Historical materialism

Historical materialism (or what Marx himself called "the materialist conception of history" - materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung) is a social theory and an approach to the study of history and sociology, normally considered as the intellectual basis of Marxism.

Historical materialism as doctrine

Nevertheless, at least from the 1870s the pressure towards the doctrinalisation of Marx's interpretation of history became increasingly strong, for several reasons.

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(1) Marx & Engels did aim to increase their own political influence in the labor movement and socialist movement, and for this they needed a popular ideology or doctrine which people could easily understand and act upon. Both men were quite capable of splendid political rhetoric and, occasionally, of making sweeping generalisations

Related Topics:
Labor movement - Socialist - Ideology - Doctrine

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(2) Attacks by critics, academics and competitors in the socialist movement also forced them to systematise their ideas; generalisations from experience and research demanded a more explicit coherent theoretical framework.

Related Topics:
Socialist - Generalisations - Experience

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(3) christian religious and moral doctrine was still very influential among the working classes, who mostly lacked access to a scientific education, and this created the political need or pressure to articulate a complete alternative belief system or scientific world outlook. Thus, Engels sought to distinguish between religious-utopian and practical-scientific socialism.

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These three factors are the original sources of the tension between science and ideology in Marxism. Engels, who was the first great "Marxist systematiser", tried to take a nuanced approach in his writings and popularise the materialist approach without vulgarisation.

Related Topics:
Tension - Science - Ideology - Marxism - Nuanced - Vulgarisation

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In a Preface to the English edition of his pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (completed in 1880), Frederick Engels indicated that he accepted the usage of the term "historical materialism". Recalling the early days of the new interpretation of history, he stated:

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"We, at that time, were all materialists, or, at least, very advanced free-thinkers, and to us it appeared inconceivable that almost all educated people in England should believe in all sorts of impossible miracles, and that even geologists like Buckland and Mantell should contort the facts of their science so as not to clash too much with the myths of the book of Genesis; while, in order to find people who dared to use their own intellectual faculties with regard to religious matters, you had to go amongst the uneducated, the "great unwashed", as they were then called, the working people, especially the Owenite Socialists".

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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/int-mat.htm

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In a foreword to his essay Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886), three years after Marx's death, Engels claimed confidently that "In the meantime, the Marxist world outlook has found representatives far beyond the boundaries of Germany and Europe and in all the literary languages of the world."

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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/foreword.htm

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In his old age, Engels speculated about a new cosmology or ontology which would show the principles of dialectics to be universal features of reality. He also drafted an article on The part played by labour in the transition from Ape to Man, apparently a theory of anthropogenesis which would integrate the insights of Marx and Charles Darwin http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/

Related Topics:
Cosmology - Ontology - Dialectics - Anthropogenesis - Charles Darwin

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(This is discussed by Charles Woolfson in The Labour Theory of Culture: a Re-examination of Engels Theory of Human Origins).

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At the very least, Marxism had now been born, and "historical materialism" had become a distinct philosophical doctrine, subsequently elaborated and systematised by intellectuals like Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Georgi Plekhanov and Nikolai Bukharin. Even so, up to the 1930s many of Marx's earlier works were still unknown, and in reality most self-styled Marxists had not read beyond Capital Vol. 1. Isaac Deutscher provides an anecdote about the knowledge of Marx in that era:

Related Topics:
Marxism - Eduard Bernstein - Karl Kautsky - Georgi Plekhanov - Nikolai Bukharin - Isaac Deutscher

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"Capital is a tough nut to crack, opined Ignacy Daszynski, one of the most wellknown socialist "people's tribunes" around the turn of the 20th century, but anyhow he had not read it. But, he said, Karl Kautsky had read it, and written a popular summary of the first volume. He hadn't read this either, but Kelles-Krausz, the party theoretician, had read Kautsky's pamphlet and summarised it. He also had not read Kelles-Krausz's text, but the financial expert of the party, Hermann Diamand, had read it and had told him, i.e. Daszynski, everything about it".

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http://www.rote-ruhr-uni.org/seminare/lesekreis.shtml

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After Lenin's death in 1924, Marxism was transformed into Marxism-Leninism and from there to Maoism or Marxism-Leninism-Mao Ze Dong Thought in China which some regard as the "true doctrine" and others as a "state religion".

Related Topics:
Lenin - Marxism-Leninism - Maoism - China

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In the early years of the 20th century, historical materialism was often treated by socialist writers as interchangeable with dialectical materialism, a formulation never used by Friedrich Engels however. According to many Marxists influenced by Soviet Marxism, historical materialism is a specifically sociological method, while dialectical materialism refers to a more general, abstract, philosophy. The Soviet orthodox Marxist tradition, influential for half a century, based itself on Joseph Stalin's pamphlet Dialectical and Historical materialism and on textbooks issued by the "Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union".

Related Topics:
Dialectical materialism - Friedrich Engels - Sociological - Philosophy - Joseph Stalin

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