Historical and Dialectical Materialism

Historical and dialectical materialism are doctrines in the philosophy of history and in metaphysics, respectively. They were developed within the Marxist tradition and refer to ideas found in the works of Karl Marx (1818–1883). However, neither term Friedrich Engels (1820–1895). Engels, a friend and collaborator of Karl Marx, believed that the concept of private property was to blame for all the problems of society. He authored several publications espousing scientific socialism, including the Communist Manifesto which he cowrote with Marx. was used or endorsed by him explicitly, and the relationship between those doctrines and his writings has always been problematic. In recent years scholarship has clarified these questions considerably. While in the later twentieth century dialectical materialism all but faded away, historical materialism has had a remarkable revival in an "analytical" form.