Great Man theory

[Mahatma Gandhi]

Hi Comrades!:)

Isn't the Great Man theory so evidently true that it doesn't even need an explanation? Why do most leftists attack this theory? Even if man is a product of social conditions, isn't it also true that different people influence those conditions differently? Millions were in the same position as Napoleon, yet there is only one Napoleon. Only a man of his class could have influenced the world the way he did.

What I am trying to say is this: the theory that man is a product of social conditions doesn't contradict the great man theory; rather, they complement each other very well.

Your thoughts?

[Comrade Gwydion]

Hi Comrades!:)

Isn't the Great Man theory so evidently true that it doesn't even need an explanation? Why do most leftists attack this theory? Even if man is a product of social conditions, isn't it also true that different people influence those conditions differently? Millions were in the same position as Napoleon, yet there is only one Napoleon. Only a man of his class could have influenced the world the way he did.

What I am trying to say is this: the theory that man is a product of social conditions doesn't contradict the great man theory; rather, they complement each other very well.

Your thoughts?

First of, I'd say there were dozens, a few hundred at max. who were in the same position as Napoleon. Secondly, why was there only one who did what napoleon did? Because there can only be one supreme ruler of France. If there were two, three, or a million supreme rulers, none of them would be the supreme ruler.

Why was it Napoleon who did it, and nobody else? I don't know. Luck, probably, and ruthlessness and ambition, for a large part. However, he got the chance through external conditions, and had he not taken up the chance, someone else just as easily might have.

[Rogue Trooper]

Yes there is, a great man is not made by condition, he is made by knowledge, courage and opportunity

[ComradeOm]

Isn't the Great Man theory so evidently true that it doesn't even need an explanation?Obviously not, otherwise it would not have been effectively abandoned (decades ago) by professional historians :glare:


What I am trying to say is this: the theory that man is a product of social conditions doesn't contradict the great man theoryThis pretty much directly contradicts the great man theory. This concept infers that the rise and actions of these "heroes", to quote Carlyle, are based entirely on their own personal attributes and are independent of their social environment or other material trends. The latter cannot be understood solely through a few biographies of notables

To take your example, the Napoleonic Wars were the product of a multitude of factors - such as innovations of the 18th C French military, the revolutionary concepts unleashed at the turn of the century, the rise of the French bourgeoisie and associated political forms, etc - of which Napoleon's undoubted military genius is only one. The great man theory fails to explain why, for example, French armies had been driving back the combined armies of the European monarchies years before Napoleon's usurpation of power

Marx really summed it up well:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past

[Bud Struggle]

The Great Man Theory like the "History-of-the-World-is-a-History-of-Worker-Struggles" Theory or any other such--"this is what is REALLY happening" theory is partly right and partly a load of fluff.

Yes there are "Great Men" that come along and change the course of history. The time and the place have to be right, but there is no doubt they did things to change the world. But the point is that's not the entire story--other things come into play. Lots of other things. But it is pretty obvious that there are men that will take advantage of situations that they come across and use them to their own ends.

Further "Great Men", Worker's Struggles", "the Advance of Science Theory" and more are all subjective. Things happen in the real world and these theories are just man's little way of making sense of it. They have nothing to do with absolute truth.

There is nothing wrong with seeing how each of these theories have affected the history of the world, but everything has to be kept in perspective. No one theory explains history in total.

[Sturzo]

I like to think of history like a map, we can know the major events, and outline the processes and conditions that lead to them, but we can't truly "know" in entirety what happened in the past.

I don't really think that there is a single theory or frame of reference that can explain all events in the past, much less as I don't think it's really possible to understand people's mindsets even a few decades ago.

I think it's a real mix of all sorts of conditions, I'm currently reading the book "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11," the author takes a very good range of events and conditions that lead to the precipitating causes to the rise of Islamic terror and eventually 9/11, but at the same time he acknowledges how key individuals made minute decisions that had tremendous impacts on the future course of human history and really shaped the definite outcomes we know today. Kind of what Pascal once said about the course of European civilization would have been completely different if Cleopatra's nose was just a few centimeters longer.

As much as Napoleon had been trapped in his own time, what if such a unique individual had not been there to take the helm of the French Republic? Would the republic have collapsed or disintegrated? Would liberalism and nationalism become the forces they were without the impact and influence of the Napoleonic Age? Despite being products of our own age, our actions can have lasting and tremendous consequences on the course of history.

[Tyrlop]

indeed there has been great leaders, and great leaders will also lead the future. look at for example Lenin. he was great

[Dean]

The "great man theory" postulates that single individuals were personally responsible for historical phenomena.

