Historical Materialism: Understanding Social Evolution
Marx and Engels developed the scientific theory of social evolution, known as historical materialism. Its aim is the study of society and the laws governing its development. These laws are objective and knowable. According to historical materialism, we must understand the study of society and the laws that determine its development, which is always produced by material, economic causes. The history of humankind is the history of man’s self-production through work in social conditions that involve exploitation. Similarly, the existential conditions, materials, and practices of the working class under capitalism enable the development of class consciousness, precisely due to the material processing and circulation of these conditions.
The defining characteristic of historical materialism is the claim that the economic and modes of possession of material goods are the basis of all social transformation. The social structure and the engine of change are not the wills of persons taken individually, nor ideas, let alone divine will, but the material, real economic, and social life of man: the economic needs and economic interests of different social groups. The fundamental proposition of historical materialism, therefore, is the assertion that social existence determines social consciousness. Social existence is defined by the material life of society and, primarily, the productive activity of men, along with the economic relations between them that are generated in this process. Social consciousness refers to the intellectual life of men, the ideas, trials, and theories that guide their practical activity.
Marx and Engels were supported by the fact that man, before turning to philosophy, art, science, or any other activity, must eat, drink, have a home, etc. This is achieved only through work, through the production of material goods. The economic phase for the development of a people or an epoch is the basis on which political institutions, legal concepts, and artistic and even religious ideas have developed.
Theories of Suspicion
Historical materialism is often included among what have been called theories or philosophies of suspicion. These theories maintain that to understand the behavior of an individual or a social group, it is not appropriate to accept the explanation that the individual or group gives of themselves because that explanation is not objective. Instead, it is mediated by the interests of the individual or group. To understand an individual or group, it is necessary to suspect the understanding they have of themselves and refer it to another level of reality different from one’s own conscience. The philosophers of suspicion include Freud, Nietzsche, and Marxism. According to them, the true foundation of social behavior is not the level of understanding that men have of themselves, which is at the level of ideologies, but the level of economic and political interests of the dominant group.
Labor and Production
With the creation of historical materialism, Marx and Engels tried to prove that those who truly make history are the masses, the workers. The lives of men cannot be conceived without food, clothing, housing, and some other property. But nature does not give us any of this as finished goods; man must work to achieve them. Work is, for Marx, the foundation of social life, a natural human need. This is why the production of material goods is the main cause and determining factor in the development of society. Men relate to nature at work. Work objects are all those natural resources used as raw materials, and working media are the tools that carry out the work. Also involved is the force or energy that man puts into production: the labor force. Therefore, “job” is the performance of the workforce. Linked to this is the “product,” the result at the end of work.
The product has two settings: “use value” (satisfaction of a need, individual or collective) and “exchange value” (trade or sale of the products of labor). The relative values shown in the exchange of goods acquire a fetish character. The relations of exchange of goods cannot express relations between things but the social relations of men involved in their production. So things (goods) acquire dimensions of value and serve to fix the social and class relations among men. Money, the peculiar commodity that serves as a general medium of exchange, becomes the key piece of the social relations of production and also acquires a fetishistic value.
Productive Forces and Relations of Production
The sum of the objects of work, the media, and the force deployed in the same constitute the productive forces and means of production. In the production process, there are two types of social relations of production:
- Technical relations: The linkage between man and nature. Forms of domination that the agents of production have on the means of work and the work process in general. This results in the technical division of labor, the “division of labor” between the collective production workers. The worker directly works the raw material for the manufacture of products, and personnel controls, monitors, and manages the production process while imposing their authority over other employees.
- Social relations: Established between the agents themselves, these are the links established between the men involved in the production process. These relationships give rise to social classes, which are basically two: the owners of the means of production and the non-owners.
The two forms of social relations, according to Marx, are the relationship of exploiter and exploited and a relationship of mutual cooperation where there is no exploitation (future primitive communism and communism). The relations of production do not follow the will of the people but the material conditions of production for each historical moment. Between the productive forces and relations of production exists a law of correspondence, so that to a certain degree of development of productive forces corresponds a parallel development of social relations of production.
Uneven Development
Marx’s theory of productive forces and relations of production notes an uneven development. The productive forces are in constant development and change, while the relations of production tend to fall behind the development of productive forces. This gradually produces a mismatch between the two, so that production relations are inadequate for the expansion of productive forces, slowing their development. In this way, the struggle and contradiction between the productive forces and relations of production are the driving force of history.
Infrastructure and Superstructure
The relations of production and all of the productive forces are the modes of production, infrastructure, and economic structure, the material basis of society, which determines the social structure, development, and social change. It depends on the superstructure, consisting of:
- Legal and political structure: The set of apparatuses, institutions, and rules that govern the functioning of society as a whole. This is insured by the State, whose function is to reproduce the relations of production that exist since the State is always in the hands of the ruling class as an instrument of pressure on the dominated class. The state has two closely linked functions: technical and administrative-organizational, and other functions of political control.