Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Historical Materalism
- Intellectual Basis Of Marism
- Key Idea - Technological advances in the modes of production
lead to changes in the social relations of production
- A methodological approach to the study of
society, economics & history.
- Analysis of the causes of developments and changes in human
society by how humans collectively produce the necessities of life.
- Assumption: In order for human beings to survive and continue
existence, it is necessary for them to produce and reproduce the
material requirements of life
- To occur people must enter into social relations (production relations)
- Division of labour
- Owners of capital.
- Determines type of society
- Society has moved through different modes of production.
- Character of the production relations is determined by the character of the productive forces
- From Primitive communism to capitalism.
- Production relations are the economic base.
- Superstructure forms. The political/ideological superstructure of society
- How people organise society is determined by the economic base and the
relations that arise from its mode of production.
- How society is organised. Base & Superstructure
- Key Idea - The economic base supports the ideological superstructure
- Super Structure: culture, religion, politics and all other aspects of humanity's social consciousness
- Changes in in economic, technological, material factors, clashes
of material interests are examined for cause.
- CRITIQUE - oversimplification of the nature of society
- Influence of ideas & culture are just as important
as the economic base. Marx's Superstructure.
- If the superstructure has no
influence why does Marx
expose it at length?
- Engels said Marx never pertained this. The production and
reproduction of real life is the determinant of history not purely an economic
determinism.
- If superstructure influences the base
it can't be argued that the history of
society is based on class conflict.
- Chicken & egg arguement
- Singer - Marx saw the economic base as real.
- Humanity's defining characteristic are its means of production and thus the only way for
man to free himself from oppression is for him to take control of the means of production.
- Goal of history.
- Superstructure acts as tools of history
- Popper - The concept of Marx's historical
method & its application are unfalsifiable.
- Earlier work was proven falsifiable when the predictions did not occur.
- Reinterpreted the theory & evidence by later Marxists.
- Destroys scientific claim.
- Society has moved through different modes of production.
- Assumptions
- The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence.
- There is a division of labour into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership where
some people live from the labour of others.
- The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production
- The mode of production is based on the level of the productive forces
- Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class
- Takes place in the superstructure of society. Revolution.
- Materialist Conception of History
- History is made as a result of struggle between different social classes rooted in the underlying economic base.
- Historical determinism - events are predestined
- Marx was only roposing a guideline to historical research
- Not a grand philosophy of history
- Importance.
- Revolution in human thought, and a break from previous ways of understanding the underlying basis of
change within various human societies
- CRITIQUE: human history is simply a series of accidents. (Weber)
- Influences
- Doctoral research on the philosophy of Epicurus
- Adam Smith
- Popular philosophy of his time that development of human society has moved through a series of stages