Philosophy of history

The philosophy of history asks at least these questions:

Motive engine of history

The central contention of historical materialism is that history exhibits progress, not of a linear sort but cumulative nonetheless, and that the motive engine of this progress is the struggle over ownership and control of the means of production.

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The history of the means of production, then, is the substructure of history, and everything else, including ideological arguments about that history, constitutes a superstructure.

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Critics have contended that this is either too vague to be useful or too mechanistic to be plausible.

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