Maybe the Vietnamese textbook on ML has more relatable examples: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Curriculum_of_the_Basic_Principles_of_Marxism-Leninism_Part_1. Or the ABC of diamat: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:ABC_of_Dialectical_and_Historical_Materialism. Haven't read either yet but you might just find your luck in them.

I thought of the textbook because that's exactly what we need, textbooks. In schools students are not just told how to do something, they are then tasked with practicing it (in most cases lol). This is what we lack, we are by and large passive consumers of theory and very few make it to the "applying theory on my own" stage. I'm sure these textbooks exist, they certainly existed in the USSR, we just need to find and make them available... or write our own.

Try to answer this one: how does war progress dialectically? You'll find the answer in Clausewitz' On War but try to formulate your own answer first. Try to apply the four laws of diamat wholly, not isolated from each other. Also note that the question is not how do we explain war or why does war exist, but how it progresses.

I am not capable in explaining anything really but maybe this short video helps.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fopyyYbSvuQ

Edit: I know short videos are not enough to understand theory but as you have read theory it might help put things together

What have you tried to analyze thus far? Dialectical materialism is one of those fuzzy subjects that is both simpler and more complex than you first realize, the basics are easier to grasp than you think but the depth is far beyond what you imagine.

One example, for the transformation of quantity into quality, is the balloon. Balloons are filled with air, and eventually pop. This is due to the internal contradictions within the balloon, an unpopped balloon posesses the capacity to pop.

Historical materialism is the application of dialectical materialism to the course of human societal development. Using this, we can view class struggle, and how each mode of production creates its own negation, sublimating into a higher mode of production.

Materialism is the understanding that physical matter and energy are the source of ideas. Everything exists whether it is observed or not. Idealism is the approach to reality from the incorrect basis that first ideas exist before the material world. "The world exists because you perceive it." Spiritualism is kinda in the middle. Everything exists because the spirit made it but even if there were no material observers there would still be spirit.

Dialectics is a method of studying why and how things change from one thing into another. Nothing stays the same. All things have internal contradictions within them driving them to become something else. Ever growing imbalance of internal contradictions (quantitative changes) results in a change from one thing into another (qualitative change). The more complex the thing the more contradictions it has.

So you have a starting point called the "thesis" the contradiction is called The "antithesis" and the product of the process called the "synthesis."

Recognizing the main forces at play (Primary contradictions) to find the antithesis is the hard part unless you are analyzing in hindsight. Contradictions are internal. They are attributes of the thing itself that inevitably build up (quantitative) and result in transformation.(qualitative)

A child, [thesis] cannot stay a child due to its genetic and social blueprints, [antithesis] it will become an adult (if it does not die.) [Synthesis]

The synthesis is a new thing that shares some attributes with the thesis but at the same time it is not the thesis and the thesis ceases to exist in the transition. (This can be called "negation" because the thing stops being what it was and the "negation of the negation" is it becoming a new thesis of its own.)

Dialectical Materialism is the understanding that material conditions spawned the human mind and the ideas in the human mind can shape material conditions (praxis) which can in turn shape the human mind in an endless dialectical dance.

Just gonna copy/paste my response I posted to a similar question the other day.

In the first camp, I see dialectical materialism used as a static sort of list of qualities that govern all of reality and nature, basically creating a list of universal laws that have predictive and explanatory power in all cases, scenarios and scales, no matter the context.

It seems arbitrary if you don't know where the list comes from and just memorize it without much thought. I would recommend reading Engels' Dialectics of Nature as he explains in that book the reasoning behind the list.

I think Bohm actually summarizes the idea the best.

Indeed, to some extent, it has always been both necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, and to separate them, so as to reduce his problems to manageable proportions; for evidently, if in our practical technical work we tried to deal with the whole of reality all at once, we would be swamped…However, when this mode of thought is applied more broadly…then man ceases to regard the resulting divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and his world as actually constituted of separately existent fragments…fragmentation is continually being brought about by the almost universal habit of taking the content of our thought for ‘a description of the world as it is’. Or we could say that, in this habit, our thought is regarded as in direct correspondence with objective reality. Since our thought is pervaded with differences and distinctions, it follows that such a habit leads us to look on these as real divisions, so that the world is then seen and experienced as actually broken up into fragments.

