An article on historical materialism
The Communist Manifesto summarises Marx and Engels' theories about the nature of society and politics, that in their own words, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism.
In the book Marx gives gives his approach of human history called Historical materialism, a methodological approach of history that focuses on human societies and human development. According to historical materialism, human development is determined by the material conditions of the way a society produce and reproduces their means of existence. Which means that all of human development weren't just a series of accidents but rather driven by an underlying cause.
Historical materialism springs from a fundamental underlying reality of human existence: that in order for human beings to survive and continue existence from generation to generation, it is necessary for them to produce and reproduce the material requirements of life.Marx then extended this premise by asserting the importance of the fact that, in order to carry out production and exchange, people have to enter into very definite social relations, most fundamentally "production relations". But human beings dont all do he same work. Humans are classified by a division of labor, in which, according to Marx, some people enjoy the products of labor by owning the means of production. How this is accomplished depends on the type of society. Production is carried out through very definite relations between people. And, in turn, these production relations are determined by the level and character of the productive forces that are present at any given time in history. For Marx, productive forces refer to the means of production such as the tools, instruments, technology, land, raw materials, and human knowledge and abilities in terms of using these means of production.
The productive forces determined the character of the production relations, and creates the modes of production. Marx identified the main modes of production that human society have moved through as Primitive comunism or tribal society in the prehistoric age, slavery in the ancient society, feudalism in the middle ages and capitalism in the modern age.
Marx identified the production relations of society (arising on the basis of given productive forces) as the economic base of society. He also explained that on the foundation of the economic base there arise certain political institutions, laws, customs, culture, etc., and ideas, ways of thinking, morality, etc. These constituted the political/ideological superstructure of society. This superstructure not only has its origin in the economic base, but its features also ultimately correspond to the character and development of that economic base, i.e. the way people organize society is determined by the economic base and the relations that arise from its mode of production.
Historical materialism can be seen to rest on the following principles:
The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence.
There is a division of labor into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership where some people live from the labor 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, by overthrowing the "political shell" that enforces the old relations of production no longer corresponding to the new productive forces. This takes place in the superstructure of society, the political arena in the form of revolution, whereby the underclass "liberates" the productive forces with new relations of production, and social relations, corresponding to it.
Historical materialism implies an underlying cause in all of human development. This posits that history is made as a result of struggle between different social classes rooted in the underlying economic base. Broadly, the importance of the study of history lies in the ability of history to explain the present.
In his analysis of the movement of history, Marx predicted the breakdown of capitalism, and the establishment in time of a communist society in which class-based human conflict would be overcome. The means of production would be held in the common ownership and used for the common good. In the mention of "human liberation" one should not neglect that, in the level of production, solely the working class is the most oppressed. But either way in the prediction of the future, one shall first know of the past
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