Historical Materialism: Unveiling Society's Economic Foundations

Historical materialism is the philosophy of society and history in Marxism. Marx assumed that the knowledge of man, society, and history requires a science whose subject matter, epistemological foundation, and method are radically different from those of the natural sciences. Historical materialism, Marx thought, is the true science of human phenomena (social and historical) and is presented as a scientific theory of the economic or material conditions of society and history.

The main idea of historical materialism is that history is not an accidental sequence of events resulting from the individual action of some influential characters and decisive action or imaginary subjects, like providence, fate, or the spirit of the people (Volkgeist), but the succession of economic modes of production. What gives meaning and unity to the story is the basis or economic structure (economic or material conditions of human existence) on which the rising social relations, the political, cultural norms, and ideas of a certain age are based.

Historicism

Reality is, ultimately, history. The focus of nature, the interpretation of human beings, the global organization of a society, norms, and cultural performances depend on the historical significance they acquire at a given time. In other words, history is the first level of reality that encompasses the others, and only from an accurate interpretation of history can the whole of reality be understood. Understanding is actually a correct understanding of history (historicism).

Economism

The interpretation of history proposed by Marx is based on economic factors, recognizing a preponderant weight in explaining the totality of historical processes (social, political, legal, cultural, technical) among those who have scientific and philosophical knowledge. Scientifically, the causes of social facts and historical events are economic.

Determinism

According to the Marxist interpretation, there are some economic laws that determine the inevitable historical evolution of modes of production (slave, feudal, pre-capitalist, capitalist, socialist). Such evolution is not random or arbitrary, but through the proper use of social and economic categories of historical materialism, one can know the exact causes of the necessary transition of modes of production to others and predict the passage of the capitalist mode of production to socialist. It is a metaphysical assumption that makes the existence of a domestic law or inherent in the history of a material nature governing the subsequent change in societies.

Categories of Historical Materialism

Historical materialism has some theoretical assumptions stated above (historicism, economism, and determinism) and some categories or concepts central to the scientific analysis of society and history. The main categories of historical materialism are as follows:

• Productive Forces: Designate the capacity or the collective work of society, i.e., the processing capacity of man at a particular time. Including human labor, raw materials, and technical and social means of production.
• Relations of Production: Refer to the economic and legal relationships that men establish in a given mode of production.
• Economic Structure or Infrastructure: Consists of the sum of productive forces and production relations. The economic structure is the foundation that supports the entire production process of a material and ideological society (the real basis of a partnership).
• Superstructure: Designates the wide range of symbolic and ideological formations that shape the ideas and values of society and the political-legal framework of the state that is raised or constructed from a given economic structure or infrastructure.
• Mode of Production: The social organization of production of a society at a particular time in history is a mode of production.
• Social Revolution: It means the crisis, destruction, and replacement of certain relations of production with others, with a consequent change in the ideological components of the superstructure. The main engine of history and, consequently, of social revolutions and the replacement of one mode of production by another is the class struggle.