Is Marx's theory of history plausible?

[davemorrison]

Been handed the above (Is Marx's theory of history plausible?) as an assignment title, and as a new student of Marxism am struggling a bit. Any advice/input/opinions on how to approach/structure it and what to include, as well as personal opinions of course, would be massively appreciated.

Many thanks

[Blake's Baby]

It's plausible, in that he studied history - ie, collected some data - and tried to build a theory around what he thought happened (and crucially, why).

His basic thesis is that civilisations/societies change (not necessarily in a positive way) through conflict. This conflict is the result of structural contradictions in said societies, these contradictions being between ruling and oppressed classes. Because there has never been a perfect society, all existing (historical, let's not get into prehistoric) societies have had these structural conflicts. It's the working out of these conflicts that makes this society dynamic. Happened in Antique slavery, happened in Feudal Europe, happens in capitalism. China, Persia, Arabia, he was less certain about. But in outline, you can apply the insights about Europe to other places as well, and he had the idea of 'Oriental Despotism' which was a kind of socially-stagnant tribute-based empire, which is also somewhat applicable to certain places and times.

So; systems that are dynamic because of class conflicts; the classes in conflict win or lose, and sometimes (when a new class comes to the forfront to be the new dominant class) a new system is born, so capitalism is born from the ashes of feudalism, as feudalism had been from antique slavery. So far, so based on history (and therefore as plausible as any other historical theory that's actually based on evidence not just prejudice).

It's pretty much unverifiable, however, as you can't run history again to see if you get a different result, so it's not a scientific test. It's an observation to account for data. I think it's a convincing one, but that's hardly surprising, if I didn't I wouldn't be a Marxist. It certainly knocks theories like 'The Great Man of History' and such like into a cocked hat, or all those racist versions of history that look to one group as the 'chosen race' of history (Nazi historians, Victorian Imperial history in England etc).

[MarxSchmarx]

what is "marx's theory of history"? answering that woukd use up all your essay

[Kronsteen]

The essay question seems phrased so as to allow many different kinds of answers.

* What did Marx write about history?
* What historical events did he think were important/unimportant?
* How was what Marx wrote different from what Engels, Lenin etc wrote?
* How do his ideas about the patterns of history relate to his ideas about metaphysics?
* Does Marx even have a theory of all human history?
* ...or several theories at different points in his life?
* If he had a theory, is it translatable into mainstream terms, or fundamentally different?
* Could Marx be wrong about the patterns and shape of history, but right about capitalist economics?
* Etc.

There's nothing wrong with answering any of these questions and finishing the essay up by saying "It's plausible, but unproven" or "It makes sense but it's too early to say whether it's true".

If you want a place to start reading, I suggest the afterword to the 2nd German edition of capital. It contains a long quote of a review of the first edition, which Marx agrees with emphatically.

Here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm

[The Insurrection]

What is meant by "plausible"? I would challenge the premise of the question. I don't think it's a matter of "plausibility", it's a matter of fact...

[Desperado]

Emphasise that for Marx & Engels, the primary tension in society leading to change was not class struggle per se, but the growing contradiction between the mode of production and the social relations of production (which is then clearly demonstrated and carried out in terms of class struggle). Lenin et al tend to focus completely on class struggle, ignoring this.

Don't follow Plekhanov orthodoxy neither: Marx at times spoke of the "economic base" determining the "superstructure", at other times just more casually influencing it. As Engels noted, the radical thing was that they were putting emphasis on the economic, whereas most historians of the time completely ignored it.

Lastly, a downplaying of "great man" theories and war and such as the determinants of history's direction is a key part of the Marxian perspective. I think we also need to concern ourselves with purpose a bit, and in what sense is a Marxian analysis useful. For Marx, class is the important part of society, and so I think it's helpful to qualify that for Marx the *important* history of all hitherto societies is that of class struggle, but not necessarily the be all and end all. Recognising that it's a very flexible tool, rather than a single "master key", is important.

Considering most historians tend to look at history far more holistically, and technological progress is given far more emphasis, I think it can be stated that key aspects of Marx & Engels' analysis have now been incorporated into the main-stream.

[Alf]

The Preface to the Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy is Marx's own brief summary of his historical method. Good place to start as it's so succinct.

The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarised as follows.

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms - with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production - antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence - but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm


But commentaries can be helpful, especially when written by other communists


http://en.internationalism.org/ir/134/what-method-to-understand-decadence


http://en.internationalism.org/ir/2008/135/ascent-and-decline-of-societies

[ckaihatsu]

A *very* general but uncontroversial place to start -- for the sake of starting from common ground -- is to think of society / civilization in terms of raw productive output (per capita, if you like).

- Obviously our material productivity has gained tremendously over recent past decades and centuries. We can then plausibly ask how society has come to structure its power relations in order to produce and manage / administrate such productivity, or surplus.

- We can also look at it from the reverse and ask how society's power structure at various points in history has *determined* material productivity for each kind of society. So it's a dynamic (dialectical) 'two-way street' between the existing material basis at any point and the specific organization of labor that is sufficient to produce such productivity.

- And, if there *is* more food and material stuff than is actually being consumed by any given population / society, then that can uncontroversially be called a 'surplus' -- how does any given society *dispose* of that surplus -- ?


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

http://postimage.org/image/34mjeutk4/


[22] History, Macro Micro

http://postimage.org/image/35q8b6o84/


[2] G.U.T.S.U.C., Simplified

http://postimage.org/image/34ml2e61w/