Dialectical Materialism. This phrase was used by Friedrich Engels ( 18201895) in the context of Marxism. Kant had seen dialectic as the name to be given to man's futile attempt to apply the principles that govern phenomena to the "things-in-themselves" that lie behind the phenomena. Fichte was the first to present the dialectical process as a triad: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Hegel had used this triadic formula to exemplify the principle that he saw working everywhere in reality. Engels then turned the Hegelian concept round in such a way that the dialectical process always occurs in a material context, insisting that qualitative changes are attained through quantitative changes. In political realities the thesis-antithesissynthesis is then said to apply to the way in which human societies develop through class conflict.

Geddes MacGregor, Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy, New York: Paragon House, 1989