Dialectical Materialism vs. "The New Physics"

by Mike Gimbel

There are two fundamental ideological ways of viewing reality: (1) Idealism; (2) materialism. Idealism encompasses a wide spectrum of ideologies, from extreme religious fundamentalism through agnosticism. The ultimate statement of idealist ideology is encapsulated in the following quote: “God created Man in his own image”. Materialists counter with: “Man created God in his own image”. The agnostic, in trying to find a middle road, can only come up with the pathetic and cowardly ideological position of “Perhaps there is a God. I just don’t know, one way or the other”. The agnostic, with this answer, is attacking materialism as much as the religious fundamentalist. It’s just a much subtler and dangerous attack on materialism. This cowardly ‘liberal’ firmly plants his/her feet in the quicksand of the idealism of agnosticism and skepticism in order to oppose dialectical materialism’s analysis of reality because dialectical materialism, when used to analyze human history, inevitably leads one to understand the class character of capitalist exploitation.