In terms of Nazi Germany, it would say:

-Hitler
...was the reason for German expansionism and antisemitic violence

While materialists would say:
-Repressive sanctions
-The weakened Weimar Republic which allowed for a totalitarian regime to prevail
-Historical antisemitism coupled with a large Jewish population
-Perceived benefits to the ruling class in Germany for an expansionist, paranoid-propaganda regime
...were the reasons for a violently antisemitic, expansionist German regime.

Its fairly obvious which one makes more sense. You don't get an empowered central leader without the conditions which allow for it.

[Sturzo]

I think that view still leaves out an important half to individual's roles in history, as I tried to explain above. True, we are all products of our conditions, but an individual's actions can create profound conditions in the future.

It can be demonstrated through counter-factuals.

Had it not been for Napoleon taking over the French Republic and deposing the decrepit Directory, would have the French Revolution survived from getting crushed by the power of the old regime? If it had been crushed, would the French ever been able to spread the ideas of liberalism and nationalism across Europe?

If that effect had never been planted across Europe, how would have history turned out? Would the Concert of Europe (or whatever it would be) be even stronger to withhold the forces of revolution? Would the bourgeoisie had ever gained the power they hold today without these conditions that were created in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars?

So in a sense, individuals can steer and set the conditions for history in future by the actions they can take in their own time. You could try to argue that history would take the similar course to create a similar socio-economic structure we have today regardless to what single individuals did, but that's diving off so far off into the hypothetical, I think it's hard to make that case. What individuals do is just as critical if not sometimes more as the conditions they are done in.

[Bud Struggle]

Its fairly obvious which one makes more sense. You don't get an empowered central leader without the conditions which allow for it.

And if there was no central leader--let's say in Nazi Germany then Fascism might have come and gone as it did in Franco's Spain--a isolated bad pholosophy but nothing that would have change the course of history and left millions dead.

As the poster above me states--it is more than just conditions and more than just a "Great Man" showing up.

[Sturzo]

I would say using both schools of thought to some degree gives a better understanding to how history works out.

Sure, the conditions enabled Hitler to do what he did, those conditions were what I would call the precipitating causes that created a whole number of possibilities and Hitler was the enabling cause that lead to a specific outcome. The conditions in Weimar Germany could have led to a whole number of scenarios, one that Bud Struggle already pointed out. Who knows, without Hitler, it's conceivable that the Communists could have taken power.

Conditions give us opportunities to act, however it is up to us what we do with those conditions. Who would connect the steam engine to powering factories?

I don't think anything in history is necessarily inevitable.

[mikelepore]

This pretty much directly contradicts the great man theory. This concept infers that the rise and actions of these "heroes", to quote Carlyle, are based entirely on their own personal attributes and are independent of their social environment or other material trends. The latter cannot be understood solely through a few biographies of notables

You're right in terms of the way Carlyle presented the idea. The phrase "great man theory" entered the vocabulary in the first place because Carlyle wrote the rather extreme statement, "The history of the world is but the biography of great men."

[Dean]

I think that view still leaves out an important half to individual's roles in history, as I tried to explain above. True, we are all products of our conditions, but an individual's actions can create profound conditions in the future.

It can be demonstrated through counter-factuals.

Had it not been for Napoleon taking over the French Republic and deposing the decrepit Directory, would have the French Revolution survived from getting crushed by the power of the old regime? If it had been crushed, would the French ever been able to spread the ideas of liberalism and nationalism across Europe?

If that effect had never been planted across Europe, how would have history turned out? Would the Concert of Europe (or whatever it would be) be even stronger to withhold the forces of revolution? Would the bourgeoisie had ever gained the power they hold today without these conditions that were created in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars?

So in a sense, individuals can steer and set the conditions for history in future by the actions they can take in their own time. You could try to argue that history would take the similar course to create a similar socio-economic structure we have today regardless to what single individuals did, but that's diving off so far off into the hypothetical, I think it's hard to make that case. What individuals do is just as critical if not sometimes more as the conditions they are done in.


And if there was no central leader--let's say in Nazi Germany then Fascism might have come and gone as it did in Franco's Spain--a isolated bad pholosophy but nothing that would have change the course of history and left millions dead.

As the poster above me states--it is more than just conditions and more than just a "Great Man" showing up.


You both miss the point. The point was never to imply that men and women cannot gain singularly held power and enact their own vision.

The point was that the conditions for singular leadership are neither created by the given individual, nor is the enactment of his or her policy created by him or her. It is the struggle for survival or expansion of any given power system that makes individual activity effective; simply put, without resonance through a practical power system which is responsive to the leader's policies, they will fail - either totally, by deeply reorganizing the system in an undesired way, or marginally, by failing to achieve any of the goals set out by the leader.

