A (Somewhat Brief) Critique of Historical Materialism

If one surveys the political landscape of the Anglosphere (United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand) one thing become apparent: all these governments operate from some form of capitalist, and indeed fiscally conservative, ideology. Even the Obama Administration in the United States is just capitalism-lite (or naïvely labeled socialism by far-right decriers) in contrast to its Republican critics. Nevertheless, any interventionist economic policy during the remaining years of Obama’s Presidency have been hampered by the Republican Party gaining control of the legislature in the 2014 mid-term elections. This turn in history could not surely be put down to mere coincidence? Despite what Karl Marx argued, capitalism seems destined to stay for the foreseeable future. Regardless of a brief Keynesian respite between the 1930s and 1960s, capitalism has become cemented as our mode of political economy. Even centrist labour parties have conformed to capitalism such as Britain under Tony Blair by adopting the acquiescent Third Way. So was Marx wrong about emergence of socialism and in turn communism? To answer this it is pertinent to understand historical materialism, Marx’s theoretical exposition of how we came to be in our present circumstances.

Marx developed his materialist conception of history not in a single work but gradually over several works, which makes it difficult to understand, and it can seemingly appear to be lacking coherence.[1] To find Marx’s roots for historical materialism we need to consider one of his forebears, Georg Hegel. In the Phenomenology of Spirit (as well as other works) Hegel developed a speculative logical system that served as the basis for his metaphysical and political thinking.[2] Hegel’s thinking was based on a dialectical methodology whereby successive categories are implicitly self-contradictory and give rise to a hierarchical evolution of categories: an initial thesis is contrary to its antithesis, and the two are united in a synthesis by the positive outcomes of each by avoiding both their self-contradictions.[3] Marx uses Hegel’s dialectical methodology but uses it within the circumstances of material conditions, not as an agent for history, but as a story of class struggle as defined by those material conditions. Marx’s history is therefore regarded as “materialist” in contrast to Hegel’s “idealist” history guided by the human spirit (Geist) that is directed towards freedom. In The German Ideology Marx elucidates how stages of material and productive development give rise to certain social arrangements related to division of labour and ownership of the means of production.[4] Certain antagonisms between modes of production have brought us from hunter-gatherer societies to primitive communal ownership, to feudal societies, and finally to capitalism. Capitalism however, has simplified class antagonism into two simple camps: the owners of production, the bourgeoisie, and those who must sell their labour to subsist, the proletariat.[5] When class is reduced to this definition it clarifies any grey areas that might suggest a fluidity between classes that is often the cornerstone of liberalism. This antagonism is still axiomatic in the same sense that aristocratic privilege was the defining feature of pre-revolutionary France. The repulsive aspects of capitalism’s contradictions would eventually create its collapse and give birth by way of revolution to a socialist society where the proletariat retain common ownership of the means of production.[6]

Class conflict because of material circumstances is inevitable; one class will always attempt to dominate the other whatever the historical circumstances.[7] Marx recognises this, however, the desire to overcome this relationship is tentative, especially in a world dominated by capital's hegemony. Marx's interpretation of class conflict suggests to the casual reader it is aimed at a specific end point: communism, or, a classless society. While idealistic, there is nothing to suggest that one system will triumph over another, and history will be drawn to an ideological terminus. Ideas will always arise from present material circumstances. But understanding Marx is more about the possible rather than the inevitable. Historical materialism is often misinterpreted or misappropriated as a historiographical methodology, as pointed out by Terry Eagleton, to explain the unfolding of history, especially in terms of class conflict.[8] What should be taken from Marx is a general theory of social change. Marx is not suggesting an internal determinist mechanism for history’s unfolding as well as its future, but putting forward an economic and well as technological argument for historical development of social formations. Humans are conditioned to execute a development in their productive relationships.[9]

The picture Marx paints however is not exempt from criticism: while Marx's explanation of the transition from primitive societies, to feudalism, and then to capitalism is plausible and well understood, his theory seems hollow when contrasted with the history of the twentieth century. The establishment of the Soviet Union after the 1917 Russian Revolution failed to follow the development of socialism according to historical materialism because it was a largely feudal society (in the loosest sense, especially in contrast to the industrialised capitalist economies of Germany, Britain, and the United States). The Soviet Union only heavily industrialised after transition to socialism, undermining Marx's logical development of communism. The collectivisation of agriculture and the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin cost millions of lives and failed to produce the means to create a classless society. Even China’s ruling communist party is gradually reforming its economy to what appears to be more capitalistic. This has led some commentators such as Francis Fukuyama, to suggest the inevitability of liberal democracy (and implicitly capitalism). Fukuyama has suggested the collapse of the Soviet Union has proved capitalism as the natural condition of human affairs and therefore the end of history.[10] Fukuyama is very much influenced in this regard by Hegel in an explanation for the unfolding of History. Marx also could not have foreseen to ideological power of the fusion of capital and technology to exacerbate what Fredrich Engles described as a false consciousness in the proletariat.[11] The ability of media corporations to distract and disseminate ideas that work in favour of capital is incredibly powerful.

Postmodern interpretations of history are dismissive of grand historical narratives whether they be materialist or otherwise.[12] However, the scepticism expressed by postmodernism towards any form of teleological inevitability need not undermine the theoretical basis for socialism or even the impetus to make all human lives better. A critique of Marx's historical materialism does not necessarily mean an outright rejection of all Marxist theory or socialism as a viable economic alternative to capitalism, but this also does not mean embracing Fukuyama's End of History thesis, which is teleological in itself being a derivative of Hegel.[13] There is nothing to suggest the present ideological epoch will not be undermined by some catastrophic event—say, anthropogenic climate change, or a dramatic financial collapse worse than the Great Depression, or a nuclear war—that will cause some regressive state of affairs to arise: one of the many flavours of anarchism or potentially a totalitarian government that derives its power from control of what little post-apocalyptic resources exist. So that leaves us with the question: if the historical march to communism is not inevitable, how does society overcome the vicissitudinous nature of capitalism? One can either wallow in the nihilism that Marx was wrong and we are all doomed to capitalism’s negativities, or we can use Marx as a theoretical impetus to critique capitalism without being locked into the dogmatism of inevitability. To quote Marx himself, "philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it".[14]

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[1]  Terrence Ball, "History: Critique and irony," in The Cambridge Companion to Marx, ed. Terrell Carver (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

[2] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and J. N. Findlay, Phenomenology of spirit, trans. Arnold V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Allen Wood, "Hegel and Marxism," in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick  C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

[3] Hegel and Findlay, Phenomenology of Spirit; Michael Forster, "Hegel's dialectical method," in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick  C. Beiser (Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 131-3.

[4]  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, ed. C. J. Arthur (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1970).

[5] Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Penguin Books, 2002).

[6] ibid.

[7] ibid.

[8] Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011).

[9] Marx and Engles, The German Ideology, 47.

[10] Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).

[11]  Fredrich Engles, "Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1893," accessed March 27, 2015, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm.

[12]  Jean-François Lyotard et al., The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).

[13] Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man.

[14] Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach," in Early Writings. Introduced by Lucio Colletti. trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, ed. Lucio Colletti. translated by Gregor Benton and Rodney L. Livingstone (Harmondsworth: Penguin, in association with New Left Review, 1975), 423.

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