Are there any non-Marxian versions of historical materialism?

[heiss93]

Of all the aspects of Marxism, political economy, sociology, psychology, philosophy, science etc, there are relatively sophisticated bourgeois versions of. But as far as I know there is no non-marxian historical materialism. Structuralism has some features, and there are certain schools of sociology and anthropology. But it seems like non-Marxist theories of history break down into a best of all possible worlds progressivism, a pessimistic cyclic there is nothing new under the son, or Great Man. And there is also the attempt to universalize the ethos of capitalism. I think there are interesting aspects to sociobiology as a theory of history, but when applied to history after the stone-age it usually reduces to capitalism is human nature, or all actions are the result of males wanting sex.

Pretty much ever aspect of Marxism has been absorbed into bourgeois academia either to tame or refute the revolutionary aspect of Marxism. But historical science which deals with man as he is actually live is a rather barren area of non-marxist research. Which is not to say that no good individual works of history have been written, but there is no examination of the socioeconomic mode of production. But if not MOP, what can drive history?

[mikelepore]

There are many theories about the importance of climate and geography in determining social conditions. They are all materialist theories. However, those factors are not directional. There is no particular direction of change in geography as we move from ancient times to modern times, so those factors cannot explain how social relationships and ideas develop through stages across spans of time. The means of production are a material factor that changes in a directional and permanent way, and therefore its impact on directional changes in the superstructure can be observed in time variables. When geography affects the superstructure this may be observed across a distribution in space but not in the time dimension. This is where Marx's theory has been helpful.

[trivas7]

[...] The means of production are a material factor that changes in a directional and permanent way, and therefore its impact on directional changes in the superstructure can be observed in time variables.
This tantamount to saying that history has a teleological end in view. I deny it. The transition from classical slave economies to the feudal period in many ways represent a devolution in many areas of life: food production, scientific inquiry, etc. Even today primitive communal relations exist along side capitalist arrangements. There is no Marxian god called Historical Materialism.

[ChrisK]

Kant.


On Kant, for example, Marxist philosopher Allen Wood had this to say:

"Kant's historical conjectures are inspired less by Scripture than by the model of Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. But Kant's philosophy of history also goes beyond Rousseau in many ways.... As should be evident by now, Kant's theory of the human race's development bears more than a casual resemblance to the materialist conception of history later worked out by Karl Marx. Kant's vision of humanity's historical future as well as its past has more in common with its greatest nineteenth-century descendant than has usually been appreciated.

"Kant's Idea for a Universal History proposes to view history as the process through which human beings develop their species-capacities. As we have seen, for Kant the decisive trait of the human species -- the original empirical meaning of its rationality and freedom -- is its ability to devise its own way of life. Thus along with Marx, Kant understands the basis of history as the development of people's socially productive powers, their collective capacities to produce their means of subsistence. In history, these capacities change and grow, and the historical process follows on this growth. As becomes clear in the Conjectural Beginning [of Human History -- RL], history for Kant has passed through several different stages, each of which corresponds to the then dominant modes of productive activity. If the key to historical development is the growth of human species powers, the fundamental determining powers are productive ones. What fundamentally characterizes each historical epoch is not only the mode of material production characteristic of it, but also the social conflicts this mode of production involves....

"Like Marx, Kant regards history as a scene not only of conflict and strife, but also of deepening inequality and oppression.... As in Marx's theory of history, the root of social antagonism is a struggle between groups of people with opposed economic interests, where the different groups represent different stages in humanity's economic development. And in both theories the victory in this struggle tends to belong to the group whose mode of production more fully develops the productive powers of humanity.

"Marx's theory of history is 'materialist' in more than one sense. First, it treats 'the mode of production in material life' as the key to humanity's historical development. Second, and perhaps more significantly, it understands the social 'form' of human society as grounded on its economic 'matter'. Kant's theory of history is materialist in both these senses. It treats humanity's activities in producing their means of subsistence as the historical basis for the development of all their capacities.... And Kant regards the employment of these capacities as conditioning the social relations -- in particular, the property relations and political forms -- that characterise a given historical epoch. Kant's theory of history, therefore, is correctly described as a form of 'historical materialism.'" [Wood (1998), pp.25-27.]

Bold emphasis alone added.

Wood, A, (1998), 'Kant's Historical Materialism' in Kneller and Axinn, Chapter Five.

Kneller, J., and Axinn, S, (1998), Autonomy And Community: Readings In Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy (State University of New York Press).

Hume, Roussau and The Scottish Materialists all had forms of historical materialism.

[Hit The North]

There are a number of partial attempts to develop a materialist conception of history before Marx (those ChistoferKoch mentions), but it would be misleading to call them historical materialism, which remains a Marxist theory of class struggle within modes of production, something absent in Kant's 'Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View' which maintains a standard Enlightenment view whereby human history is an outgrowth of human nature.

[Bud Struggle]

Originally Posted by Rosa Lichtenstein
On Kant, for example, Marxist philosopher Allen Wood had this to say:


For a second there I thought she said Woody Allen. :D