A Comprehensive Look at the Dialectical Materialist Worldview
Carlos L. Garrido
Abstract
This article defends the conception of Marxism as a weltanschauung — a comprehensive dialectical materialist worldview — against the prevailing skepticism found in Western Marxism. Beginning with the contemporary global crisis of neoliberal capitalism and the decline of U.S.-led unipolarity, the article argues that only a dialectical materialist ontology and epistemology can adequately grasp the present historical juncture. Through a rigorous distinction between objective and subjective dialectics, the paper clarifies how the dialectical method functions simultaneously as an account of reality’s structure and as a method for knowing that reality. It critiques the Western Marxist reduction of “worldview Marxism” to the simplified formulations of Soviet manuals, demonstrating that this rejection relies on caricature and an unexamined postmodern aversion to grand narratives. Drawing on Engels, Lenin, Lukács, Gramsci, Ilyenkov, and the tradition of “creative Soviet Marxism,” the article reconstructs a richer and more dynamic understanding of dialectical materialism — one open to scientific development, grounded in the unity of ontology and epistemology, and capable of comprehending both natural and social becoming. Against revisionist tendencies fostered by the postwar “theory industry,” the article reaffirms the need for a robust Marxist weltanschauung as the theoretical foundation for revolutionary praxis in the multipolar era.
Keywords
Marxism, dialectical materialism, worldview marxism, western marxism, ontology, epistemology, dialectics, Engels, Lenin, Lukács, Gramsci, Ilyenkov, soviet marxism, theory industry, multipolarity, revolutionary praxis, Carlos L. Garrido
