The Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism is considered to be one of the fundamental works on dialectical materialism

Dialectical materialism

Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...

 and Leninist communism. The book remains important in understanding the philosophy and politics of the Soviet Union, by consolidating the work of important contributions to Marxist theory.

Publication

The First Edition of The Fundamentals, was published in 1961. a Second Edition was published in 1963. The Text Draws heavily on the Works on Marx and Lenin, with additional References to Engels, Stalin and Khrushchev.

Part One: The Philosophical Foundations of The Marxist-Leninist World Outlook

Part One of Fundamentals covers Materialist and Idealist Philosophy, the use of Dialectics within Materialist Philosophy and its opposition to Metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

, and develops a Theory of Knowledge, Truth, Necessity and Human Freedom.

The text argues that only a consistently materialist approach to philosophy can be truly scientific, since it requires the recognition of the objective existence of matter, as outside and independent of the human mind.

Part Two: The Materialist Conception of History

Part Two covers marxist theories of history, or historical materialism, by outlining the role of the mode of production, class, class struggles, the state and the individual in social development.

Part Three: Political Economy of Capitalism

Part Three summaries Marx's Capital

Das Kapital

Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...

 and Lenin's theory of Imperialism.

Part Four: Theory and Tactics of the International Communist Movement

See also

• Dialectical Materialism
  Dialectical materialism
  Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
  
  
• Historical Materialism
  Historical materialism
  Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans...
  
  
• Marxism–Leninism
• Otto Wille Kuusinen
• Philosophy in the Soviet Union
  Philosophy in the Soviet Union
  Philosophical research in the Soviet Union was officially confined to Marxist-Leninist thinking, which theoretically was the basis of objective and ultimate philosophical truth. During the 1920s and 1930s, other tendencies of Russian thought were repressed...
  
  

Further reading

• Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentals of Philosophy. Translated from the Russian by Sergei Syrovatkin. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990.

  Spirkin's textbook offers a systematic exposition of the foundations of dialectical and historical materialism. The book was awarded a prize at a competition of textbooks for students of higher educational establishments.