the materialistic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

in Hegelian and Marxist theory, the view that the world is a material process undergoing stages of unending change.

A form of materialism that sees matter not as something static, on which change and development have to be imposed, but as, containing within its own nature those tensions or "contradictions" that provide the motive force for change.

From the Greek words for dispute and debate, this is the science of the general laws governing the development of nature, science, society and thought. It considers all phenomena to be in movement and in perpetual change. Marxism linked this concept to materialism and showed the process of development in all things through struggle, contradiction and the replacement on one form by another.

According to many followers of the theories of Karl Marx (or Marxists), dialectical materialism is the philosophical basis of Marxism. The name, which was never used by Marx himself, refers to the notion that Marxism is a synthesis of philosophical dialectics and materialism.