Overcoming the “disease” of fatalism through the “cure” of dialectical materialism
By: Seek the Alternatives (STA)
August 30, 2026
The “disease” of fatalism
According to Merriam-Webster (n.d.-a) a disease is “a condition of the living animal […] or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguished signs and symptoms.” Some of the most common diseases affecting humans are diabetes and heart disease. The signs and symptoms of such diseases may include extreme thirst and chest discomfort, respectively. With respect to the mind, some of the most common illnesses include depression and bipolar disorder. Possible signs and symptoms of such ailments include perpetual sadness and extreme shifts in mood, respectively. But what about diseases of human consciousness? Not comas induced by a traumatic brain injury but rather the undiagnosed type that infects one’s worldview and sense of place and purpose in the world. The disease of human consciousness that this reflection considers is fatalism.
As stated by Merriam-Webster (n.d.-b), fatalism is “a doctrine that events are fixed in advance so that human beings are powerless to change them.” Like all diseases that work to impair, fatalism generates its own signs and symptoms within the organism—in this case, the organism’s consciousness. In the disease of fatalism, consciousness embraces notions of inevitability and powerlessness (Rice, 2024), which renders human cognizance and activity inconsequential. In political terms, fatalism’s mission revolves around reduction and political incapacitation. Humans are reduced to automatons in a predetermined world. Whether it is the gods or biology, the world and human affairs unfold according to forces beyond our individual and collective control.
On a psychological level fatalism pushes the feeling of disempowerment to the forefront of human thought and numbs our individual and collective ability to imagine and construct a social, economic, political, and cultural life other than what we see and experience. Whether it is war, genocide, poverty, imprisonment, or torture, fatalism teaches us that we must accept the world the way it is because we have been condemned to live in a state of hopelessness and helplessness. Fatalism’s conclusion is clear: humanity is doomed. It is the silent killer of human hope and the possibility of a material reality qualitatively different from the one currently haunting us—albeit unevenly.
Under the rubric of fatalism, life is reduced to a time and energy without purpose, meaning, and direction. Under the umbrella of fatalism, our individual and collective spirit and will are crushed and manipulated by those who stand to benefit from such psychic wounds, brokenness, and docility. Embracing fatalism is the acceptance of the inhumane and rapidly deteriorating conditions of our time.
From the perspective of political functionality, an acceptance of this sort removes the possibility of resistance and radical social transformation, making it easier for the ruling class to regulate, administrate, dominate, and ultimately accumulate wealth, property, and power—all of which provides the means to live a life of plenty while others beg, starve, and die prematurely. The ideology of fatalism functions like a key that locks the door to a possible future built around solidarity and human needs.
The ruling class contains many strategies, one of which revolves around the production and distribution of a fatalistic outlook of the world. Whether it is mainstream movies such as Antichrist (2009), No Country for Old Men (2007), and Melancholia (2011) or headlines that read Doomsday Clock moved closest ever to destruction (Lukiv, 2025), what we see is the gradual normalization of universal cruelty. The message is clear: giving up is the only way to be.
The search for a “cure”: Dialectical materialism
If fatalism is the ultimate disease of human consciousness, dialectical materialism is the “cure.” Unlike fatalism and its cognitive paralysis, dialectical materialism constitutes a form of consciousness—a worldview—that conceptualizes every single thing in the universe as existing in a state of flux—a process. The dialectic of materialism maintains that despite some things appearing static, fixed, or permanent, everything is in constant motion and therefore transforming. In addition to perpetual activity, there exist innumerable relations to other things. In other words, everything exists in a state of interconnectedness.
As interconnected things in constant motion, Au (2018) adds, “every ‘thing’ is developing through the unfolding of its own internal contradictions in relation to the contexts and conditions outside of that ‘thing,’ and these external conditions have a powerful effect: selecting exactly which internal process (contradiction) is resolved” (34). There is no way to simplify the complexity of such a vast network of relations. Beneath the illusion of separation, independence, and motionlessness exists a totality of relationships bound together in uneven and unpredictable ways. In relation and in constant motion, all things contain the seeds of their being as well as what they will become. In the words of Au, “in dialectics, all things/processes carry within them the kernel of their own destruction” (34) and reconfiguration.
As an attempt to ground such philosophical phrasing, think of soldiers within a settler-colonial army like the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). While soldiers are normatively viewed as armed labourers that carry out state-sanctioned murder, the dialectical materialist sees relations and hence possibilities. From the dialectical materialist lens, soldiers do not constitute a homogenous social formation but rather a set of relations that not only follow state commands but also contain the potential to turn on the state in support of something new. In the eyes of the dialectical materialist, it is a question of conditions. Phrased as a question: What type of conditions reproduce loyalty to the settler colonial state? Conversely, what type of conditions would sever such loyalty? From a dialectical materialist lens, there is absolutely nothing natural or inevitable about the soldiering class’s commitment to state violence as we have come to know and experience it locally and globally.
In the dialectical materialist view of reality, fatalism does not get the final word but rather exists as a psychic phenomenon in relation to its opposite: human agency. This agency represents “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or exerting [individual and collective] power” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-c) against the socio-economic forces that exist at the root of the prevailing social chaos. From a dialectical materialist standpoint, there is no social predetermination or inevitability but rather numerous possibilities rooted within human agency and influenced by the intellectual and material conditions we have inherited from the past.
The dialectical materialist does not drown in the puddle of “silent killers” of consciousness but rather attempts to understand the relationship between the silent killers of consciousness and human agency. Put another way, deteriorating conditions and psychic frames of fatalism might just be the essential ingredient that awakens a dormant agency awaiting full activation. This is not the road to giving up but rather revolution. For the dialectical materialist fatalism is not an end in itself but rather a relation with the capacity to give birth to a highly organized and unstoppable human agency that directs its power toward the collapse of capitalism and the birth of a socio-economic structure that places human need at its centre—that is, a new set of social relations.
As an ideological tool of the ruling class, fatalism works like a disease. Its signs and symptoms include hopelessness, helplessness, and a hyper-passivity rationalized as the only way to exist in a predetermined world—a world out of our collective hands. From a dialectical materialist standpoint, the disease under examination is viewed in relational terms and as a potential psychic driver towards human agency and ultimately revolution—that is, a world in our collective hands.
References
Au, W. (2018). A Marxist Education: Learning to Change the World. Haymarket Books.
Lukiv, J. (2025 January 28). Doomsday Clock moved closest ever to destruction. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgmkdz0297o.
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-a). Disease. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disease.
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-b). Fatalism. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fatalism.
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-c). Agency. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agency.
Rice, Hugh, “Fatalism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/fatalism/.