Questions and Suggested Reading

Why does the working class need a philosophy?
What is ‘common sense’?
What is materialism?
What is idealism?
How do we explain the rise of materialism from the seventeenth century onwards? What were the limitations of this materialism?
Can you summarise Hegel’s ideas, including the strong points and limitations?
How did Marx and Engels rescue dialectics?
How would you define dialectics?
How would you define empiricism? What are the strengths and limitations of this approach?
What is formal logic? Can you give an example of someone approaching a question formalistically?
What are the positive and negative sides to formal logic?
What is the relationship between formal and dialectical logic?
Can you explain the law of the development of quantity into quality (and vice versa)? Can you give some examples that demonstrate this?
Can you explain what is meant by the “interpenetration of opposites”? Can you give some examples that demonstrate this?
What is the relationship between true and false?
Can you explain what is meant by the “negation of the negation”? Can you give some examples that demonstrate this?
Was the First World War caused by the assassination of a Crown Prince in Sarajevo? What is the role of accident in history?
What is the difference between determinism and fatalism? Into which of these categories would you place Marxism?
Using what you have learned, are you able to explain why workers sometimes accept major attacks on their working conditions, then strike over some ‘small’ incident?
Can you explain how having a dialectical materialist understanding is a vital tool to help the working class achieve victory in the class struggle?