Dialectical Materialism: An Introductory Course Volume One - Materialism and the Dialectical Method

1952. First edition. 144pp. Maurice Campbell Cornforth (1909-1980) was a British Marxist philosopher. When Cornforth began his career in philosophy in the early 1930s, he was a follower of Ludwig Wittgenstein, writing in the then current style of analytic philosophy. Cornforth later became a leading ideologist of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and was critical of the aesthetic theories of fellow Marxist Christopher Caudwell. This is the first of three volumes on Dialectical Materialism, and is intended for the general reader. It deals with the basic ideas of Materialism and with the Dialectical Method, and provides a good introduction to several important sociological principles: idealism, metaphysics, materialism, mechanical materialism, and dialectical materialism, in addition to Marxist philosophy. Volume 2 of this text is entitled Historical Materialism, and Volume 3 is Theory of Knowledge. The book is bound in the original grey boards with blue titling on the spine. The case of the book is in very good condition with slight fading to the spine and some browning along the top edge of the rear board. The spine ends are lightly bumped. The contents are tight and clean with staining along the edges of the text block, possibly from smoke damage. Two names have been written on the front free endpaper. The unclipped dustwrapper is a bit brittle and has shelf wear with some soiling and heavy browning to the spine. a piece is missing from around the bottom front spine corner and about 1" is missing from the top of the spine. The corners are chipped with small pieces missing and there is a tear of about 1 1/2" on the top front corner. The front spine edge has a tear of about 1" just below the missing section that extends into the front of the wrapper. There are a few other small tears on the edges.