Hey guys! It's been a while since I've made an addition to our glossary here at the channel, but today we have a very special one, we'll deal with the definition of the way to interpret and act on the world of the ones who identify themselves as and practice Marxism politically. I know it took a while but it was for a special reason, because this addition here requires a lot of responsibility, so today we’ll talk about M of historical materialism Subtitles by Débora Cunha and André Gavasso (Leia Marxistas) There are hundreds of definitions out there, in several books, of what historical materialism is.
So what I actually decided to do was to separate some coming from Max and Engels themselves, our pioneers in developing what we today call historical materialism. I'm going to focus directly on them, but I'll also leave some other recommendations on the description of the video. Especially some that I'm going to list there for you from Zé Paulo Netto, who is very didactic and he was also a big reference who marked the beginning of my Marxist studies.
Before that, it is also good to add a piece of information. Karl Marx does not begin to write and interpret the world already following historical materialism As you can see in the video I made about his biography, Marx, because of his contact with hegelian philosophy, he starts from an Idealist conception Today, we can't focus on this difference or even on Marx’s philosophical path, but it's good to point out that he's going to leave the Idealist conception towards materialism, but also not any materialism, okay? That's how Marx will criticize Feuerbach’s materialism and then he's even going to write eleven theses about that, got it, right?
Eleven theses. The direct definition of historical materialism I’m going to use here is this: historical materialism is a method to understand and act on the reality that sees the existence of human beings within a historical context and according to the material relations of the human society. And what does this actually mean?
It is to understand that we, today, we have our situation, it exist, but it is inherited from past conditions. For example, if we live in Brazil, where there is institutional racism, it's not by chance, it's because these institutions were founded on exploitation and slavery, and a production logic that also needed a racist logic to promote its earnings. So these are historical and material conditions, not something simply moral or related to principles and values, or even opinions.
Everything that we must handle today, we handle within this context, this historical context coming from the past. To understand this I chose two excerpts and then a few more, but first one by Engels and another one by Marx. That I believe to be excerpts that describe and illustrate this method of analysis and action to you.
Actually, I'll start with the one by Marx. In 1852, he published The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, and at the very beginning, at the very very beginning, he says the following: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. " So what does that mean?
It means that we have the agency and capacity to act, but this capacity, the effectiveness of our agency, they are shaped by these historical conditions, you might want to change the world, but to do this it is necessary to understand where are we in terms of material conditions. What forces do we have and what kind of forces do we need to really change the world. That's why, to Marxists, changing the world is a matter of praxis.
So don't forget to check it out either, right? Don't forget to see the video I've already posted here on our glossary, on the channel, called P of praxis, ok? I really recommend reading the Brumaire, in general, reading it demands some knowledge of what was going on in France at the time, but nothing that a review of the context doesn't settle.
And eventually I’ll get back here to tell more about the Brumaire, which is a very, very important book to me, and I'm just adding this here because it really is an analysis that, to me, perfectly illustrates what it means to look at reality through the eyes of historical materialism In addition, there is an excerpt from a book by Engels which is a later publication, from 1877, which is Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. I'll put the link here too and here's the tip, right, to watch the videos U of utopia and S of socialism to better understand what this distinction between utopian and scientific socialism means, ok? Part 3 of this work is where he explicitly deals with historical materialism as a method.
And then I have chosen an excerpt which is a little longer, but that's because it's very important and I'll put it here on the screen for you as well, and that's where he says: “The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.
” This excerpt, it is good because it explains that the Marxist method is not just to analyze capitalism. We analyze and focus on capitalism, because it is what we are dealing with. There in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels, they already open the book by saying that the history of society is the history of class struggle.
They're not saying, of course, that it starts with classes in capitalism. That's why Engels says classes or layers. But they are saying that the mode of production and the division of production in a society, these are crucial for conflicts and for resolutions in that society.
These generates questions, for example: Who owns the land? And the tools? Who does what?
How is this managed? Are the functions inherited or are they determined by aptitude tests? And more recently, for example, Marxist feminists have added emphasis to some other questions, which is something that Engels actually had also done, in a way.
Such as: How does the family organize itself around production and ownership? What kind of work is paid? What kind of work is not?
What is considered to be “work”? This is important for us to understand that there is an interaction between agency and structure. What is decisive here is the rule, this is not impervious, we can change reality, but we won’t change reality with any tool.
For example, a communist culture would not do if the means of production remain capitalist. So that’s why we always say we always talk about the means of production because they shape the concrete reality. This material reality.
