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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Materialism is the view that existence does not necessarily involve perceiving or being perceived, knowing or being known. Dialectics is the view that the universe is a system of entities in process of change, the dynamic arising from the impact of the parts on one another. The epistemology of Dialectical Materialism (Marxism) is therefore the view that truth (i.e. the correspondence of a sentence with fact) can be determined by the following rule: “Examine any alleged state of affairs as related to and distinguished from a total environment, and you will know whether or not the sentence alleging that state of affairs is true.”
No special pedagogy is required for Marxist epistemology: the only rule is the usual rule of honesty and candor which bids us teach every subject as that subject actually is.
A paper delivered before the Western Conference on the Teaching of Philosophy, St. Louis, Missouri, May 4, 1961.
1 Thesis No. 11. Italics Marx's.
2 E.g. Russell's paradox, and Lewis Carroll's, and the celebrated Epimenides.
3 E.g. Marx's Preface to Capital and Theses on Feuerbach, Engels’ essay on Feuerbach and Anti-Dühring, and Lenin's Empirio-Criticism.
4 Quoted, and translated, by Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers, Oxford, 1956, pp. 26–27.
5 No. 10 of the Theses on Feuerbach.