Welcome to the 44th Issue of the SHAPE Journal. This is an unusual short series on Marxism. It doesn’t take the usual form of such an introduction: instead it seeks to reveal the philosophical stance, and how this allows the most penetrating and revealing work on a vast range of areas of serious study.

So, it isn’t about Capitalism or Socialism, and certainly says nothing about Economics. So, what is it?

It takes four very different issues in Philosophy and investigates them via the Marxist stance, which is termed Dialectical Materialism. So, it isn’t just Politics. It is Philosophy! And, as far as I am concerned, it is far and away the most profound and revealing stance and methodology that currently exists in Human Thinking.

It will be published on the SHAPE Blog as a weekly series of articles, so the reader can sample exactly what it does, and here as a full Issue of the SHAPE Journal.

Non participants in this field usually conceive of Marxists as political activists with a revolutionary purpose, and though that is certainly true, it doesn’t address the Philosophy of Karl Marx that started it all off, nor in any way include the profound methods developed to analyse all aspects of our World.

Indeed, in addition to the impetus that gave a sound basis for the Socialist Movement, the methods of Marxism have also transformed many important areas of Social Culture and intellectual disciplines of every kind. But, it doesn’t, and shouldn’t, divide Marxists into two opposing groups at all. Indeed, in the experience of this serious scientist and teacher it can transform inadequate positions, and enable the most revealing and exciting possible developments in literally all fields of study.

For example, in Sub Atomic Physics, after a century of retreat and compromise as embodied in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, it is the Marxist approach that is now dismantling this idealist concoction, while making significant contributions to Philosophy in the same undertaking.