Historical Materialism : The Concept Of Historical Materialism

With his co-author Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx produced one of his most famous works, The Communist Manifesto. The authors begin with the famous line, “history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle” (Marx and Engels 1848: 2). It emphasizes that the bourgeoisie is a powerful class, which will stop at nothing and force the adoption of a capitalist means of production upon anyone it meets. Marx describes how this will force society to split into two classes. The Manifesto of the Communist Party also emphasizes the theory of historical materialism. Historical materialism happens when

Initially we shall examine the concept of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels view of Socialism as described by Michael W. Doyle. At the very beginning of the chapter he states that “[Marx and Engels] are perhaps best known for the materialist conception of history in which the conditions of production shape all other areas of society — institutions, laws, ideas and morality” (Doyle 322). Both of

Marx begins his analysis of social order with the historical development of materialism that results in the industrial capitalist society. For him, the history of society depends on the understanding of “real process of

Marx’s conception of society has its grounds in a theory of action: as he put it, human beings make their own history. But Marx goes on to argue that they do this is circumstances which are not of their own choosing, and he develops an analysis of how action is organized by these circumstances as material conditions of production which structure and determine the social relationship that are primarily generated by the particular material forces of production utilized, which include not only raw materials but also the technology which is used to extract and work them into products (Jenks 15).

The Industrial Revolution, which began in England, brought on many advancements in the production of textiles. This revolution that improved the manufacturing industry’s ability to produce goods in mass quantity with less labor should have been a way that the industrial worker’s lives improved. However, the opposite occurred. Engels describes a competitive working environment where workers competed to make enough money to survive with their families. Their survival only led to more suffering of neglect, poverty, and squalor. Engels book, Condtion of the Working Class in England, 1845, is a detailed account of the proletariat who were oppressed by the bourgeoisie. Engels wrote a dismally detailed account of the working class place during the Industrial Revolution in England, placing the workers in the cities as subhuman, expendable, and economically less expensive to maintain than a slave.

The Marxist theory of historical materialism understands society to be determined by the relationships which people enter into with one another to fulfill their basic needs, for instance to feed and clothe themselves and their families. In general Marx identified five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe.

Marx's ideas on labor value are very much alive for many organizations working for social change. In addition, it is apparent that the gap between the rich and poor is widening on a consistent basis. According to Marx, the course of human history takes a very specific form which is class struggle. The engine of change in history is class opposition. Historical epochs are defined by the relationship between different classes at different points in time. It is this model that Marx fleshes out in his account of feudalism's passing in favor of bourgeois capitalism and his prognostication of bourgeois capitalism's passing in favor of proletarian rule. These changes are not the reliant results of random social, economic, and political events; each follows the other in predictable succession. Marx responds to a lot of criticism from an imagined bourgeois interlocutor. He considers the charge that by wishing to abolish private property, the communist is destroying the "ground work of all personal freedom, activity, and independence". Marx responds by saying that wage labor does not properly create any property for the laborer. It only creates capital, a property which works only to augment the exploitation of the worker. This property, this capital, is based on class antagonism. Having linked private property to class hostility, Marx

In their materialist reading of history, Marx and Engels proclaim that with the necessity for survival driving history/ and man to the development of social interaction and thus the establishment of the economy, staged progressions will come forth as a result. To Marx the economy will ultimately be responsible for all aspects of society. It will be from the development, and circumstance stemming forth from such development of the economy, that the stages of history will progress. And as such to Marx and Engels Capitalism will be a stopping point upon this staged progression route of history. In this way it is concluded that Capitalism is a mode of production stemming from the economy [means and relations of production], which in itself is a result of the history of materialism [the innate struggle for survival and the social relations built upon this struggle].

The next section draws attention on the central feature of Marxist approach, the historical materialism. The “Materialist Conception of history” was to the Critique of Political Economy; the fundamental argument here, is that economics is the motor for the history as a whole; in other words, Marxists argue that the procedure of historical changes is in analyse,

Marx’s (1987) “materialist conception of history” (p. 146) provides an outline through which he presents the intimate connection between society and the provision of material need through the ages. His theory begins with the pre-modern individual, whose existence consists only of productive actions vital to only his own survival, such as gathering food and building shelter. Marx considers this

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx famously claimed that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle (Marx, p.219).” For Marx, the engine of history is the productive power. In every society, there

The specialised critique of capitalism found in the Communist Manifesto (written by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels), provides a basis for the analysis and critique of the capitalist system. Marx and Engels wrote about economical in relation to the means or mode of production, ideology, alienation and most fundamentally, class relations (particularly between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat). Collectively, these two men created the theory of Marxism. There are multiple critiques of Marxism that attack the fundamental tenants of their argument. Several historical events have fueled such criticisms, such as the fall of the Soviet Union, where Marxism was significantly invalidated and condemned. On the flip side, Marxism has been widely supported in times of capitalist hardships. What viewpoint a person will hold towards Marxism is largely dependable on the economical environment in which they live. Further, it is also important to remember that Marx and Engels lived in a very different era than today’s society, and the concept of capitalism may have arguably changed quite a lot over time. Therefore, the principles found in the Manifesto may often have to be refurnished and reapplied to fit different economic environments.

In the short story, multiple elements of material/non-material culture are portrayed. Material culture is composed of tangible items that are symbolic or hold meaning to a society such as having a car. Non-material culture consists of ideas, morals and values that hold importance a society or culture. This story illustrates the effect culture can have in our behavior and how it shapes our society, it just comes to support the idea that culture and society are dependent on each other in order to thrive. In order to comprehend material and non-material culture we will first have to separate the both an apply them to context.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels collaborated to produce The German Ideology, which was one of the classic texts generated by the two. Even though The German Ideology stands our as one of the major texts produced by the two, it was never published during Marx’s lifetime. This was a clear expression of the theory of history by Marx and its associated materialist metaphysics. One of the main reasons this text is a classic text by these philosophers is the fact that it introduces students to the basic tenets of the philosopher’s approach. Notably, Karl Marx produced The German Ideology in 1846 as a critique of George Friedrich Hegel and his followers in Germany. The philosophers sought to differentiate their concept of socialism from existing ones and exhibit how socialism emerges ordinarily from the social conflicts embedded in capitalism.

“Now the owner of the instruments of labor continued to appropriate the product, although it was not longer his product, but…the product of other’s labor. Thus therefore, the products now socially produced were not appropriated by those who had really set the means of production in motion and…produced the products, but by the capitalists.” (Engels 1939, p. 295)