How did Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels define materialism in dialectical materialism?

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Bronze bust of Epicurus with a full beard and draped clothing, displayed on a round inscribed base at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. — Materialism Epicurus, bronze bust from a Greek original, c. 280–270 bce; in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.

For Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, materialism defined the material world as possessing an objective reality that exists independently of the mind or spirit.1

They did not deny the existence of mental or spiritual processes; however, they maintained that ideas are merely products and reflections of underlying material conditions. Consequently, they positioned their materialist view as the direct opposite of idealism, which they defined as any theory suggesting that matter depends on the mind or that the mind can exist independently of matter.1

Marx and Engels argued that these two perspectives are irreconcilably opposed throughout the history of philosophy, asserting that any attempt to reconcile them leads to inconsistency. Their approach emphasized that knowledge is derived from the senses and validated through practical human interaction with the material world.1