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Historical materialism is Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx located historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods.^[1]

For Marx and his lifetime collaborator, Friedrich Engels, historical materialism is the "view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another."^[2]

Although Marx never brought together a formal or comprehensive description of historical materialism in one published work, his key ideas are woven into a variety of works from the 1840s onward.^[3] Since Marx's time, the theory has been modified and expanded. It now has many Marxist and non-Marxist variants.

Enlightenment views of history

Marx's view of history was shaped by his engagement with the intellectual and philosophical movement known as the Age of Enlightenment and the profound scientific, political, economic and social transformations that took place in Britain and other parts of Europe in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.^[4][5][6]

The "spirit of liberty"

Enlightenment thinkers responded to the worldly transformations by promoting individual liberty and attacking religious dogmas and the divine right of kings.^[7] A group of thinkers including Hobbes (1588–1679), Montesquieu (1689–1755), Voltaire (1694–1778), Smith (1723–1790), Turgot (1727–1781) and Condorcet (1743–1794) explored new forms of inquiry, including empirical studies of human nature, history, economics and society. Some philosophers, for example, Vico (1668–1744), Herder (1744–1803) and Hegel (1770–1831), sought to uncover organizing principles of human history in underlying themes, meanings, and directions.^[8] For many Enlightenment philosophers, the power of ideas became the mainspring for understanding historical change and the rise and fall of civilizations. History was the gradual advance of the "spirit of liberty" or the growth of nationalism or democracy, rationality and law.^[9] This view of history remains popular to this day.^{[10][11][12][13]}

Materialism

Beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries, materialism came to prominence in Western philosophy, especially in opposition to the Cartesian rationalism of philosophers such as Descartes.^[14] Notable philosophers expounding materialist views included Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, and John Locke.^[15] They were followed by a series of materialists in France in the 18th century such as Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Claude Adrien Helvétius, and Baron d'Holbach.^[15] In the 19th century, the pre-Marxist communists Théodore Dézamy and Jules Gay adopted materialism in their historical analysis of society as well.^[15] Marx inherited his materialist philosophy from this Gassendi-Dezamy line of thinkers.^[15]

Marx 's ideas were also influenced by his reading of Young Hegelian writer Ludwig Feuerbach's 1833 work Geschichte der neuern Philosophie von Bacon von Verulam bis Benedict Spinoza which covered Gassendi's materialist philosophy as well as Gassendi's treatment on materialist Ancient Greek philosophers such as Epicurus, Leucippus, and Democritus.^[15]

Materialist conception of history

Inspired by Enlightenment thinkers, especially Condorcet, the utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) formulated his own materialist interpretation of history, similar to those later used in Marxism, analyzing historical epochs based on their level of technology and organization and dividing them between eras of slavery, serfdom, and finally wage labor.^[16][17] According to the socialist leader Jean Jaurès, the French writer Antoine Barnave was the first to develop the theory that economic forces were the driving factors in history.^[18]

Marx came to his commitment to a materialist analysis of society and political economy around 1844 and completed his works The Holy Family in 1845, The German Ideology or Leipzig Council in 1846, and The Poverty of Philosophy in 1847 along with Friedrich Engels.^[19]

'Great man' history

Marx rejected the enlightenment view that ideas alone were the driving force in society or that the underlying cause of change was guided by the actions of leaders in government or religion. The "great man" and occasionally "great woman" view of historical change was popularized by the 19th-century Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) who wrote "the history of the world is nothing but the biography of great men".^[20] According to Marx, this conception of history amounted to nothing more than a collection of "high-sounding dramas of princes and states".^[21]

Hegel's contribution to Marx's theory of history

While studying at the University of Berlin, Marx encountered the philosophy of Hegel (1770–1831) which had a profound and lasting influence on his thinking. One of Hegel's key critiques of enlightenment philosophy was that while thinkers were often able to describe what made societies from one epoch to the next different, they struggled to account for why they changed.^[22]

Hegel and historicism

Classical economists presented a model of civil society based on a universal and unchanging human nature.^[23] Hegel challenged this view and argued that human nature as well as the formulations of art, science and the institutions of the state and its codes, laws and norms were all defined by their history and could only be understood by examining their historical development.^[24][25] Hegels philosophical thought saw it as an expression of a specific culture rather than an eternal truth: "Philosophy is its own age comprehended in thought."^[26]

World spirit

In each society, humans were 'free by nature" but constrained by their "brutal recklessness of passion" and "untamed natural impulses" that led to injustice and violence.^[27] It was only through wider society and the state, which was expressed in each historical epoch, by a "spirit of the age", collective consciousness or geist, that "Freedom" could be realized.^[28] For Hegel, history was the working through of a process where humans become ever more conscious of the rational principles that govern social development.^{[citation needed]}

Dialectics of change

Hegel's dialectical method presents the world as a complex totality where all aspects of society (familial, economic, scientific, governmental, etc.) are interconnected, mutually influential, and unable to be considered in isolation.^[29] According to Hegel, at any particular point in time, society is an amalgam of contesting forces – some promoting stability and others striving for change. It is not just external factors that bring about transformation but internal contradictions. The unceasing drive of this dynamic is played out by real people struggling to achieve their aims. The outcome is that ideas, institutions and bodies of society are reconfigured into new forms expressing new characteristics. At certain decisive moments in history, during periods of great conflict, the actions of "great historical men" can align with the "spirit of the age" to bring about a fundamental advance in freedom.^[30]

Algebra of revolution

The implication of Hegel's philosophy that every social order, no matter how powerful and secure, will eventually wither away was incendiary..^{[citation needed]} These ideas were inspirational to Marx and the Young Hegelians who sought to develop a radical critique of the Prussian authorities and their failure to introduce constitutional change or reform social institutions.^[31] However, Hegel's contention that ideas or the "spirit of the age" drive history was mistaken in Marx's view. Hegel, wrote Marx, "fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought..."^[32] Marx contended that the engine of history was to be found in a materialist understanding of society - the productive process and the way humans labored to meet their needs. Marx and Engels first set out their materialist conception of history in The German Ideology, written in 1845. The book is a lengthy polemic against Marx and Engels' fellow Young Hegelians and contemporaries Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and Max Stirner.^{[citation needed]}

Historical materialism

The production of life

Marx based his theory of history on the necessity of labor to ensure physical survival. In The German Ideology, Marx wrote that the first historical act, was the production of means to satisfy material needs and that labor is a "fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life".^[34][35] Human labor forms the materialist basis for society and is at the heart of Marx's account of history. Marx viewed labor throughout history, in all societies and in all modes of production, from the earliest paleolithic hunter gatherers through to feudal societies and to modern capitalist economies as an "everlasting Nature-imposed condition of human existence" that compels humans to join socially to produce their means of subsistence.^[36]

Forces and relations of production

Marx identified two mutually interdependent structures of humans interaction with nature and the process of producing their subsistence: the forces of production and relations of production.^{[citation needed]}

Forces of production

The forces of production are everything that humans use to make the things that society needs. They include human labor and the raw materials, land, tools, instruments and knowledge required for production. The flint sharpened spears and harpoons developed by early humans in the late Paleolithic period are all forces of production. Over time, the forces of production tend to develop and expand as new skills, knowledge and technology (for example wooden scratch plows then heavier iron plows) are put to use to meet human needs.^[37] From one generation to the next, technical skills, evolving traditions of practice and mechanical innovations are reproduced and disseminated.^{[citation needed]}

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