Historical Materialism: How Much It Explains, How Much It Doesn't - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Discourse exclusively on the basis of historical materialist methodology.
Forum rules: No one line posts please. This forum is for discussion based on Marxism, Marxism-Leninism and similar revisions. Critique of topics not based on historical materialism belongs in the general Communism forum.
#14740067
(Note: deleted early this morning in a database restoration, then reposted.)

DISCLAIMER: My ideas, though well-formed, may be far from well-informed. I'm just now researching Marxism, my knowledge of which stems mostly from a handful of cursory sources. Do feel free, if I've made a basic factual mistake, to correct me. I am getting started on a number of introductory texts; feel free, also, to provide recommendations.

Having said that, I'm curious how Marxists here view the explanatory scope of historical materialism. Is it a comprehensive account, or is it a general guideline? Marx himself believed the latter, if I'm not mistaken—after all, should such a doctrine, which deflates "eternal truths" on the basis of material context, really become an eternal truth itself?

(I'm not feeling too articulate tonight. I was going to try to explain a possible difference between Marxism in theory, which seems to avoid unfalsifiability, and Marxism in practice, which will claim as much philosophical ground as it can to appeal to the masses. Could I be right in that regard, too?)
#14740147
“The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of the direct producers determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves; thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers-a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity-which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure, and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short the corresponding specific form of the state.” (Capital, Vol. III.)


I used to be sceptical of economic history proposed by Marxist theorists but most world history books are written on the basis of historical materialism, which explains how human societies developed economically from tribal to capitalist, while educating the masses on the necessity of a working-class revolution. The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production and with the dawn of an era of social revolution, peasants and serfs were gradually liberated from the old elites but they were replaced by a class of owners and managers of private capital assets in the capitalist mode of production. At the end of this month, I'm going to attend the annual meeting of a historical association, which is very left-leaning, founded to fight fascism in our society.
#14740154
Engels seemed to think it could be applied to everything.

But if someone does so, I think it's always important to remember that historical theory is not iron law. That is to say, dialectic materialism explains how history works, not the other way around.

Lenin mocks the view or Marxists that every event must be the same:

Lenin wrote:To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie WITHOUT ALL ITS PREJUDICES [italics in original], without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc.--to imagine all this is to REPUDIATE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. So one army lines up in one place and says, "We are for socialism", and another, somewhere else and says, "We are for imperialism", and that will be a social revolution! Only those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic view would vilify the Irish rebellion by calling it a "putsch".
#14740245
@The Immortal Goon: A point I didn't include very well in my original post is that ideas seem to mobilize in proportion to how straightforward they are. In other words, Marxist thinkers can better spread class consciousness if they offer the proletariat a formula that spits out explanations given an input of sparse data, rather than a set of historical guidelines whose proper use requires a good deal of research. (As another example, Christians cite the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions.) By the time ideas enter the public sphere, they've grown simpler and broader to fit preexisting motives.

After all, isn't this exactly what historical materialists contend? The superstructure of society has no room for ideological frills—as soon as this superstructure appropriates an idea, whether to cement or to dissolve the current relations of production, that idea becomes an immutable Law, one applying to all mankind throughout all history. This leads to another paradox: as an idea becomes more needed within a certain historical context, it becomes more detached from its context on the whole. A ruling class at risk of losing its power may try to enforce an increasingly abstract justification of the status quo, for example.
#14740283
You're moving a little bit into Gramsci. This is a good thing.

What you're touching on is hegemony, how the superstructure will make even thinking of dissent as difficult as possible.

I'd reccomend looking into that.

So far as not derailing things, you are more or less correct. Part of Leninism as an interpretation of Marxism is the idea of the vanguard that will do exactly as you're saying. And I think that's mostly what James Connolly did in his career (Lenin was influenced by Connolly), what Lenin did, and even what Mao tried to do.

An early, but flawed, example of distilling these ideas to the masses is Jack London.

Jack London in The Iron Heel wrote:“Five men,” he said, “can produce bread for a thousand. One man can produce cotton cloth for two hundred and fifty people, woollens for three hundred, and boots and shoes for a thousand. One would conclude from this that under a capable management of society modern civilized man would be a great deal better off than the cave-man. But is he? Let us see. In the United States to-day there are fifteen million* people living in poverty; and by poverty is meant that condition in life in which, through lack of food and adequate shelter, the mere standard of working efficiency cannot be maintained. In the United States to-day, in spite of all your so-called labor legislation, there are three millions of child laborers.

In twelve years their numbers have been doubled. And in passing I will ask you managers of society why you did not make public the census figures of 1910? And I will answer for you, that you were afraid. The figures of misery would have precipitated the revolution that even now is gathering

“But to return to my indictment. If modern man’s producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, why then, in the United States to-day, are there fifteen million people who are not properly sheltered and properly fed? Why then, in the United States to-day, are there three million child laborers? It is a true indictment. The capitalist class has mismanaged. In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the cave-man, and that his producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, no other conclusion is possible than that the capitalist class has mismanaged, that you have mismanaged, my masters, that you have criminally and selfishly mismanaged. And on this count you cannot answer me here to-night, face to face, any more than can your whole class answer the million and a half of revolutionists in the United States. You cannot answer. I challenge you to answer. And furthermore, I dare to say to you now that when I have finished you will not answer. On that point you will be tongue-tied, though you will talk wordily enough about other things.

“You have failed in your management. You have made a shambles of civilization. You have been blind and greedy. You have risen up (as you to-day rise up), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and declared that profits were impossible without the toil of children and babes. Don’t take my word for it. It is all in the records against you. You have lulled your conscience to sleep with prattle of sweet ideals and dear moralities. You are fat with power and possession, drunken with success; and you have no more hope against us than have the drones, clustered about the honey-vats, when the worker-bees spring upon them to end their rotund existence. You have failed in your management of society, and your management is to be taken away from you. A million and a half of the men of the working class say that they are going to get the rest of the working class to join with them and take the management away from you. This is the revolution, my masters. Stop it if you can.”


So I may not understand, but tying that knot is--indeed--something we strive to do.
#14741549
the superstructure will make even thinking of dissent as difficult as possible.

DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Philosophical Fragments

MAX HORKHEIMER and
THEODOR W. ADORNO


"All are free to dance and amuse themselves, just as, since the historical neutralization of religion, they have been free to join any of the countless sects. But freedom to choose an ideology – since ideology always reflects economic coercion – everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same."

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (pp. 94-136)

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