Understanding Marx: Historical Materialism and Social Transformation
Historical Setting
The 100 years following the French Revolution (1789) witnessed the decline of the nobility and the rise of the bourgeoisie, opposed by the proletariat (the working class in capitalist production). This era saw the unifications of Italy and Germany and the expansion of European colonialism, seeking markets and raw materials.
Sociocultural Framework
The Industrial Revolution spread across France, Germany, Italy, and the USA. Its initial negative impacts on workers led to the emergence of socialism, anarchism, and communism.
Revolutions of the 19th Century
- 1820: Liberal university agitation in German states.
- 1830: Nationalist, liberal, and bourgeois democratic revolution in France; rise of popular consciousness among the working class.
- 1848: Revolutions across France, Austria, Italy, and Germany, leading to the Second Republic in France due to political unrest and economic crisis.
- 1868: Overthrow of Isabella II in Spain due to political and economic unrest.
These revolutions, while rooted in liberal and nationalist ideologies, were intertwined with emerging ideological currents, including Marxism. Liberalism, the dominant ideology of capitalism, advocated for limited state intervention in the market, private property rights, separation of powers, freedom of thought and expression, individualism, and census suffrage (voting based on economic power), gradually extending to all men.
The optimism surrounding scientific and technological discoveries fueled Positivism, a belief in science’s capacity to solve any problem. Darwin’s evolutionary biology greatly influenced thinkers. Romantic literature flourished with authors like Lord Byron, Walter Scott, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and composers like Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt.
Philosophical Framework
Admiration for science led to the adoption of its methods in philosophy: positivism and Marxism (scientific socialism). Idealism waned, giving way to philosophies with strong social and political content. Positivism sought to reconcile scientific progress with social well-being, utilitarianism aimed for the welfare of the majority, and Marxism sought to transform society. Marx was influenced by:
- Hegel: Religion, theology
- Feuerbach (Hegelian Left): Atheism, utopian socialism, anthropocentric theology (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen)
- Economists: David Ricardo, Adam Smith
- Rousseau: Inequalities created by political institutions
Ideology: Illusion and Scientific Knowledge
For Marx, everyone possesses an ideology, a set of representations or ideas, true or false, about society. The ruling class uses ideology to conceal reality, but complex social reality can also hinder true knowledge. Ideology, based on perceptions and experiences rather than scientific activity, can create false perceptions. True knowledge arises from understanding the material conditions of life. Without this, consciousness is alienated, even if it imagines its ideas to be its own.
Alienation and Its Purpose: Theory and Praxis
Alienation is a state of disorientation experienced by individuals under capitalism, where the world feels strange and dominating. Marx believed that in capitalist production, workers create a world but do not own or control it; it becomes foreign to them. The worker, dispossessed of the objects they create, is denied their personhood. The proletariat sells itself and its existence, becoming a commodity with exchange value. Philosophers have interpreted the world; the point is to change it. Humans are dehumanized by unjust social relations and exploited. Capital gain is the difference between what the worker produces and the cost of production.
Types of alienation:
- Labor (social, economic)
- Religious
- Political
Understanding alienation allows for the development of a theory that, when put into practice (praxis), enables human liberation.
Dialectic and Historical Materialism
To create a new society, social reality must be understood as a dialectical process (a process affecting all of reality, involving denial or contradiction to reach a synthesis). Dialectics encompasses a worldview, history, and methods for understanding reality. This leads to a materialist conception of history, where the fundamental factor is human production to satisfy basic needs.
Work is divided into:
- Manual vs. intellectual
- Property owners (dominant class) vs. workers (dominated class; the former live off the work of the latter)
Marx saw historical materialism as a science of social reality capable of explaining and transforming the world. According to historical materialism, different modes of production (slavery, feudalism, capitalism) determine changes in social structures, ideologies, and policies.
Dynamics of the Historical Process
The economic infrastructure determines the cultural superstructure (moral, political, and legal structures). The infrastructure is divided into forces of production and relations of production. The economic infrastructure determines the production process and the superstructure, which includes ideas shaping consciousness (juridical and political structures). Ideological aspects (religion, philosophy, art) are less directly determined by the economic structure.
The economic structure of society is the mode of production, which is the relationship between the forces of production and the relations of production. Forces of production are the productive capacity of people in a particular mode of production. Relations of production are the relationships established between the owners of the means of production and the direct producers within a fixed mode of production.
As the forces of production change, so do the modes of production and the relations of production. If these relations do not adapt, contradictions arise, leading to social revolutions that transform the relations of production and the superstructure. Changes in human consciousness occur depending on economic transformations, with the superstructure changing more slowly than the forces of production due to increasing human needs.
End of History
Capitalist production leads to self-destruction and a revolutionary process.
- Dictatorship of the Proletariat: Appropriation of bourgeois property and control of the state.
- Socialism: Elimination of social classes and private property.
- Communism: A classless and stateless society; realization of human potential; the disappearance of class struggle.
The process culminates in the disappearance of classes and the establishment of communism. This process would be accelerated by a conscious proletariat, aware of its exploitation and interests, opposed to capitalists, and using historical materialism to end alienation and achieve liberation. The first step is the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and the division of labor, establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat (a classless society). In a classless society, the state, which serves to maintain the privileges of the ruling class, becomes unnecessary. Class struggle ceases, and a community of free and equal individuals (communism) emerges.
Relationship of the Text
In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels adjusted Hegelian accounts, dealing with history and presenting their materialist conception. Marx’s core ideological work focused on history, developing themes from determining social life to the relationship between ideas and material conditions of existence. Marxism challenged Hegelian idealism and Feuerbach’s materialism. Idealism conceives all reality as an expression of a single reality (spirit). Marx sees humans in social life, subject to continuous change as a result of work, which is the essence of humanity in its historical process. Work is not reduced to a spiritual and abstract activity, as in idealism, which ignores the material component.
Thanks to Feuerbach’s materialism, Marx conceived of humans as natural beings. However, unlike Feuerbach, Marx acknowledged human activity not just as practical production but also as theoretical behavior, which idealism saw as mere expression. Marxist science of history aims to be a science of social reality, capturing the active side of human beings. Work expresses the relationship between natural objects and human subjects, as humans produce their means of living and transform reality. Work also leads to relationships between people, which become uneven and alienating with greater division of labor. These relations are conditioned by the relations of production.
The mode of production determines how humans live and interact, shaped by the historical process and giving rise to various modes of production that mark each stage of history. Modes of production are the ways societies organize to ensure survival. Marx differentiated several modes of production (primitive community, Asiatic, ancient/slave, feudal, and capitalist, which prepares for communism). In history, civil society, not heroes or great individuals, is the protagonist.