Historical Materialism

[Comrade Jandar]

Could anyone point me in the direction of some literature that would give me a good foundation in understanding historical materialism? I'd prefer some contemporary theorists or authors. Being an anarchist, I would prefer the writer to not be coming from the perspective of a Leninist tendency. Thank you in advance.

[citizen of industry]

Just bite the bullet and read some Marx. If you don't want to go through three volumes of Capital, I'd suggest the pamphlet Wage Labor and Capital, Communist Manifesto, and Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. It's not a huge amount of reading. If you can get through that I'd at least read volume I of Capital. And here's a good comic:

http://theredphoenix.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/cartoon01.gif

[Comrade Jandar]

I've read quite a bit of Marx, including Capital Volume I and excerpts from volumes II and III. I'm looking for some literature that deals specifically with historical materialism and perhaps analyzes certain periods or civilizations from this perspective.

[Rooster]

I've read quite a bit of Marx, including Capital Volume I and excerpts from volumes II and III. I'm looking for some literature that deals specifically with historical materialism and perhaps analyzes certain periods or civilizations from this perspective.

I know you did not want anything from a Leninist perspective, but I would recommend Trotsky's The First Five Years of the Communist International (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-1/ch07.htm). It lines out a historical materialist analysis of the history up to that point, giving examples, to explain why revolution broke out in Russia.

[Alf]

I posted this just now on the thread about Marx's theory of history being plausible, over in Theory, but it also seems relevant here.

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...my/preface.htm


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


http://en.internationalism.org/ir/13...tand-decadence


http://en.internationalism.org/ir/20...e-of-societies
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[Volcanicity]

I'm looking for some literature that deals specifically with historical materialism and perhaps analyzes certain periods or civilizations from this perspective.

Try reading these two of Marx's:

The Class struggles in France,1848 to 1850:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/index.htm

The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/

[Firebrand]

If you want something thats comparatively light reading try Chris Harman's "A peoples history of the world". It has the added adventage of giving a whistlestop tour of revolt and revolution through the ages, and its much easier to read than marx.