The role of economic forces in history

[Brigg]

How can you justify that claim that economic forces and interests are the driving force of history?

I have often heard the claim from social-democrats that the claim that all history is a series of economic modes of production is simplistic and does not take into account other important factors such as ideas, religion, nationalism, human nature, human psychology. What's your response?

[the last donut of the night]

How can you justify that claim that economic forces and interests are the driving force of history?

I have often heard the claim from social-democrats that the claim that all history is a series of economic modes of production is simplistic and does not take into account other important factors such as ideas, religion, nationalism, human nature, human psychology. What's your response?

Basically, we Marxists see class antagonisms as the driving force of history. What does this mean? Well, we believe that the economic struggle between classes moves history by creating various social phenomena as we see today. For example, capitalism was born out of the struggle between a weakening noble class and the rising merchant class in Europe (however, it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the general scheme of things). We counter the social democrats by showing that religion, nationalism, and "human nature", are usually also the products of class struggles.

[Brigg]

Thanks, can you recommend or link to a thorough analysis?

[Spawn of Stalin]

Both ideas and nationalism, in the political sense of the words, are generally heavily influenced by economics, for better or worse, people become more nationalistic in periods of extremities, during a time of recession such as the one we have now, people are more likely to be nationalistic in the reactionary "towelheads fuck off" way, whereas if an economy is going through a period of rapid growth, people are more likely to express something about how wonderful their country is, which of course is far less reactionary than the other type of nationalism, but harmful nonetheless. Ideas do not shape the conditions, the conditions shape ideas. Human nature and psychology cannot be changed as easily as policy, these thing evolve to fit the current conditions, they do not create the conditions themselves. The only one I'm not really sure about would be religion

[mikelepore]

How can you justify that claim that economic forces and interests are the driving force of history?

I have often heard the claim from social-democrats that the claim that all history is a series of economic modes of production is simplistic and does not take into account other important factors such as ideas, religion, nationalism, human nature, human psychology. What's your response?

I recommend that you read Engels' letter to Joseph Bloch

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm

From that letter, two points in particular:

***

"According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. 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."

***

"Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction."

[RadioRaheem84]

You want a big example of the hidden economic forces that drive history? Read the Church Committee's section on Chile. What one saw outward was heavy inflation on the part of the Allende government when an economic war was going on underneath the surface being conducted by a coalition of the business interests of Chile, the CIA and the Nixon administration. Bourgeoisie history though vindicates Pinochet and his Chicago Boys.