The fact is that the Holocaust was probably rooted fairly closely to the activities of a very narrow milieu of German leaders - perhaps simply Hitler. But the conditions which allowed for this tragedy were not of his or any other single leader's creation. As mikelepore accurately points out, the rejection of the "great man" theory of history is not an argument that individuals cannot accumulate and maintain power personally over dramatic systems. The point is that history is defined along the lines of the prevalent social, political and economic systems, and so too are powerful leaders and their policies.

[mikelepore]

Part of the problem is that traditional education methods contains too little discussion of cause and effect processes, and too much of a tendency to make history into a long list of dates, names and cities. If educators are going to take that lazy route, they will probably end up listing "prominent" people and their "accomplishments" as their major activity. If they promise to explain all about how the Roman empire developed, what they deliver is a pointless list of this kind: 27 BC: Augustus, 14 AD: Tiberius, 37: Caligula, 41: Claudius, 54: Nero. Having done that, the teacher has a lesson all planned out, and a handy collection of questions that can be used on the examimation, without having to think about the gray issues. Best of all, no one has had to draw too much attention to the dangerous information, the exploitation of the working classes and the resistance of oppressed groups.

[Bud Struggle]

The fact is that the Holocaust was probably rooted fairly closely to the activities of a very narrow milieu of German leaders - perhaps simply Hitler. But the conditions which allowed for this tragedy were not of his or any other single leader's creation. As mikelepore accurately points out, the rejection of the "great man" theory of history is not an argument that individuals cannot accumulate and maintain power personally over dramatic systems. The point is that history is defined along the lines of the prevalent social, political and economic systems, and so too are powerful leaders and their policies.

WeellI think we can all agree that economic and political trends are what couch any particular event in history--but occasionaly an individuals force these events to hiw own will. Maybe the French Revolution was a force of history--but Napoleon certainy wasn't. The course of French history would have been entirely different if he didn't exist. There was no substitute for him and nothing obvious at the time and now even in hindsight that he or someone like him would exist. Millions of lives were changed by the fact that he was born. He indeed was a Great Man in that respect.

One could also make a case that there are are thousands of "lesser" great men that force and form events so that they could be further formed by other lesser great men.

[ComradeOm]

WeellI think we can all agree that economic and political trends are what couch any particular event in historyThen you are no longer subscribing to the great man theory. As both myself and Dean, the latter far more eloquently, have pointed out, this is a theory that ignores the role of material factors in favour of destined heroes. In contrast, a materialist reading of history fully accepts the role of individuals in history


Maybe the French Revolution was a force of history--but Napoleon certainy wasn'tWould history have been different if Napoleon died as a child? Of course it would have, perhaps significantly. However as it was France did not become the pre-eminent European power simply because of one little Corsican. It did so because Napoleon was able to lay his hands on a frighteningly modern/efficient state apparatus that was bolstered by very favourable demographic trends. Would Napoleon have been so successful if, in an admittedly ridiculous hypothetical, France had a population of ~8 million to England's ~30 million in 1800? Of course not. When you reverse the figures however, as they were historically, and place them in the wider context you see that Napoleon was merely the crowning apex of centuries of French rise of European predominance. And this is not even noting the other advantages I mentioned in my first post

So if we take another ridiculous hypothetical (or 'counter-factual' as they are increasingly styled) and somehow place Napoleon in control of the 13th C French state you'd find that his impact would be much less than at the head of the powerful post-Revolution France. Material conditions constrained and channelled Napoleon's actions and influence

[Bud Struggle]

Then you are no longer subscribing to the great man theory.

I don't believe I ever have. If I may be permitted to quote myself:


Yes there are "Great Men" that come along and change the course of history. The time and the place have to be right, but there is no doubt they did things to change the world. But the point is that's not the entire story--other things come into play. Lots of other things. But it is pretty obvious that there are men that will take advantage of situations that they come across and use them to their own ends.

Further "Great Men", Worker's Struggles", "the Advance of Science Theory" and more are all subjective. Things happen in the real world and these theories are just man's little way of making sense of it. They have nothing to do with absolute truth.

There is nothing wrong with seeing how each of these theories have affected the history of the world, but everything has to be kept in perspective. No one theory explains history in total.

There may be a very good chance that we are all saying exactly the same thing just with a slightly different emphesis. :)

[Sturzo]

Yes, we really are agreeing to the same thing.

It's funny that this is even in issue, Marx's concept of history has penetrated so far in the mainstream, most people don't realize the common viewpoint of how we look at history is actually Marxian. Just a matter of penetrating the whole idea of exploitation and wage labor into the mainstream.