Dialectic and Matter

Generally in Marxism, 'Dialectical Materialism' connotes the principle that a Dialectical process is immanent in all Matter, thereby corresponding to the Hegelian Dialectic of which it is the putative Inversion, according to which a Dialectic is immanent in all Mind. So, just as in the latter the foundational Mental term is the bare "this", the Epicurean atom, with its "swerve", which, in his dissertation Marx champions and analyzes as Dialectical, can be interpreted as the foundational term of Dialectical Materialism, and of a Physics further developed by Engels. However, according to the "Material Method" of the German Ideology, the 'atom' of the system is the individual biological human, which thus serves as one of the terms of Dialectical processes such as sexual reproduction and collaborative labor. Thus, the German Ideology establishes Dialectical Materialism as primarily a social principle, i. e. not as a physical theory, even if that status receives no explicit articulation there or anywhere else. And, since the principle obtains in any simple interpersonal interaction, it methodologically precedes both the Dialectics of Class, and the Dialectics of History.