Meaning of DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM:
Dialectical materialism is the philosophy underlying Marxism that was based on Hegel’s dialectics. Like Hegel, Marx saw reality as a totality, as a system. Following Hegel, Marx regarded history as the unfolding of a process of progression through contradictions within a system, requiring periodically a more or less violent reorganisation or synthesis. Marx, however, rejected the idealism of Hegel and instead, propagated materialism. He believed that the impetus to change comes from the material conditions. Ideas are only a reflection of the material world. He saw a class society as a unity of opposites. It is through clash of these opposites that change occurs. He identified three stages-thesis, anti thesis, and synthesis. As contradictions (anti-thesis) develop in a social order (thesis), a new synthesis develops. Social change is the dialectical sequence of contradictions and synthesis.