34

It is not just because the working Subjects mediate the

material o f nature through themselves that is is impossible
to speak o f matter as a supreme principle o f being. Men are
not concerned in their production with matter as such, but
always with its concrete, quantitatively and qualitatively
determined forms o f existence. Its general form,i.e.its
independence o f consciousness, exists only in particular
shapes. There is no fundamental matter, no fundamental
ground o f being. M aterial reality can no more provide an
ontological principle in die being for the other it owes to
its reladvity to men, than it can in its being-in-itself.
There is even less justification for describing dialectical
materialism as a philosophy o f origin' than there is in the
case o f Hegels dialectical idealism. Dialectical materialism
admits no autonomous substance such as could exist independendy o f its concrete determinations. Engels expressed
him self in the following manner on the concept o f matter in
his notes to Anti-Dukrm g:
N .B . M atter as such is a pure creation o f thought and an abstraction.
W e leave out o f account d ie qualitative distinctions between things in
subsum ing them as corporeally existing things under the concept
matter*. M atter as such, as opposed to definite, existing pieces o f
m atter, is therefore som ething which has no sensuous existence.*1

H e dealt again with the question o f matter in the Dia

lectics o f N ature-.
M atter and m otion cam tot. . . be known in any other way than through
the investigation o f d ie separate m aterial things and form s o f m otion,
and b y knowing these w e also, in the sam e measure, know m atter and
m otion as such.**

T h e latest attempts to systematize dialectical materialism

dispense just as explidd y with the concept o f matter as a
substantial bearer* o f secondary accidents. N either Spirit
nor matter is a uniform, 'fundam ental' principle for ex
plaining the world:
In opposition to m etaphysical m aterialism , dialectical materialism
rejects the notion o f a final, im m utable essence o f things, o f an
absolutely fundamental substance', from whose ultim ate properties
and appearances everything that exists can be derived. In nature there
finfhtng jmmufaMf. anrl q q

absolutely fundamental SubfitUlCC.**