For a few years now, I have enjoyed listening to and viewing recorded courses from The Teaching Company’s "The Great Courses" series.  I think I first discovered Teaching Company materials through their website and I purchased a few inexpensive courses after my initial discovery.  Some time later, my local library began purchasing these courses and rather than spend my money on purchasing tapes, CDs, and videos, I decided to limit myself to what the library had to offer.  A few weeks ago, I was browsing through the library’s A/V collection and I found some selections from The Teaching Company’s "Great Ideas of Philosophy" series (2nd Edition).  I borrowed two of the five volumes from this course in hopes of hearing more of the informative and enjoyable presentations that I had come to expect from The Teaching Company.  The packaging of the course materials indicated that this particular course was taught by Professor Daniel N. Robinson of Georgetown University, so my expectations were somewhat high.

Of particular interest to me was Lecture 44: "Marxism—Dead but Not Forgotten."  After I listened to some unremarkable lectures by Dr. Robinson on the likes of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, I skipped to the Marx lecture in hopes that the material in this "lesson" would prove to be a bit more interesting than the preceding lectures.  In all candor, I must admit that I did not honestly think this presentation would prove to be objective in terms of philosophical critique, especially given Robinson’s explicit caveat that one might find echoes of his upbringing as an "American boy of the 1950's" and his early understanding that "if it's Marxism, it's bad."   But what I was truly unprepared for were the significant errors of fact uttered by Robinson during the course of his 30 minute lecture.

Critiques of Karl Marx and Marxism fill many, many volumes in the libraries of the world.  In his day, Marx even spent a fair amount of time composing works to refute the half-truths and falsehoods of his detractors.  His 1860 work Herr Vogt is one rather substantial example of his efforts in this respect. It’s a safe bet that Marx really needs no defense from philosophical critique, as history will be a better judge (despite the fact that many people wrongly assume that history has already passed judgment, and that Marx's vision has failed).  than the most seasoned academic or philosopher.  However, it is worth noting a few of the most significant errors from Dr. Robinson’s speech, as Robinson's inaccuracies could potentially distort the historical legacy of Marx in the minds of students who might have no previous knowledge with which to discern fact from fiction. Throughout the course of this article, I will provide verbatim transcriptions of Robinson's lecture where necessary.

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Dr. Robinson begins his lecture with an effort to present the ideas of Marx in a broad historical and philosophical framework and in doing so, he attempts to craft his exposition of the nature and origins of Marxist thought:

"We also know that Karl Marx's doctoral dissertation was on Democritus and Epicurus.  He was, at least early on, very interested in materialistic philosophy in that sense of materialism, and surely, uh, taking on a project like that for a doctoral dissertation shows not only an interest in questions of that kind, but already a certain allegiance to a particular approach to solving problems of that kind.  Nonetheless, if we were to classify Marx as a materialist, it would be a different kind of a materialist. It would be what he himself referred to as a dialectical materialist." [my emphasis]

So, according to Dr. Robinson, Marx himself used the term "dialectical materialism". Interesting.  I almost jumped out of my seat when I heard that part.  I even played the CD track over a few times and transcribed the statement to make sure that I had heard it correctly. To state that Marx used the term "dialectical materialism" is quite an egregious error, to say the least.  It is a typical error, to be sure.  Lenin incorrectly asserted this in Chapter Four (section eight) of his work "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism." Hell, I made the error myself early in my graduate school years when I wrote one of my first papers on Marxism.  The fact that it is a typical error does not make it an excusable one, though, especially considering that in over a century's worth of translations of the voluminous works of Marx, the term "dialectical materialism" does not appear even once.  The fact is that Marx never committed this term to text.  So the error is a significant one.  This is especially the case if the presenter -— the responsible party, if you will — is a "distinguished professor" of Philosophy with purported decades of lecturing experience and reams of published work.

To clarify things a bit, I will note that it is accurate to say that Marx and Engels wrote extensively on both dialectics and materialist philosophy.  But to state that Marx explicitly used the term "dialectical materialism" or to otherwise infer that Marx explicitly represented himself to be a "dialectical materialist" is beyond stretching the truth. And publishing the error — and marketing it in multiple formats (as text, audio, and video) — guarantees the perpetuation of the falsehood so that the audience of students learns not the truth, but a muddled half-truth and myth.

