se of quantity, quality, opposition, and so on, being derived from experience). But at the same time, once they are formulated, the necessity, of dialectical laws, and consequently their logical distinction from empirical laws, can be demonstrated, and their formulation be then systematically corrected and made more exact in the procedure of demonstration.
5. DIALECTICS AND MATERIALISM
An important consequence of this account of dialectics is that it renders invalid the separation so often made in expounding Marxist philosophy between materialism and dialectics.
In his little book on Dialectical Materialism (which was extracted from the larger History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1938) J. V. Stalin separated materialism from dialectics by saying that the former was "the theory" and the latter "the method". Mechanistic or pre‑dialectical materialism is, perhaps, "a theory"—that is to say, a "metaphysical theory" which attempts to state the ultimate constitution and structure of the universe. But dialectical materialism is not "a theory" in that sense, or in any sense of the word in which "theory" may be contrasted with "method". The fact is that the derivation and substantiation of the principles of dialectics is at the same time that of the principles of materialism—they are inseparable and are principles of exactly the same sort, being demonstrated in terms of the correct marshalling of categories in informative discourse.
Thus, for example, Ryle was quite right in calling the idealist theory of "the ghost in the machine" a "category mistake", even if one may disagree with his account of category. And so is it a category mistake to adopt the more general idealist approach that "thinking is prior to being", as it is to adopt such typically "undialectical" ideas as that things are what they are independent of their relations with other things and of their modes of coming into being and ceasing to be, or that qualitative and quantitative changes take place independently, or that processes proceed free of contradiction. To think in a consistently materialist way is to think in a dialectical way and to think in a consistently dialectical way is to think in a materialist way. These ways are the laws of thought, because they are the ways of assembling information, keeping thought within the bounds of informativeness and excluding illusion and fantasy. Materialism is not "a theory" that requires experimental verification and could be falsified, any more than it is a "metaphysical theory" which is somehow established a priori; nor are the laws of dialectics laws that require experimental verification and could be falsified; for any verifiable theory is materialist and dialectical.
The "mystification which dialectics suffers in Hegel's hands" was due to the way he separated dialectics from materialism, and tried to base formulation of laws of dialectics on idealist theory. The way Marx began to put this right was by getting rid of "preconceived idealist fancy". Hegel started with a preconceived and absurd idealist theory, to the effect that Thought or The Idea exists timelessly and independently of anyone's thinking, and that the world is created to be as Thought thinks it. Then (supposing himself to have what Ryle and others would now call "privileged access" to The Idea) he tried to write down in a book the sequence of Categories (in this context capital letters are used as a mark of respect for timelessness) in accordance with which the world is created. The result, naturally enough, was "mystification". Marx, on the other hand, did not start with any "preconceived idealist fancy". He started from "real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination . . . the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live". He started to work out how these real individuals must think and assemble their information in order to inform their practice. That is what he meant by turning dialectics "right side up again".
To work out the laws of thought is to work out the principl