On Dialectical Materialism Of Henri Lefebvre

Dialectical Materialism is an important theoretical work the great French thinker Henri Lefebvre wrote in his early life.The book was published the year after Stalin’s work Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism.As the translator of the first French version of The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,Lefebvre integrates the humanism in the Manuscripts with the dialectics in Marx’s later study on economics,leading to a quite different understanding on dialectical materialism from that in Stalin’s work.The book contains two parts.First,Lefebvre studies on the connotation of dialectical materialism from two perspectives mediated by Hegelian dialectical logic: the development of western philosophy and the development of Marx’s own thought.Then Lefebvre interprets the Manuscripts with dialectical materialism and formulates his dialectics of total man.This thesis summarizes the content of Dialectical Materialism in three leaps of the reconstruction of dialectics: Hegelian dialectical logic breaches formal logic including Kantian transcendental logic;Marxian dialectical materialism obtained after the period of historical materialism breaches Hegelian dialectical logic;Dialectics of total man develops dialectical materialism.Formal logic presupposes the independence of form and content,of analysis and synthesis,and takes the purely abstract formal identity independent of content as its utmost principle,which leads to several essential contradictions and traps itself in a dilemma.Hegel puts forward the third term setting out from the content and breaches formal logic in the movement of the spirit unfolding itself as a totality.However,the pursuit of a perfect system and the incompatibility of his alienation theory with dialectical becoming kill the coherence and vitality of his dialectical logic.Marx went through the period of historical materialism as an alienation theory based on empiricism when he refuted Hegelian logic in his study on the alienated reality,then he turns back to Hegelian dialectical logic as his study on the reality goes deeper.Here dialectical logic as a method of exposition merges with his investigation of the alienated reality.For he brings difference in,the alienation and dialectical becoming are reconstructed as one process,leading to a much more profound understanding of how the alienation happens and giving a hint of the way to eliminate the alienation.Dialectical materialism as dialectics of alienation finally breaches Hegelian dialectical logic and elevates historical materialism to a higher level.This original explanation of Marxist theory shows postmodern features is a valuable effort to decipher and fight against the alienated reality under the new condition of capitalism.Lefebvre talks about the production of man in the second part of Dialectical Materialism and the production of space later in his life.The term “production” corresponds to his interpretation of the dialectical becoming,deepens his understanding on the alienated reality,and develops his exploration of the way to overcome the alienation.Thus the dialectics of total man and the dialectics of space can be taken as the reproduction of dialectical materialism.To be conclude,the dialectical becoming is not only the core of dialectical materialism and how this book unfolds its content,but also the way Marx develops his thought during his lifetime and how Lefebvre’s own thought evolves.