Buzuev and Gordonov's What is Marxism-Leninism? provides a succinct definition of dialectical materialism:

Dialectical materialism, the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, a scientific world outlook, a universal method of perceiving the world and a science of the most general laws governing the development of nature, society and thinking.

The above glossary entry is an abbreviated and accurate summary of what dialectical materialism is, but it provides little insight into the formulation and articulation of the concept as such.  Z.A. Jordan’s book "The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism," provides an overview of the evolution of dialectical materialism in both terminology and concept.  Jordan attributes the formulation of dialectical materialism to Frederick Engels's  1876-1877 work Anti-Dühring (published 6 years before the death of Marx), but Jordan is careful to note that the term itself does not originate in the work of Engels.
In the history of Marxian thought the publication of Anti-Dühring (Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwalzung der Wissenschaft) turned out to be an epoch-making event. Originally planned as a polemical tract with a narrowly defined objective of no more than transitory importance, Anti-Dühring gained the distinction of being the canonical statement of the doctrine which came to be known as dialectical materialism and acquired great renown all over the world. Engels is the founder of dialectical materialism but he never used its now familiar name, calling it simply ‘modern materialism’. While he saw its modernity in being dialectical, that is, in the application of dialectics to the phenomenon of nature, he left it to Plekhanov and Lenin to coin the new term ‘dialectical materialism’.

Although the term ‘dialectical materialism’ is of later origin, there is no doubt that the oldest and most authoritative exposition of the doctrine itself is to be found in Anti-Dühring...

An early printing of Tom Bottomore's "A Dictionary of Marxist Thought" features an article by Roy Edgley which suggests that "the term (dialectical materialism) was probably first used by Plekhanov in 1891."  While this timeline is a bit more realistic, it is more widely accepted that the term is correctly attributed to Karl Kautsky.  The term was popularized during the Second International which was organized in 1889 (three years after the death of Marx).  As noted above, Plekhanov and Lenin featured prominently in the effort to expound upon the tenets and features of dialectical materialism.  Andy Blunden's essay "Marxism" (from the "Value of Knowledge" collection) provides the historical context of the origins of the term itself:
It is certainly a weakness of Marx’s literary legacy that although he is the originator of these ideas, there is very little in his works which simply and straight-forwardly explains them. It was left to Engels, mainly, to elaborate, explain and summarise Marx’s method of work...

And further (from the section entitled "The Marxism of the Second International):
During its first decades, Marxism was a few individuals intervening in the workers’ movement, promoting the revolutionary perspective and criticising the programs and ideology of other currents. By the end of the nineteenth century, Marxism had become a vast party with a mass working class membership and in the case of Germany for example, members of Parliament.

[...]

The Marxist movement of this time included a number of great figures, led chiefly by Engels, who lived until 1895, 12 years after Marx’s death, and included such figures as Georgi Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, Franz Mehring, Karl Kautsky, who had learnt his Marxism as Marx’s secretary and literary executor, August Bebel, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, and many others.

[...]

It was in the traditions of the Second International of Kautsky, Plekhanov & Co., using these conceptions, that Lenin and Trotsky, and the generation that made the Russian Revolution and built the Communist International were educated in Marxism. Consequently, this understanding of Marxism is part and parcel of what Marxism is.

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In addition to Dr. Robinson's failings regarding his understanding of the underlying philosophical tenets of Marx's work, Dr. Robinson proceeds to misrepresent the respective lives and livelihoods of Marx and the Marx family with a statement that stands in direct contradiction to the extensive selection of testimonial and biographical data regarding the life of Marx:

"He finally settles down in England where he lives the balance of his life...He married well...He did not marry into, uh,  a Marxist family, I would say...He married into quite, uh, an upper class...upper-middle class family and lived in relative comfort, insisting all the days that he did not  been engaged in anything as useless as philosophy."

