ABSTRACT
Read in isolation, this passage would seem to confine dialectics to an aspect of thought, albeit
one present in every consciousness. But when we take this as not only reflection in theory
(thought) but reflection in practice (action)—and the overcoming of the separation of these
by mere Understanding6-dialectics becomes part of the transformative process of history
itself, something that Marx’s emphasis on praxis consistently reaffirmed: the actualisation of
human thought through the sublation of the contradictions of social order. Or expressed more
simply, the fact that humans have the capacity to construct in mind before practice: that
human action is characterised by intentionality (Marx, 1986, pp. 173-174). One could raise
this as the realisation of philosophy through revolution (see Feenberg, 2014). This does not
lead to a teleology of change towards a given end, merely the individual and collective capacity
for praxis, for purposive action towards a chosen end. Dialectics is useful precisely because
society itself is complex and processual, and the human (both individual and collective) con-
scious, agential and transformative-an active part in mediating these processes. This con-
ception of dialectics shifts more towards a Vygotskian notion of human development and
learning through interactions, with the environment and social life taken as a whole (see
Blunden, 1997), rather than some mystical force concealed within every process.
