Caveat: not all analyses call for the same level of detail, and there will be valid criticisms of what I am about to say. Still, I hope this is a helpful starting point.

Roughly – because dialectical materialism is a very fluid process – I treat the subject matter as follows:

1. The subject matter is not a ‘thing’, it is a process and a relation§ (the subject matter is not static or isolated from other issues);
2. The subject matter is historically contingent;
3. The subject matter is inherently contradictory;
4. Within the subject matter is a struggle between opposites (unified in a single whole);
5. The subject matter is connected to and largely determined by political economic factors – in other words, in our era, don’t forget the influence of capitalism;
6. Quality can transform into quantity and quantity can transform into quality (which essentially means that changes happen in leaps as well as in a linear, straight-line development);
7. Change is constant, nothing is static;
8. That which appears different is also identical, meaning that different relations rely on reach other for their existence, and so are (in a sense) identical (e.g. there is no proletariat without a bourgeoisie, so each class sustains and possesses characteristics of the other – the sharp edge of this idea leads us towards concepts of a petite bourgeoisie, a managerial-professional class, and a labour aristocracy);
9. Did I mention that everything must be treated as relational?

§ Important note:

• When I say the subject matter is a relation, I mean this in two ways. The first will be easier to grasp than the second.
• (1) It means the subject matter is related to other subject matters, like crime to poverty or war to profit. It is impossible in our era to understand crime or war, respectively, without understanding poverty and profit.
• (2) It means that when we look closer, when we break down the subject matter into its constituent parts, i.e. when we ‘analyse’ the subject matter, we will find a series of ‘internal relations’. E.g. it is impossible in our era to understand crime without understanding poverty or to understand war without understanding profit.
• And now for the dialectical loop-the-loop: these internal relations are ‘internal’ because we (must) widen our gaze to fully understand the subject matter and consider factors that do not appear, at first, to be ‘internal’ at all.
• But that’s the trick: if the surface appearance revealed the full truth, there would be no need for scientific investigation.

Building on this foundation, I then ask several questions:

1. What are the component parts of the subject matter? (This will help us to see the subject matter as an internal relation rather than a static ‘thing’. For example a state comprises it’s government, it’s people, infrastructure, industries, international treaties, and within its government and people are different factions and sections, all with different interests, and it’s industries and the workers / capitalists in them may be in competition (such as the wind turbine manufacturing workers and coal plant operatives).)
2. If the subject matter is an event or action, what is this subject matter related to? (Let’s call the subject matter ‘X’ and call whatever it is related to ‘Y’.)
3. In what sense is the relation between X and Y an internal relation? That is, how are X and Y connected within a broader, single process?
4. In what ways does X contradict Y? (If X is a strike over wages and Y is the employer, the struggle is for a different distribution of the value created by the workers: X and Y cannot both take home the same money).
5. Why would the relation between X and Y be what it is in this political economy? (Or, let’s say that while X and Y may be related, they are both also related to the political economy ‘Z’; so it is never just about the relation between X and Y, and always about the relation between X and Y and Z.) In other words, why is it obvious that X and Y would develop in the way that they have developed? (E.g. if there is a war, it is obvious that weapons manufacturers will encourage the war and profit from it. They will not argue for peace. This is not just because weapons manufacturers make weapons, but because they are capitalists operating in a capitalist system.)
6. And so on, asking a range of questions to see how the 8 or 9 principles outlined above play out in respect of the subject matter.

I find that once I identify the internal relations, the contradictions reveal themselves. It helps to know what relations and contradictions have been identified by Marx et al because, very frequently, I find that not much has changed in the last 200 years to the underlying, abstract relations of capitalism.

Of course, dialectics being what it is, we can keep bringing in other factors to get a fuller and fuller analysis. That is why we must focus on a ‘moment’, the Marxist word for freezing time and isolating issues to make an analysis of them manageable. Whatever you end up analysing, you will probably want to present the results in a different, more coherent way, which only focuses on the main issues / relations (the important contradictions, in the Marxist sense, will become clear(er) upon analysis). It’s up to you where you stop.

Edit: spelling.

Well, as I’ve always understood it, it’s important to understand the material conditions that lead to any situation. Anything that happened in the past could not had happened in any other way, and every issue of the present is motivated by historical reasons. But I’m still learning about this (thanks to Dessalines’ wonderful compilation of Marxist theory and other pointers I’ve been given here).