| Efforts to reproduce, enrich, and update Marxism have not only ignored or misinterpreted Marxist philosophy and epistemology, but often reduced Marxism to economism, historicism, humanism, and structuralism.;What emerges from this study is a set of new concepts (dialecticism: philosophical, epistemic, and social) and a new methodology (dialectical) for uncovering the nature of the universe, mental phenomena, and human social life.;Dialecticism is made up of three distinct, interrelated scientific practices: (1) Dialectical philosophy studies the universe. The principal theme of this part is to show that it is neither matter nor idea but practice which constitutes the very existence of all phenomena. (2) Dialectical epistemology has as its object mental phenomena. Here, the main goal is to understand the existential basis of knowledge, and then, as a subfield of dialectical epistemology, to study the dialectical mode of production of knowledge: dialectical methodology. (3) Dialectical sociology studies social phenomena. This part is devoted to group of theoretical problems at the heart of the most topical concern of Marxism.;The research method derives from the questions posed and defined in the dissertation: (1) What is the existential basis of the universe? (2) What is the existential basis of knowledge? (3) What is dialectical methodology? (4) What is the general condition of life? (5) What is the mode of production and reproduction of life? (6) What is social class? (7) What are social institutions? (8) What is state? and (9) What is the world capitalist system? The questions are answered using primarily the secondary sources technique. They culminate in an in-depth examination of the capitalist world system. Central to the discussion is the fact that (1) capitalism is governed by the profit motive, and (2) capitalism is unable to exist and develop by itself.;No remedy can be prescribed for liberation of people from the aggressive interest and forces of the capitalist vampire, unless the people destroy the roots of imperialism... They must fight to replace the capitalist system with a new planned humanist mode of life in which people's needs, requirements, wills, interests and their constant development are the chief aim of the process of production and reproduction of life. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.). |
