HOW SHOULD WE ANLALYSE HISTORY?

[red warlock]

CAN WE ANALYSE HISTORY AS A CONTINUOS FIGHT BETWEEN CLASSES,THE WAY KARL MARX DID?
IS HISTORY MADE UP ONLY OF THESE ACTIONS AND REACTIONS?FROM TODAY'S PERSPECTIVE WHAT OTHER POSIBILITIES DO WE HAVE,TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW TOO,TO ANALYSE HISTORY?
hasta la victoria siempre!!!

[BasementAddix]

to learn from it and hopefully not repeat it...if EVERYONE learned then it shouldnt be repeated...but most dont care...

(Edited by BasementAddix at 11:51 pm on Dec. 14, 2002)

[Ian]

"History does nothing, possesses no enormous wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, the real, living man, who does everything, possesses, fights. It is not History, as if she were a person apart, who uses men as a means to work out her purposes, but history itself is nothing but the activity of men pursuing their purposes."
Marx & Engels, The Holy Family

[chamo]

analyse with an open mind and how to imrove on past failures and mistakes

[queen of diamonds]

Analyse all facets history in order to piece together the absolute truth, and learn from it what you can.

I think Marx may have been simplifying matters a little when he said all history was the history of class struggles; I think the causes of historical events are a little more complex than that, and that if the causes of history must be reduced to one overriding factor (which it probably shouldn't be), it would be self-interest.

[ComradeJunichi]

I'M NOT SURE.

[queen of diamonds]

Quote: from ComradeJunichi on 8:59 pm on Feb. 8, 2003
I'M NOT SURE.

Nice and honest

[ravengod]

man lets analyse history as impersonal as we can get
multiple pasts multiple presents multiple futures
multiple points of view
as long as we are humans
no truth can be revealed
let others try that
we depise them
multiple histories?
multipletruths ?
definitely
each man with his own history

[ravengod]

man lets analyse history as impersonal as we can get
multiple pasts multiple presents multiple futures
multiple points of view
as long as we are humans
no truth can be revealed
let others try that
we depise them
multiple histories?
multipletruths ?
definitely
each man with his own history

[ravengod]

man lets analyse history as impersonal as we can get
multiple pasts multiple presents multiple futures
multiple points of view
as long as we are humans
no truth can be revealed
let others try that
we depise them
multiple histories?
multipletruths ?
definitely
each man with his own history

[redstar2000]

As it happens, ravengod, there WAS a famous speech given back around 1938 by the newly-elected president of the American Historical Society that was actually entitled "Every Man His Own Historian". I don't know if the text can be found on the net, but I think you'd like it. :cheesy:

Seriously, I think a literal reading of the famous words of the Manifesto--the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles--would be somewhat misleading.

People conclude that ANY historical development that is not OVERTLY a manifestation of class struggle must be "unexplained" by Marxism or somehow lies "outside" of Marxism.

My reading is somewhat different: I think class struggle is ALWAYS in the background or beneath the surface of "what is happening"...and, on some occasions, breaks out into the open where no one can deny its existence or its importance.

But it would be foolish and simplistic to deny other factors their role in history: the accidents of geography, disease, and personality have all had much to do with the details of historical developments.

Yet it seems to me undeniable that all of these other factors take place as modifications of the underlying reality of history: that there are and have been exploiters and exploited--that the exploited NEVER really accept their fate--that exploiters NEVER stop exploiting voluntarily. In other words, class struggle.

[ravengod]

andrew my man
i see marx is still one of your favourites
i mean why not?
afterall we are different
from the teodorescu like creatures
anyway
i think history is relative
and it should be analysed from a postmodernist point of view
multiplicity of pasts and of presents etc
you see things are not whatthey seem

[ravengod]

sorry guys i seem to have problems with the net connection
i see that my posts hav ebeen multiplying and i am saying the same things all over again
redstar2000 thx for the advice

[Blibblob]

History is a circle, it will repeat itself, you cannot stop it.

[redstar2000]

"History is a circle"--an idea that goes back to Plato, if I'm not mistaken. One of the old Greeks, anyway.

Total nonsense, of course.

[Blibblob]

How is it total nonsense?

Plato had some good ideas comming, much of The Republic is communist. And Alegory of the Cave was kick ass.

[redstar2000]

Sorry, I should have said SELF-EVIDENT nonsense.

Anyone who tries to argue that history is one of unending linear progress runs into difficulties almost immediately...the combination of barbarism and technology that we call the 3rd Reich, for example.

The circular theory of history was quite plausible in 400 BCE or thereabouts; a look at the histories of the Greek city states seemed to justify a cycle that went: absolute monarchy, aristocratic oligarchy, democracy, despotism, and back to absolute monarchy again.

Since the renaissance in Western Europe, that theory has completely fallen apart, to be replaced by the two main contenders: the bourgeois historians regard each and every historical event as completely unique and, thus, there are no "laws" of historical progress; and the Marxist theory of history which says that there ARE "laws" of historical progress, that history progresses through clear "stages" of historical development and will continue to do so. The main such law is one of technological determinism: changes in the means of production COMPEL changes in the relations of production.

Plato was a fascist asshole. You need not take my word for it--see Vol. I of Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper was not a Marxist, but writing during World War II, he was able to put together the views of Plato and the Nazis in such a way as to demonstrate an excellent match.



(Edited by redstar2000 at 6:07 pm on Jan. 19, 2003)

[Blibblob]

Ok, and yes i agree that plato was a fascist, his Republic set it up perfectly for him to be elected into the high office, and then immediatly break his rules, he wrote it, why cant he break it.

[Dhul Fiqar]

FIRST OF ALL HISTORY SHOULD NOT BE ANALYZED WITH ALL CAPITALI LETTERS!!



Secondly, I tend to favour the discourse analysis method pioneered by Michel Foucault. It basically entails going to the roots of how knowledge comes to be 'created' by society (since knowledge is by definition a human construct), by whom it is constructed and why. Power relations are an intrinsic part of this kind of analysis.

I love reading that kind of deconstruction of past events, sheds a lot of light on unexpected things. I recommend that everyone read a littlebit of Foucault, especially his work on deviance and mental illness.

--- G.

[redstar2000]

Foucault and the deconstructionist school ARE quite interesting...if not yet a full-fledged alternative yet. I feel quite comfortable with "soft" deconstructionism; but "hard" deconstructionism seems to me to reduce all history to conspiracies of the powerful.

And there's also another French school--Annuals I think is what their journal is called; the leading work is The Mediterranean in the Reign of Phillip II. They are "context" historians who try to throw in EVERYTHING including the "kitchen sink" in their account of an event or period. Nothing is really more "important" in history than anything else...so tell it ALL. It makes for very difficult reading.