APA Dictionary of Psychology

in the philosophy of Karl Marx, the principle that accounts for the progress of history and the succession of economic and government systems. The process is one in which the clash of the prevailing system (the thesis) with an insurgent system (the antithesis) results in a new system (the synthesis). This movement is driven by purely material factors, most notably those attending the control of the means of production. Marx’s dialectical account of history thus inverts what may be referred to as the dialectical idealism of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). See also class theory; Marxism.