Welcome to Special Issue 69 of SHAPE Journal, a continuation of the series called Redefining Philosophy. This research attempts to complete the unfinished task of Karl Marx, and redefine philosophy as both Materialist and Holist - in other words, grounded in the ever-changing and interconnected real world that surrounds us.

We cannot possibly deliver here, all that is needed in differentiating Idealist Dialectics from the Dialectical Materialism of Marx. And this is primarily because neither Marx, nor his followers within the Socialist and Communist Movements of the Working Class, have, as yet, really fully appreciated his methods, and attempted to complete the still unfnished areas he revealed - or even more crucially, extended the stance into vital areas NOT addressed in any comprehensive way by Marx. And this has been, primarily because, he never produced a full informing and instructing definition of his Stance and Method.

But also, it was mainly because neither Marx nor anyone else tackled the major Elephant-in-the-Room - the omission of a comprehensive treatment of The Sciences. That has been begun to be tackled elsewhere, by this theorist, but it is a colossal task, and as yet is far from being a completed undertaking! So here, the differences with Hegel, as well as with the present day crop of Hegelian (and therefore Idealist) “Marxists” (such as Zizek) will be undertaken here!

As a study of both the Development of our Universe from a still debateable starting point, and, subsequently, from Mankind’s much more available History and Prehistory, they clearly demonstrate, that these two conceptions of Reality (Idealism and Materialism) have simultaneously co-existed throughout that vast Development: and they have never ever fitted neatly together at all well, in any attempts to do so at any subsequent time either.

Indeed, they, in the emerging consciousness of Mankind, presented their implicit primary confounding contradictions, as presenting an ever more evident insurmountable barrier to any possible developments into something actually revealing of the causes for the emergence of the significantly Wholly New!