A Critical Analysis of Marx’s Dialectical Materialism

This paper examines how the concept of dialectical materialism has evolved in the history of philosophy and its distinct features based on the work of Marx and Engels. Dialectical materialism, as a fundamental philosophical outlook of Marxism, is one of the greatest contributions of Marx and Engels in the history of philosophical discourse. The importance of dialectical materialism is far beyond imagination in analyzing the nature of things and human social development in a manner that conceiving social development against a linier and disconnected mode of cognition and things. As being foundational to Marxian thought, dialectical materialism deal in wide range of subjects, such as understanding of the nature of things and change, the nature of man and also the nature of social development. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to critically analyze the concepts of dialectical materialism in terms of its origin, evolution, and how it was understood by Marx and Engels in connection with its divergence from both mechanical materialism and metaphysical conception of the nature of things.