--- David Bohm, “Wholeness and the Implicate Order”

Diamat sees reality as a single, interconnected whole, where everything flows into everything else. You cannot have a "perfect" definition of an object that perfectly captures it as it exists in the real world, because nothing exists autonomously. The more detailed the definition, the more you'd have to include aspects of things around it, and then things around that, so on and so forth, and so the only way to capture something as it actually exists in the real world would be to capture all of reality simultaneously, which is obviously not practically possible.

Instead, we divide the world up into manageable chunks, into objects and abstract categories, but these objects only reflect the dominant qualities of the system that are relevant to us. They never reflect the full complexities of the system and you will always find things that conflict with the definition you are using upon deeper analysis.

Logically, the reason for this position is because it solves certain logical paradoxes, usually those dealing with identity, such as Ship of Theseus Paradox, Water-H2O paradox, or the teletransportation paradox. Aristotle believed identity was an actual physical thing, that a "tree" isn't just a label we put on a collection of stuff, but that this collection of stuff actually acquires an additional physical property of "treeness." Diamat rejects this position and just sees abstract categories like "tree" as a description of the dominant character of a system.

It is kind of like a trend line on a graph. It adds no new information to the pre-existing dataset, it just creates a simple representation of an aspect of the dataset that is of interest.

Engels used the term "metaphysician" in a derogatory way to refer to the kinds of people, like Aristotle, that Bohm talked about in the quote above; people who confuse the abstract category as equivalent to the physical reality of a thing, as if a "dog" is actually an autonomous object existing out there in the world that perfectly fits the definition of a "dog" and nothing else.

Engels goes into a lot of detail in Dialectics of Nature to show how if you take any abstract object like a "dog" and analyze it very closely, you always find it to be very ambiguous upon further inspections. For example, drawing a hard-and-fast line as to the very precise boundaries of a "dog" in space, or precise boundaries when the "dog" comes into being and passes away, or precise boundaries on the evolutionary tree of what constitutes a "dog" and what does not, you quickly find that these kinds of questions are all pretty ambiguous and you can't actually draw a hard-and-fast line at all.

This is why in Anti-Durhing Engels says definitions are "useless for science," because the physical reality of a thing is not to be found in some sort of very precise definition that leaves no ambiguities at all, because such a thing is impossible to construct in the first place. No matter how rigorous your definition is, you will always find internal contradictions if you analyze the object more closely, things that seem to go against the dominant character that you identified.

Hard and fast lines are incompatible with the theory of evolution. Even the borderline between vertebrates and invertebrates is now no longer rigid, just as little is that between fishes and amphibians, while that between birds and reptiles dwindles more and more every day. Between Compsognathus and Archaeopteryx, only a few intermediate links are wanting, and birds’ beaks with teeth crop up in both hemispheres. “Either-or” becomes more and more inadequate.

Among lower animals, the concept of the individual cannot be established at all sharply, not only as to whether a particular animal is an individual or a colony, but also as to where in development one individual ceases and another begins (nurses).

For a stage in the outlook on nature where all differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all opposites pass into one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical method of thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no hard and fast lines, no unconditional, universally valid “either-or,” and which bridges the fixed metaphysical differences, besides “either-or,” recognises also, in the right place, “both this-and that” and reconciles the opposites. It is the sole method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage.

Of course, for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical categories retain their validity.

--- Engels, Dialectics of Nature

If we assume that (1) nature is a single unified whole which is impossible to capture in a definition / abstract category, and (2) we still need to use definitions / abstract categories because of our finite mental capacity, then the next question becomes, how do we navigate this? How do we operate with the knowledge that we have to use categories which we know are inherently limited (unlike the metaphysician which fails to recognize the limited nature of these categories and confuses them for reality)?

That is what dialectics is about. It is a logical framework to deal with this.

Engels, in Dialectics of Nature, reduces dialectics to three laws. The first two are the most important as they explain how qualities (abstract categories) are to be dealt with.

