This is a (hopefully) fairly simple explanation, rather than the full deal, and like most simplifications probably has major failings
Historical materialism
Historical materialism is the theory that history is primarily driven by material forces rather than by ideas or ‘great men.’ The theory that history is the working out of ideas alone can often be called something like ‘historical idealism’
Marxism asserts Ideas arise out of the human conditions of life and are generally spread by ‘class representatives’. “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas”. The ideas of the ruling classes get promoted and distributed, whereas other ideas tend to be persecuted or ignored. However, in conditions in which the ruling class is destroying itself, or a new class is rising, alternative ideas can arise out of existing class conflict. Hence Marxism itself was supposed to be able to challenge capitalist ideology, through the rise of the working class and through expressing their understandings and experience of life.
It seems to have failed dismally as, nowadays, most people have no idea what Marxism stands for or argues, they simply know what their rulers and the rulers’ representatives tell them about it 🙂
Important factors in history
Important factors in material history include the ways that people gain survival through the “organization of the means of production.” So the fundamental questions for a Marxist are:
- How do societies produce food and other products?
- How do they distribute or trade food and other products?
- What groups of people does this organization allocate control over the distribution?
- Who does the system allow to accumulate more than other people?
- How is this inequality preserved?
- How does this organization protect itself and enforce itself?
- How does this organization undermine or destroy itself? These ways of self-destruction are usually called “contradictions.” Marxism implies that contradictions are binary (the “dialectic” because of Hegel :), but there is no reason to assume this is correct. Contradictions could involve multiple forces acting at the same time.
In capitalism, capitalists (deliberately?) confuse capitalism with exchange and trade, which are universal. For Marxists capitalism is a particular set of forms of organization of production, technology, labor, trade, distribution, allocation of prosperity, power and so on. Capitalism is not trade in itself. Otherwise bureaucratic state communism would have to be classified as capitalism, which is not useful, even if both are oppressive in often different ways.
Example: the history of capitalism
The capitalist idea of history is that people become rich because they, or their ancestors, worked hard, were virtuous or brilliant having great ideas. This set of ‘ideologies’ (ideas justifying a particular social organization) feels right to capitalists and makes capitalism ‘good’ which is pleasing to them. It is well known and well distributed. Every American, Britisher, European, Australian has probably heard this ideology repeated over and over until it sounds like common-sense.
Marxists would tend to argue that capitalism arose through violent theft of land by those in power (aristocrats), and through expansion of the aristocracy in the UK to include people who owed their wealth directly to the crown through services they performed. Many of these people used that land to accumulate capital, and start investments in newly invented operations like corporations. These people had the military power and technologies to continue their plunder throughout the world, moving on when they had destroyed land, stealing valuables like labor (slavery), gold. silver and other resources, often with the co-operation of other powers (such as local rulers).
This process of dispossession and investment, created a working class in the UK and elsewhere, who could no longer support themselves through their own food production and farms, craft or traditional labor. The self-reliance of the people was destroyed by capitalism and turned into reliance on transactional capitalist bosses. Eventually traditional aristocrats had to move into business or marry into business, because their lands no longer brought in enough income to live at the level required by their culture and forms of social power.
The State acted to support the rising capitalists and enforce this dispossession and impoverishment. This allowed the workers to be exploited in factories often with working and living conditions so bad, that capitalists were also stealing the health and lives of the workers as they were with slavery.
Eventually this similar experience lead to the working class unifying and struggling against bosses who extracted riches from them, and forming unions, fighting for political rights, political participation and decent working and living conditions
Marx expected these processes to lead to revolution and the abolition of capitalism and its State. There is no capitalism without a capitalist State. Marx rather naively seems to have thought that Communism without the State, would have few contradictions.
However, the processes in the West first led to the post war semi-socialist welfare State, as a defense against the possibilities of revolution, but capitalists fought back, and restored their dominance, as their control of wealth production enabled them to support ‘free market’ ideas through sponsored think tanks, fund politicians, persuade the State to make union life much harder and to repeal the taxes which allowed the welfare state to exist.
This set of pro-corporate political and economic actions is often known as ‘Neoliberalism.’ Some say this counter-revolution happened because capitalists were still afraid of workers’ revolution or the political influence coming from the new freedoms of people to participate politically, or because capitalism had become less profitable. I don’t know what is the case.
Liberty for ordinary people, collapsed and we are now living in a capitalist in plutocracy which is slowly destroying itself by impoverishing the people, destroying the competitive market, and destroying functional ecology. The only ‘solution’ being proposed for current capitalist contradictions seems to be authoritarianism, suppression of dissent and keeping people exhausted at work. Similar solutions were previously tried in the 1930s and did not work that well. There is no reason to assume they will work now.
However, information has been shown to be important. In my experience, many people still believe that the Mueller Report cleared Trump, did not find anything wrong with his behaviour or was a fraud. That Trump is being conspired against by the establishment and the FBI. That Putin is scared of Trump and campaigns for Democrats. That Harris slept her way to the top and is a communist who organised the assassination attempts on Trump, and that a vote for Trump is a far safer and more sensible than a vote for her. This may well give the US election to Trump and have massive effects on world history and the rush to collapse. The relationship of ideas and social forces, may ultimately depend on material forces, but ideas can give victory, although a pure materialist could point out these pro-Trump ideas are driven by corporations. However other corporations oppose them.
Conclusion
Historical materialism claims the main driving factors of history are material ones: material conditions, material and social organization, the possibilities of technology, and the allocation of violence. Ideas are largely secondary to these processes. History is not the expression of Spirit, great men, or God’s will.
Tags: capitalism, history, marxism, Social change, social theory
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