Understanding Historical Materialism: The Marxist Approach to History

the past two videos have been building the foundation for discussing historical materialism in today's episode of

fundamentals marks we will be covering precisely that if you haven't watched the video on materialism and the video

on dialectics I strongly encourage you to do so to provide a concise definition we can say that historical materialism

is the application of materialist dialectics to the study of history many of the central aspects of dialectics and

materialism at least as they're understood by Marxists are more or less unchanged in the historical materialist

method for example in line with materialist dialectics historical materialism fundamentally believes that

history and the societies we study are in constant motion they are always changing this change can sometimes be

quantitative while at other times it becomes qualitative qualitative changes are normally found in explosive events

like revolutions or Wars additionally the various phenomena in societies are interconnected and cannot

be understood in a vacuum to study and understand one concept you will inevitably have to understand many more

concepts the main force of motion in history is the material specifically the material conditions of societies whereas

idealist believed that history is moved by great people and great ideas historical materialism suggests that

great ideas are born from specific and concrete conditions in history a historical materialist acknowledges the

influence and contribution of individuals and ideas but places them in a web of political economic and social

trends occurring in their time because history is in constant motion and because nothing exists in a vacuum

historical materialists reject the notion of eternal principles or phenomena proponents of capitalism like

to identify capitalist elements in past systems as proof of the natural origins of capitalism this is unscientific and a

historical because it pulls certain elements out of their context and forcefully places them in locations

where they don't belong the motivation for this is ideological supporters of capitalism want to legitimize the

current system by suggesting that the principles and mechanisms it's built on have existed forever and are simply the

way things are if we follow the method of historical materialism we would quickly see that capitalism is a

specific social development in history but the unique economic basis it cannot be found in the feudal system

because the social and political structures of that time developed from a fundamentally different economy

historical materialism finds that the development of societies is primarily contingent on the forces of production

and relations of production in simpler terms the way a society looks and functions is determined by how and with

what things are produced and the social relations associated with the production process the feudal era in Europe for

example relied on serf or peasant labour which utilized livestock and handheld tools to produce goods the relations of

production were organized around the Lord serf dynamic the tools of that time were notably more complex than the tools

of past eras to incentivize optimal use of the means of production feudal lords were better off loosening the grips on

their subjects at least in comparison to slaves and the slave labor that dominated the past those peasants were

no longer considered property like slaves were and actually had some of their own property which they used to

work their lord's land capitalism brought with it a new economy industrial production meant that individual

producers could not keep up with art enterprises as land and resources began to be bought up by capitalists social

relations changed as well now the economy was predominantly determined by the capitalist worker dynamic unlike

Lords capitalists offered their social support in its plages instead of physical security in exchange for labour

the change from serf labor to wage labour meant unnecessary shift in political structures and laws complex

machinery and the use of highly developed equipment meant that the capitalist benefited from and indeed

needed a more educated and sustainable labor force each new social formation with its own distinct economic base was

in some way or another more progressive than its predecessor serfs had better lives and slaves and workers have better

lives than serfs this is why many Marxist acknowledge the historically progressive role of capitalism the next

stage however is a radical departure from the previous systems in the past we saw the preservation of a core dynamic

in each system Explorer versus exploited dominant versus subordinate etc there was always a powerful minority

that dominated a disenfranchised and oppressed majority socialism which Marx and others saw as the next stage after

capitalism is at first a reversal of that relationship the majority becomes dominant a People's

Revolution necessarily transitions the power from a minority class of exploiters to a majority class the

objective of the majority class is to erase class boundaries altogether to erase the age-old exploiter exploited

social structure once and for all it's important to note that capitalism produces the conditions for socialism

capitalism created the workplace as we know it where large numbers of people regularly work in close proximity with

each other capitalism needed the production process to occur on a large and highly

concentrated scale having achieved this capitalism also created the conditions for socialism to take place finding

themselves in the same spaces living very similar experiences the working people are granted both a means and a

reason to produce change as transnational corporations to race borders and it Road the nation-state the

possibility of socialist revolution magnifies historical materialism is a powerful scientific tool however it can

be misinterpreted and misused we should be careful in creating a linear or deterministic vision of history some

people may be tempted to find a linear pattern of progression set in stone by stages that are supposedly predetermined

such an interpretation of history is not true to the historical materialist method because it ignores nearly all its

fundamental principles if history is determined to follow a linear and so-called upwards path and there is no

notion of a constant state of change change is no longer based on shifting conditions and overlapping causes but

rather on some specific vision that is set in stone at that point we are no longer analyzing history scientifically

instead we are creating Universal and unchangeable characteristics that exist outside of any real observations of the

world and are dependent entirely on ideology some of the confusion that creates formulaic history can be

attributed to Marx himself his fixation with European history and European modes of production allows some critics to say

that mark Chisholm is Eurocentric the historical materialism describes the European path

of development of course it should come as no surprise that Marx was focused on Europe as he lived and worked there his

whole life with no exception because Marx applied historical materialism to his study of Europe much

of the analyses he produced were indeed Eurocentric did non European societies experience a different path to the

present day absolutely if we use historical materialism to understand the histories of other parts of the world as

Marx did for Europe we would almost definitely produce a different variant of what Marx found his studies another

area of historical materialism that has been distorted is the idea that social and political structures of a given

society are determined by the economic base while it is true that this is a fundamental relationship in historical

development Marx angles and many others who followed them repeatedly reiterated that that relationship is not one-sided

it is just as likely that social and political structures affect the economic base they are connected to and many

times in history we have witnessed precisely this kind of activity suggesting otherwise is essentially

nothing more than fogger materialism it is the equivalent of saying that human thought has no impact on the material

reality around it which neither Marx nor any of the other major scholars had ever advocated in summary historical

materialism is not a philosophy of history it is not about grand narratives and a perspective that is set in stone

more accurately it is a scientific tool that we can use to uncover the nature of different historical events and periods

if there's anything to take away from this video and the videos on dialectics and materialism it is that the world

around us is incredibly complex Marxism and the materialist dialectic make this assumption going into any analysis of

social political or economic phenomena Mao and Lenin insisted on the same assertion regularly and the idea of

complexity is at its peak in Alpha sirs concept of overdetermination this idea goes hand-in-hand with the

observation that everything is in a constant state of change if we should remember anything about materialist

dialectics and historical materialism it is these two things that's it for today's video please leave

your thoughts in the comment section below a huge thanks to the patreon supporters who make this project

possible thank you for watching and until next time remember the philosophers have only interpreted the

world in various ways the point is to change it [Music]