Subversive Soviet Squirrel @xmakina@mastodon.technology

@jaye you can see the two 'disagreeing people' as workers and capitalists; the capitalist says "I own this work because I bought the raw materials and paid you to make them into things," the worker says "I own this work because I'm the one who *did* the work and made you rich". the 'coming to agreement' part is revolution, the overthrowing of the ruling class.

Marx says this kind of thing has happened before, in the transition from feudalism — think medieval society, with a monarch, some lords below them, and peasants/serfs workjng land owned by the lords — to capitalism, and that in general you can describe and predict history in this way, as the conflicts between classes and their resolution through revolution.

@jaye so, in the oldest sense, a dialectic is a conversation between two people who disagree where they come to a consensus, a shared ground.

a guy named Hegel extended this to the idea that contradictory concepts, the "thesis" and its opposite the "antithesis," come together to form the "synthesis" and move society or history forward. this is the part I'm shakiest on, but if you see "thesis/antithesis/synthesis" they're riffing on this.

Marx and Engels took it a step further to say that it isn't a contradiction in ideas, but a contradiction in the everyday conditions of history — things like, "I work and make products that are more valuable than their raw materials, but my employer collects the profits that I produced and pays me much less than the value I made for my work."

Marx says that contradictions like this must resolve over history — a dialectic — and in particular he says the resolution of this dialectic is for workers to own their work directly.

oh my glob