For decades and decades, authors and scholars of all political shades have consistently provided accounts that stand in direct contradiction to Robinson’s supposition.  Although Marx and his wife Jenny von Westphalen received what are described as "legacies" and other sorts of financial endowments and assistance from friends and contemporaries, the fact of the matter is that a host of complicating factors (some of which were likely the fault of Marx himself) brought tragedy and suffering to the Marx family at almost regular intervals.  From Francis Wheen to Thomas Sowell to Harold Laski and countless others, it has been shown time and again that Marx’s adult life was not "comfortable" by any stretch of the imagination.  Consider these passages from Laski’s 1927 work, "Karl Marx":
Marx's London period is, creatively, the most important part of his career; but it was a difficult and tragic struggle for existence, and his work was accomplished only by heroic effort. For the first ten years, the family was hardly over the verge of starvation, and Marx had even to pawn his clothes for necessary expenses. For was his intellectual environment easy. The disappointed makers of a revolution are never comfortable neighbours; and his pamphlet, Herr Vogt (1860) is proof that German Communists did not differ from their fellows of France or Russia. ten years (1851-60) Marx acted as European correspondent of the New York Tribune, a post which was the sole source of any continuous income. It was, however, very poorly paid, and if the selection of his articles therein published by Eleanor Marx after his death is at all representative, it is clear that the taste of the American reader has changed in remarkable fashion since the 'sixties. For Marx does not abate one iota of his convictions in his correspondence; and the manner of interpretation is that of the philosopher rather than the journalist.

That income apart, Marx had no consistent means of livelihood during his first ten years in London...

[...]

The long struggle against poverty had left its mark upon his frame, and the last twelve years of his life were an incessant fight against pain and disease. Asthma and inflammation of the lungs left him little chance of continuous world...(V)isits to Karlsbad and Algiers did not improve his shattered health; and he did not lift his head again after the death of his wife on December 2nd, 1881. To her, Marx had intended, as Engels has told us, to dedicate the completed structure of his work. He had no strength for the effort. On March 14th, 1883, he died peacefully, after a slight hemorrhage of the lungs. 

Even biographical vignettes from Thomas Sowell's "Marxism" (which is itself a blistering critique of both Marx and Marxist thought) are largely consistent with the above summary.
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Robinson roughly summarizes his understanding of Marx with a value judgement disguised as the product of scholarship and research
"His contributions as a scientist, social or otherwise, I would declare to be...again, perhaps disclosing a bias, uh, negligible, if coherent."

The above sentence is not so much an error of fact as it is an overtly skewed statement of opinion.  If one takes into account that Marx’s works have been published regularly for almost one and a half centuries as well as the fact that his works have been translated into a multitude of languages from English to Urdu, one should easily reach the understanding that it is not necessarily a small audience of international readers who find the work of Marx to be "coherent."  It is not uncommon for the works of Marx to find their way into textbooks, anthologies and multi-volume works featuring the greatest works of Western Civilization.  So I will respectfully submit that Dr. Robinson’s findings that Marx was both "incoherent" and "negligible" to be an indication of his own intellectual shortcomings and nothing more.

If Marx were alive today, he would likely find the errors of Dr. Robinson to be of little interest or consequence.  In his own day, Marx was the subject of gesticulation and criticism from all manner of political opponents.  In his Preface to the First German Edition of Capital (1867), Marx evoked Danté in his anticipation of the opposition and skepticism with which he was so accustomed:
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti."
["Follow your own course, and let people talk."] 

It's probably a safe bet that Dr. Robinson speaks not from a revisionist perspective as much as he is simply showing his own ignorance.  Unfortunately, his "pulpit" is ostensibly one of a distinguished academician and this commands a certain amount of respect to the uninformed listener.  Just as the legacies of deceased philosophers are judged and re-judged by history, the merits of an academician will ultimately be determined by his or her pupils as they assimilate knowledge from a broad range of didactic and interactive experiences.  If Robinson's errors on the matter of Marx are an indication of the quality of scholarship in Robinson's body of work, hopefully his students will be even less kind to him than he was to Marx.

Thanks to my pal Andy for providing some editorial assistance.