Dialectical materialist

A dialectical materialist is a person who adheres to the philosophy of dialectical materialism, a Marxist doctrine holding that the material world exists independently of human consciousness and that historical and social change arise through the development and resolution of internal contradictions. Derived from the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and influenced by the dialectical philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, dialectical materialism teaches that change occurs through the conflict of opposing forces within a system. According to this view, every social, economic, or natural condition contains contradictions that generate tensions and eventually produce new forms of organization. Marxists applied this dialectical method to history by arguing that conflicts between social classes, such as slave and master, feudal lord and serf, or capitalist and worker, drive historical development. Rather than viewing societies as static or changing primarily through the actions of individuals, dialectical materialists regard history as an ongoing process in which contradictions give rise to successive stages of development. In the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist states, dialectical materialism served as the official philosophical framework and was presented as a scientific method for understanding nature, society, and history, though critics contended that it often became an ideological orthodoxy used to legitimize communist policies.