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Dialectical materialism

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Dialectical materialism is Marx’s theory that material conditions and class struggle drive historical change through contradiction and synthesis.

Detailed Definition
In politically engaged poetry, dialectical materialism surfaces through depictions of labor, inequality, or revolution. Poets frame social reality as dynamic conflict, using juxtaposition and irony to expose systemic contradictions, aligning poetic form with historical transformation and collective agency.
Example
Example in poetry:
William Morris’s socialist lyrics depict weavers and artisans as agents of historical change; Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again” links poetic voice to working-class struggle; Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead documents industrial disaster as capitalist contradiction; June Jordan’s political poems frame love and justice as dialectical; Amiri Baraka’s “SOS” calls for revolutionary poetry as material force; Bertolt Brecht’s “In Praise of Learning” urges art as weapon in class struggle.
Additional Notes
Dialectical materialism (Marx) posits that material conditions (economy, labor) drive historical change via contradictions (thesis-antithesis-synthesis). In poetry, it appears in socially engaged work: Hughes’s working-class voices, Rukeyser’s industrial elegies. But poets rarely apply it dogmatically; instead, they dramatize class struggle or commodification. Students should note how form enacts dialectics: juxtaposition, irony, or montage (per Eisenstein). Caution: not all political poetry is dialectical materialist—some leans idealist or existential. Related to ideology critique, praxis, and historical materialism.
Also Known As
Diamat Historical materialism
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