> What is this method or approach which Marxists have been talking about for
150 years? Is it the same
> thing called the Dialectic in History and Class Consciousness?
The dialectic is a large part of historical materialism but it's not the sum total of it. As usual, it's difficult to find a neat summary in Marx, but see "First Premises of Materialist Method", from The_German_Ideology:
"The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. [The premises are] real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.
The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. [...] The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men.
Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.
The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.
This production only makes its appearance with the increase of population. In its turn this presupposes the intercourse [Verkehr] of individuals with one another. The form of this intercourse is again determined by production." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#5a4
And that is virtually the whole passage. Hegel and the varieties of Hegelianism _are_ discussed by Marx immediately prior to this passage, and the dialectic _is_ implied in the above, even if it is not explicit or thrust into the spotlight.
Regards,
Grant.