Principles of Historical Materialism and Marxist Theory

Principles of Historical Materialism (HISMAT)

Karl Marx is a materialist thinker who gives primacy to matter over spirit and defends what is known as historical materialism. Historical materialism is characterized by supporting the following:

• The economic infrastructure of a society determines the consciousness that society has of itself, and not vice versa.
• That infrastructure develops from contradictions—that is, dialectically.

The Role of Dialectical Materialism

Thus, dialectical materialism (Diamat) serves as the basis for his theory of historical materialism. The motion of matter is governed by the laws of dialectics:

• Dialectical law of change: Nothing remains; everything changes in nature and in human thought. Dialectical change is always a spiral.
• Law of reciprocal action: Everything influences everything else.
• Law of contradiction: Each thing contains within itself the change toward its own destruction.
• Law of transformation of quantity into quality: Quantitative changes become qualitative, resulting in a new reality.

Main Theses of Historical Materialism

• Historical materialism describes the evolution of society through economic factors.
• The structure of society depends on the Productive Forces and Means of Production.
• The essence of the social realm lies in the Relations of Production.
• The economic structure, or infrastructure, determines the superstructure, which is formed by the ideology of the society at any given time.
• Economic relations produce a class struggle, which according to Marx, is the engine of human history and the social revolution that transforms the ideological superstructure.
• The class struggle is carried out in a dialectical way: in capitalist society, the capitalist class is the thesis, the proletariat is the antithesis, and the synthesis is a communist society in which no classes exist.
• In a communist society, man is fully realized and overcomes the alienation that capitalism has created.
• Historical materialism refers directly to the theory of alienation.
• Capitalist society is not eternal; the class struggle will lead to its demise, to be replaced by another form of organization—the community—in which alienation will disappear and humanity will find fulfillment.

Conclusion

History is driven by the development of productive forces, which is primarily the result of human labor.