Hey /leftypol/, the more I'm reading about these topics the more I get diverging interpretations that seem unreconcilable. So, what's the global consensus on these notions ?
>historical materialism
The structure of society, which reflects the mode of production (capitalism, socialism, feudalism etc), creates antagonist groups with structural interdependance aswell as structural contradictory modes of existence (i.e. the proletariat will aim to maximize their salaries, but the bourgeoisie will attempt to extract the most surplus value from the proletariat).
Over time, this creates change and conflict within societies, giving way to paradigmic societal change (i.e. feudalism -> capitalism -> …)
However, another interpretation seems to see it through the lens of the development in productive forces. In this case, the contradiction ceases to be between classes, but rather between the development of productive forces with the relations of production (i.e. feudalism preventing capitalism from developing because of taxes or irrational norms).
The first interpretation makes me tend to believe that there is no gradual change from one society towards another, and simply a dialectical movement towards the abolition of classes, whilst the second one seems to be much more technology-centric and linear.
>dialectical materialism
This one seems to be the most controversial one. From what I can gather, it seems that it originated with Engels and that it posits that the material world in eternal motion driven by contradictory forces and structured around 3 natural laws. However, doesn't this imply some form of naturalism ? Nonetheless, another interpretation that I have picked up accounts for it being the idea that man is in a dialectical interaction with his environment, by which he is able to consciously work on it whilst also being determined by the latter. This interpretation can be imo hardly derived easily from the first one.
>alienation
Every individual is intrinsically a social and creative potential, by which he can be fulfilled or alienated. Alienation here refers to the mechanisms inherent to capitalism which "alienates" the proletariat from that potential by reducing them to cogs.
In this view, the dialectic seems to change again and shifts towards individual interactions between the position someone holds in a factory and his social and creative potential.
"Humanist" marxists accept this dialectic first and foremost apparently but it seems contradictory to the Marx of the Capital.
I don't really see how all these can be reconciled. Unless the dialectic just becomes a very trivial method by which change is explained by conflicting tendencies/forces, they seem to operate somewhat on a fundamentally different level. So, what gives ? Is the dialectic purely a method by which to analyze change ? Or does it describe a real life movement ?