Karl Marx explained the process of class struggle with the help of which one of the following theories?

The correct answer is Dialectical materialism.

Key Points

• Dialectical materialism, a philosophical approach to reality derived from the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
• For Marx and Engels, materialism meant that the material world, perceptible to the senses, has an objective reality independent of mind or spirit.
• They did not deny the reality of mental or spiritual processes but affirmed that ideas could arise, therefore, only as products and reflections of material conditions.
• Marx and Engels understood materialism as the opposite of idealism, by which they meant any theory that treats the matter as dependent on mind or spirit, or mind or spirit as capable of existing independently of matter.
• For them, the materialist and idealist views were irreconcilably opposed throughout the historical development of philosophy.
• They adopted a thoroughgoing materialist approach, holding that any attempt to combine or reconcile materialism with idealism must result in confusion and inconsistency.
• The concept of dialectical materialism—which is a theoretical basis for a method of reasoning—should not be confused with “historical materialism,” which is the Marxist interpretation of history in terms of the class struggle. However, it is based on dialectical materialism.

Additional Information

• Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party.
• It is called dialectical materialism because its approach to the phenomena of nature, its method of studying and apprehending them, is dialectical, while its interpretation of the phenomena of nature, its conception of these phenomena, its theory, is materialistic. 
• Historical materialism is the extension of the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of social life, an application of the principles of dialectical materialism to the phenomena of the life of society, to the study of society and of its history.
  • It posits that history is made as a result of the struggle between different social classes rooted in the underlying economic base.