesthrough interaction among these fields.

When dialectical materialism was formulated, the universe was conceived as static or steady. We now know that the universe is expanding, and at an accelerating rate. Itstartedin a very low entropy state and has been gradually evolving intoa higher entropy,and may ultimately, according to one hypothesis,evolve into the highest entropy state, sometimes referred to as “heat death” in which no further energy difference will exist andthe universe will cease to evolve. However, entropy is also an emergent property, arising from the position and momentum of the individual particles. At the microscopic level, it is still the interaction of fields and particles that drives the evolution of the universe.

If dialectical materialism is to be rethought, it has to incorporate ideas of uncertainty, interaction, emergence and ecological limits as well as the expanding and dynamic nature of the universe.

The core idea of historical materialism that social life has a material base remainsinfluential. However, it needs to be expanded to include the probability, complexity, systems thinking and ecological boundaries, moving beyond a deterministic framework.