The "law of the interpretation of the opposites" is the idea that any concept only makes sense in reference to opposite. The concept of "inside" does not make sense unless it is being implicitly contrasted with "outside." One of them inherently implies the existence of the other. Logically, the opposite has to exist, and, as said before, upon closer inspection of any object, you will find things which conflict with how you have defined the dominant character. Everything must logically contain these "internal contradictions."

"The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa" then explains how these abstract categories change. If I let an apple sit long enough, it will eventually rot so much it ceases be an apple. How does this happen? It's because there were already non-apple-like things already within the apple that just were not the dominate character, and over time, those grew while the apple-like qualities decayed, until the apple-like qualities ceased to be the dominate character.

The fact that identity contains difference within itself is expressed in every sentence, where the predicate is necessarily different from the subject; the lily is a plant, the rose is red, where, either in the subject or in the predicate, there is something that is not covered by the predicate or the subject. That from the outset identity with itself requires difference from everything else as its complement, is self-evident.

--- Engels, Dialectics of Nature

1/2

Maybe this could help: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm ?

what are some of the everyday situations in which you were trying to apply it to? it's probably best to start there

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9962669/7402719

DiaMat takes a long time to come to grips with because we are consistently made to think in non-dialectical and non-material terms. We are taught to conceive of systems as being created by a higher power with objectives in mind. Your heart is there to pump blood and your lungs are there to take oxygen into your body because if they don’t your cells can’t respirate and they will die. Plants bear flowers so pollinators will move gametes from plant to plant. It’s not true, but it’s the way we’re taught to think.

It makes no more sense to say “this young man is strong and healthy so he can work for his boss and fight for his country. This young woman ovulates so she can bear children for her husband.”

If you understand that these statements are nonsense, it shouldn’t be difficult to understand that banks are not there to provide loans and credit, that groceries are not there to feed people, and that factories are not there to produce material goods. They aren’t there to make capitalists rich either. This is just a reframing of the same unscientific thinking

The unscientific way of thinking says “the system is the way it is because that’s the way it works. If it didn’t work this way, it wouldn’t exist.” It’s completely circular.

The scientific way says “This system is this way because existing the way it used to caused it to change into what it is now. Existing in its current form will cause it to change further in the future.”

I actually ended up writing, what I'm hoping is a practical introductory guide, just recently. Let me know if it helps clear things up. https://dialecticaldispatches.substack.com/p/the-toolset-of-reality

Lots of good detailed answers here. I'll start off by trying to explain it even more succinctly by breaking down DiaMat into its simpler terms.

Dialectic - The examination/investigation of opposing ideas that eventually reach a resolution (in other words, a dialogue).

Materialism - Reality stems from the material world (ideas and consciousness are products of matter).

Therefore, Dialectical Materialism is the examination of opposing material forces that eventually reach a material resolution.

The implication here is that reality isn't static. And the engine that drives change in our material world is the competition (or "dialogue") between material forces.

More broadly this encompasses examples like environmental pressure leading to new species adaptations (natural selection), the collision of hot and cold air leading to storm systems, and nuclear reactions.

More specifically, Marx takes this further and applies the DiaMat lens to the development of human civilization (i.e. Historical materialism). This is how we can recognize that our current existence under capitalism is not some static "end of history" (reality changes), but a temporary mode of production that will eventually resolve itself into something new ("socialism or barbarism") through opposing material forces (the working class vs the ruling class).

If you can follow what you read, you are understanding well enough at this stage, especially if you're not used to reading philosophy and how it works. You've barely started, and these are complicated philosophical concepts! You have some good reading recommendations here, and I would recommend trying to understand what they're saying as well as possible (go slowly if you need to), but don't worry about going beyond that yet. This is also a philosophy firmly rooted in real-life class experience, so organizing with your community will help you understand with time (and your study will make you a better organizer at the same time).

Imagine if DM was taught from an early age in Western schools.

You could look for practical examples from works that apply dialectical analysis to things you're already somewhat familiar with. From the flag in your handle, I assume Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America" will be a good short book that does exactly that for you.

Prof Wolff on dialectical and historical materialism:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bGPSKZgFH70