Historical materialism

[Misodoctakleidist]

How accurate do you think historical materialism is? i think its a pretty sound basis for theory but positivist research methods come under alot of criticism, i just wondered how accurate everyone thinks it is.

[toastedmonkey]

i think it can be quite accurate

[redstar2000]

Maybe the best way to extend this discussion is to talk about the criticisms of historical materialism in some detail...to what extent do those criticisms "make sense"?

For example, I've seen it said that Marx's "schema" on the development of class societies "only" applies to Europe.

My reply--entirely speculative, of course--is that if Europe had never existed, some other place would have evolved capitalism.

Another criticism asserts that the emerging national states in Europe "created" modern capitalism...and this has a certain degree of plausibility.

I suspect that "royal mercantilism" was an ongoing response to the restive nobility, an attempt to create an "independent" source of strength for the new autocracies. Unfortunately (for the autocrats), it turned out that capitalism subverted their power rather than strengthened it, by creating a growing new class that was increasingly contemptuous of royal and noble pretensions alike.

Those are just a couple of examples. Modern bourgeois historians mostly use--in my experience--the "everything and the kitchen sink" approach. They use historical materialism, "great man" theory, "great ideas" theory, as much juicy gossip as they can locate, and enormous heaps of "contingency"...everything really happens by chance.

Not very instructive but often makes for a "good read" and makes the historian's ass bullet-proof. No one can say he "overlooked" anything.

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[postmarkxmyxcompass]

marx was dead on with historical materialism. look at modern politics, we just fought a war to make certain people even richer. major world changes are taking place because of economic greed.

[The Feral Underclass]

The argument that Historical Materialism is flawed because it only relates to europe is complete rubbish. The principle of HM is that society has developed bsed on economic levels. In europe it was more advanced granted but that does not mean that aia and africa and south america did not develop based on the same priniple. You have to take into consideration economic imperialism and colonialism.

Historical Materialism is an accurate theory which is extremly important if we want to understand the development of humanity. Unless we dont understand what society is and how it formed we can not critise it and therefore can not understand why we want to change it!

[Misodoctakleidist]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2003, 02:12 AM
For example, I've seen it said that Marx's "schema" on the development of class societies "only" applies to Europe.

My reply--entirely speculative, of course--is that if Europe had never existed, some other place would have evolved capitalism.


I agree, the change from feudalism to capitalism was driven my the invention of methods of mass production and im sure this would have been the same anywhere else if european capitalism hadn't spread.

I often hear people say that people opinions and actions affect the developement of society but if you concider the change from feudalism to capitalism i dont see how it could happen any other way, the only way to undermime the power of the feudal hierachy was to create a mehtod by which none noble groups could make enough money to rise up in society and the only way that could be achieved is with mass production. Also i think the concequence of mass prodution can only be capitalism because in feudal society there are no laws preventing this from happening because they weren't previously needed so i dont see how anyone could have prevented capitalism. Alot of people point out that James Hargreaves invention of the spinning jenny caused capipalisation but if he hadn't invented it it wouldn't have been long before someone else did and he couldn't have invented it in a pre-feudal society because the people capable of production had no desire for change.