One Sociological Theory of Society, Social Life and History Karl Marx (1818-1883) Friedrich Engels (1820-1895 Historical Materialism One Sociological Theory of Society, Social Life and History

Historical Materialism Marx/Engels’ Theory of History is a reaction to Hegel’s theory of history, as represented in the image below:

What is Hegel’s Theory? Hegel argued that social reality, the economy, the means of production (how we meet our material needs) and class relations arose from a competition among individuals in which discussion (dialectic) of their opposing ideas (thesis, antithesis) leads to new ideas (synthesis) that human beings then act upon to change the way they think about, relate to, and manipulate reality. For Hegel, social and material reality in all its forms (how men relate to each other and to nature, how they satisfy their material needs) is a consequence of the ideas that are expressed in the choices made by individual human beings and collections of them as they act to satisfy their basic (and nonbasic) needs. The ideas that Spirit creates are always changing, and these new ideas generate new social realities, economies, means of production.

Marx and Engels Thought Hegel Got it Exactly Backward For Marx and Engels, how we think about our social and material reality is not determined by a process of dialectic in which ideas compete and new ideas emerge from the competition. NO! Quite the contrary! Our ideas, our habits of thought, or views about the way the world works, etc., are products of economic relations, the means of production by which we satisfy our fundamental human needs to get from nature what we materially need for survival. The name for Marx and Engels’ Theory of History is: Historical Materialism

Historical Materialism (HM): a methodological approach to the study of human societies and their development over time. Key to the theory: It is a theory of history according to which the material conditions of a society’s mode of production, its means of producing the requirements for continued human existence, or in Marxist terms, the union of its productive capacity and social relations of production, fundamentally determine its organization and development. HM looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. Social classes and the relationship between them, along with the political structures and ways of thinking in society are founded and reflect contemporary economic activity.

What Marxists mean by ‘means of existence’: In order for human beings to survive and continue existence from generation to generation, it is necessary for them to produce and reproduce the material requirements of life. Marx adds to this obvious fact about human survival the following: in order to carry out production and exchange, people have to enter into very definite social relations, most fundamentally, production relations. However, production does not get carried out in the abstract, or by entering into arbitrary or random relations chosen at will according to a set of preexisting ideas in the minds of human beings. Human beings collectively work on Nature, but they do not all do the same work. There is a division of labor in which people not only do different jobs, but according to Marxist theory, some people live off the fruits of the labor of others by owning the Means of Production.

How this is accomplished depends on the type of society How this is accomplished depends on the type of society. Production is carried out by very definite relations between people and, in turn, these production relations are determined by the level and character of the productive forces that are present at any given time in history. For Marx, the ‘means of production’ refers to the tools, instruments, technology, land, raw materials, and human knowledge and abilities in terms of using these means of production. Historical materialists usually postulate that society has moved through a number of types of modes of production. That is, the character of the production relations is determined by the character of the production forces.

Productive forces could be the simple tools and instruments of early human existence (spears, knives, carving stones, etc.), or the more developed machinery and technology of the present age. Marx identified the main modes of production and the types of society they produced to include: Primitive communism (hunter-gatherer, tribal societies) Ancient society (City States like Athens, Babylon, etc.) Feudalism (Manor/estate-based societies of the Middle Ages) Capitalism (Mercantile and post-industrial exchange of goods by means of money, and production based on capital [wealth]) At each of these stages, people interact with nature in different ways to produce the means to satisfy their basic material needs. And any surplus from that production is allotted in different ways.

Each stage in the productive forces generates a different set of classes. Ancient societies: ruling class of slave owners + slave class. Ruling class collects the surplus from the work that is mainly done by the slave class. Feudal societies: landowning class + serf class. Landowners collect the surplus from the work that is mainly done by the serfs. Capitalist societies: bourgeois class (which owns the means of production, distribution and exchange [factories, mines, shops, banks]) + working class (which exchanges its socialized labor with the capitalist class for wages it then uses to purchase what it needs to survive). The capitalist/bourgeois class collects the surplus generated from the socialized labor of the working class.

Key concept: capitalist class retains the “surplus value of the socialized labor of the working class” Marx calls this use of the productive capacities of the labor of the working class “exploitation”.

What aspects of society are generated and based on what Historical Materialist theory refers to as “productive relations”? Answer: All of them! Based upon existing productive forces of a given society, which constitute the “economic base” of a society, the following things emerge as determined consequences of that base: political institutions, laws, customs, culture, ideas, ways of thinking, morality, etc. These constitute the political/ideological superstructure of society. This superstructure not only has its origin in the economic base, but its features and ultimately correspond to the character and development of that economic base. That is, the way people organize society is ultimately based on the economic mode of production in that society, not the other way around.

Main Principles of Historical Materialism The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence. There is a division of labor into social classes. Relations of production, based on property ownership, determine that some people live from the labor of others. The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production. The mode of production is based on the level of productive forces. Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class of one stage is replaced by an emerging class that overthrows the political shell that enforces the old relations, which no longer fit the new modes of production and so need to be replaced.

Consequences of these Principles of Historical Materialism The revolution that changes a society in response to changes in the productive forces/modes of production occurs first in the superstructure of society (its political arrangements, along with the ideas, customs, morality that support them) The exploited class (in capitalist society, this is the working class) liberates themselves from the no longer workable class relations in which they have become exploited, unleashing a modified set of productive forces that accommodate the new modes of production.

Where Marx Expresses his Theory Best In the Preface to his 1859 book “A Contribution to the Political Economy” reproduced below: “In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”

Key Concepts of Historical Materialism and the Marxist Theory of History Determinism: HM is a deterministic theory of history. (Jason Explains) Exploitation: The surplus labor of the working class in a capitalist society is stolen by the capitalist class, and Marx’ name for this is exploitation. The dominant class (bourgeoisie), which takes the surplus created by the means of production it owns, exploits the subordinate class (workers) Alienation: Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the estrangement (Ger. Entfremdung) of people from aspects of their Gattungswesen ("species-essence") as a consequence of living in a society of stratified social classes. The alienation from the self is a consequence of being a mechanistic part of a social class, the condition of which estranges a person from their humanity. More succinctly: The process whereby the worker is made to feel foreign to the products of his/her own labor.

Ideology: the feature of the superstructure of a society that represents the way it represents itself, through ideas and principles. These ideas and principles simply are drawn from and exist only to support the existing means of production and associated class relations. False consciousness: believing the picture of the social world that is created by the means of production and the economic base. That is, a way of thinking that prevents a person from perceiving the true nature of their social or economic situation. (On projector: Marvin Harris examples of how eating meat and cows came to be discouraged by religious beliefs in India, and eating pigs prohibited by religion among the Israelites) Capitalism: A socio-economic system based especially on private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the labor force. 

Engels’ Difference from Marx Engels thinks that the superstructure of a society (everything but the economic base [=productive relations determined fully by the modes of production]) interact with each other and can act back on that economic base and alter it. What are these elements that are noneconomic? He says: “The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form.” (Notes on Historical Materialism)

Engels’ Difference from Marx cont’d Why this suggests Engels’ version of Historical Materialism is not fully determinist: when a complex system of interacting causes is used to describe and explain the behavior of a phenomenon, it is much harder to claim that the cause completely determines the nature of the effects. For this reason, Engels’ Historical Materialism seems to involve the idea that history is not completely determined by any one feature of social life, nor do the possible interactions among these complex causes have determinate effects that can be predicted in advance. But one central feature of ‘determinist’ scientific explanation is precisely that if we know the causal laws and the initial conditions, the outcome can be completely predicted. This is not possible according to Engels’ version of Historical Materialism.