MAURICE CONFORTH — The revolutionary characteristics of dialectical materialism are embodied in the two features of Marxist-Leninist philosophy which give it its name—dialectics and materialism. In order to understand things so as to change them we must study them, not according to the dictates of any abstract system, but in their real changes and interconnections—and that is what is meant by dialectics. We must set aside preconceived ideas and fancies about things, and strive to make our theories correspond to the real conditions of material existence—and that means that our outlook and theory are materialist.