Dialectical Materialism

Explanation of dialectics:

Hegel was an (idealist) philosopher. He had many followers (Hegelians). Marx thinks some of his followers are too idealist (Right Hegelians). They say that material phenomena are a result of ideas in their brains. For example, because people believe in liberty, therefore they started a war. Marx thinks that a lot of our ideas actually come from our material condition. For example, because we are poor we think money is super important. Marx thinks history should be interpreted by looking at people's material condition. We should be explaining societal beliefs, law, religion (superstructure) from the material condition (base). For example, maybe people worshipped a rain deity (superstructure) developed because they need rain for their harvest (base).

This is the materialist part.

Many people believe that Hegel started a program of thinking called Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis. (A lot think it's a wrong interpretation of Hegel, but that doesn't matter because that's what Marx thought). You start out with a statement: Dogs are blue. Then you argue with yourself: Blue objects can't bark. Then you come up with a new, higher level of understanding called the synthesis that resolves this conflict: Blue objects except dogs can't bark.

This is the dialectics part.

Marx believes that that is flawed. How can we reason about society if our material condition is the root of our beliefs? Because of that he even criticized the Left Hegelians! (Freuerbach) We need to analyze the issue the other way around! In other words, whether you are left or right Hegelian, the way you do research is wrong. You're doing research on society in the wrong way! That means instead of battling different ideas in our head, and trying to come up with a synthesis, we need to look at the material condition, and reason with the material condition. We always have to analyze a society by looking at its base first! Marx later then summarized this base as the mode of production. In our current society, our mode of production is capitalism. Therefore you constantly have to analyze a society by the interactions between its base and superstructure. The base is for the most part dominant and shapes the superstructure. That being said the superstructure also has an effect on the base which is more clarified by later Marxists. E.g. hegemony (Gramsci).

This is dialectical materialism.

An example of how you use dialectical materialism is precisely historical materialism. History is analyzed by looking at the mode of production. Why do medieval peasants behave that way? Because they're working in a feudalist mode of production! Why did the French Revolution happen? Why did serfs migrate into the cities? All these can be analyzed by looking at the mode of production.

There are many arguments against and for this method of reasoning but I won't get into it.