We saw that idealism holds that the entire universe emanates from an absolute spirit and ideas determine everything.

While Marx was attracted to the theory of dialectics, he firmly disagreed with Hegel's idealist explanation. Instead he argued that our ideas are directly related to and are a consequence of our material state. Thus, material states give rise to ideas and not vice versa as was claimed by Hegel.

In this school of thought of Marx and Engels called ‘Dialectical Materialism', the theory of idealism was replaced by that of materialism. In dialectical materialism nature or matter is primary and ideas are secondary. In fact nature or matter is primary in the whole scheme of things as understood by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. Therefore, our thoughts and ideas are the reflection of the material world. We have here Hegelian Dialectics + Materialism = Dialectical Materialism.