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

The correct answer is D, Dialectical materialism. Marx took Hegel's dialectic, the idea that change happens through conflict between opposing forces, and placed it on material foundations. In his view, history moves through contradictions between the forces of production and the relations of production. Those contradictions take the form of class struggle between owners and the propertyless, which drives the transition from one mode of production to another. The Communist Manifesto (1848) states this directly: the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

• A (Empirical liberalism): This tradition, associated with Locke and Mill, stresses individual liberty, knowledge from experience and limited government. It does not analyse history as class conflict.
• B (Existentialism): This is a 19th and 20th century philosophy of individual freedom, choice and meaning, linked to Kierkegaard and Sartre. It is centred on the individual, not on class.
• C (Darwin's theory of evolution): Marx admired Darwin, but natural selection explains biological change. Marx's account of class struggle rests on dialectical materialism, not on Darwin.

For Mains, this connects to the GS-I topic on modern Indian thought and to debates on labour, inequality and the critique of capitalism.

Trap: Aspirants often read 'materialism' as consumerism or confuse Marx's dialectic with Darwinian 'survival of the fittest'. The question is about Marx's own theory of history.