Historical Materialism: From Capitalism to Proletarian Revolution
Historical Materialism: From Capitalism to the Proletarian Revolution
A theory of society and history developed by Marx is called historical materialism. The central thesis is that the key to understanding the functioning of a society and its historical development is the economic base, how to organize material production (infrastructure). All other aspects (social structure, political history, and ideas – the superstructure) are determined by its way of producing. For Marxism, history is reduced to the succession of different modes of production that characterize historical epochs. What allows the passage from one era to another is a social revolution. Revolutions indicate times of sudden change in which contradictions, if accumulated in a social way, reveal themselves violently. Contradictions within the production process, between the productive forces and relations of production, are reflected in the struggle of antagonistic classes. These contradictions can be resolved only by transforming the existing order. For all that, it is necessary for the less privileged social class to become aware of their situation of oppression and bring about a revolution to lay the foundation for a new social order.
The Communist Manifesto and the Rise of the Bourgeoisie
The Communist Manifesto focuses on the emergence of bourgeois society from the feudal mode of production and the need to overcome this bourgeois society with a socialist society. In the Middle Ages, small industry was based on private ownership of the means of production by the worker, who exercised their activity individually. The bourgeoisie transformed these primitive means of production into mighty productive forces manageable only to a community of men. This production is transformed from being a chain of individual events to being a string of social events. Nevertheless, this new revolutionary production method was introduced for the same purpose as the previous: to increase the production of goods and maintain ownership of those goods. Merchandise becomes the private property of the owners of the means of production but is the result of collective work.
Capitalism’s Inherent Contradictions
This private ownership of the goods had a reason to exist in feudalism, in which the producer himself created them with their work, but now it has no reason to exist because the production process and product are social. This appropriation by the capitalist of products that are not theirs, but the fruit of collective work, is the main contradiction of capitalist production. Capitalism has led to further contradictions and conflicts. The producer no longer has ownership of the means to produce or products and becomes employed for life, while the capitalist has the means and appropriates products. The main contradiction is the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. But also, in capitalist society, despite the organization within the factories, lawlessness prevails in production, leading to ever-deeper economic crises. These crises do not arise from a lack of productivity but from an excess of it: overproduction. Production does not develop at the same rate as the expansion of markets, and products are stuck without being able to be consumed, causing a state of barbarism and social disorder: unemployment and hunger. Capitalism creates a blockbuster and super-misery side by side. The increased poverty of the proletariat is accompanied by the concentration of wealth in the hands of big capitalists.
The Proletarian Revolution and the Path to Communism
The capitalist system engenders contradictions that bring ruin and, in turn, creates a force capable of suppressing the proletariat. Poverty and exploitation make the proletariat become aware of their situation of oppression and the need to revolutionize the existing mode of production. Capitalist crises and the awareness of the proletariat are the two aspects needed to produce the proletarian revolution. This revolution’s main objective is to end the contradictions of capitalism: if its mode of production is in crisis, the only solution will be communism, namely the abolition of private property and its replacement with collective or public ownership. It is necessary for the proletariat to take political power and institute a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Its aim is to destroy the conditions of the capitalist mode of production. These measures will end the division of society into classes, and the state will be unnecessary. The abolition of private property or the seizure of state power by the proletariat are, for Marx, means to achieve a society in which the production system is to serve man and not the reverse: a society that allows the deployment of human forces, which would be an end in itself.