And if we have a concrete reality in which a minority - a minority - owns the means of production, and so this minority has the power to determine the life of a majority, here we have a contradiction. A contradiction is something that cannot be sustained without state aid, and also, if we stop to think about it, there’s the role of coercion and consent, as well, which is something we can discuss later, some other day, in H of hegemony. But it's good to bring this because of the discussion about base and superstructure.
Because historical materialism is far from being an economy-centred method that only contemplates the direct and super explicit production relations, especially what we may call industrial production, for example. And here is where Engel’s letter to Joseph Bloch written in 1880, it's a very good letter for us to emphasize this relationship. There in that letter he says it very clearly, I'm going to read the excerpt here for you, because I believe that there really is no better way to understand historical materialism than studying historical materialism and seeing analysis departing from it.
So here’s what Engels says: According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase.
The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc. , juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. The letter is short, but it's very good, and I'll leave the links here for you guys.
And here Engels speaks directly against some economy-centred interpretations, precisely because historical materialism would not be a good method by looking at things in isolation. It is about the production and reproduction of real life, historically. And this has to do with power.
The one who analyze and modify reality departing from historical materialism, is someone who is dealing with power all the time. This is something I keep emphasizing also here on the channel, when I talk, for example, about power, related to the political project of power. And Engels, he debates this when he polemicizes, in another book, a work called Anti-Dühring, specifically in the part about power which is in the Political Economy section of this work.
We who employ historical materialism, we understand that the relationships of power in society, they are economic power relations. We even see in which ways these relations of gender, race and sex in society encounter the economic power, and then I'll explain a little, for example: This has nothing to do with the ones who say that class is more important, we’ll deal with the rest later. These people are making the same mistake Engels described in this letter I just mentioned to you.
What we are talking about when we talk about economic and class relations is because, look, there is no such thing as social relations existing in a vacuum or in a bubble of values. We're saying that we're dealing with base and superstructure here. What is valued, what is not, the way social life ends up being organized on these economical interests.
So this also has to do with how economic power concentrates according to these categories. For that very reason, there is no such thing as gender equality, for example, if economic power is determined according to capitalism, which is the system that we have today, exploiting a majority of women, understand? It’s not possible to not understand that the economic base is also a part of everything.
I'm going to conclude in a basic way because I know it was quite a lot content, so it's important to summarize here, even to a glossary level, right? In the preface to The Critique of Political Economy, published in 1859, Marx summarizes in another way what he had said in the Brumaire, and also what he and Engels had debated in The German Ideology. He said the following, so one more quote, he says: “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. ” So, let’s recap, it's materialism because ideas have no independent existence, they depart from the material conditions and functions in which human beings are located. It is materialism also because changing reality demands more than different ideas.
We need to build conditions, understanding that these conditions, they cannot be built in bubble, they occur throughout a historical movement. So it's historical materialism. Facts are not just facts, they arise from historical relationships which are quite complex.
There’s a historical development, and then this development is not deterministic, but determinant. So it's not as if X leads to Y. What we're going to see is that this development starts from some conditions and it generates other conditions.
So we are the ones who need to get organized to act on these conditions and change the reality. And here’s where dialectics come in as something very important, because this historical movement is dialectical, it has to do with real contradictions and resolutions. But I’ll bring D of dialectics later, because that’s super complex as well.
What is important here is to understand that historical materialism follows a dialectical logic, but it will become clear to you further on. Because dialectics is about conflict it is about change, it is a constant flow of change, it is about human activity. And in historical materialism, it means praxis, so it’s clear to see why I insist on it so much.
For example, there is no socialism without going through a certain level of historical conditions, and there may be contractions, here’s where dialectics help us to explain these historical relationships. Things are not simply established and immutable facts. And it's not just a matter of interpreting these things, it’s also a matter of us transforming our reality together.
“Oh, Sabrina, but I still don't understand! ” I would be completely baffled if, after watching a video of this size on the Internet, you could perfectly understand historical materialism, okay? It took me at least three years of studying hard to absorb that, because, for me, historical materialism is not a formula.
It's not a formula that you learn to apply out there. It is empirical theory and it needs to be incorporated. It is something we incorporate.
The more you read historical materialist analyses, the more you learn to identify it, “Oh, historical materialism, that’s a historical materialistic analysis. ” And then you're going to practice that too. And especially and fundamentally when you do that while getting politically organized to change the reality, there’s the difference, because this Thesis Eleven, finally.
So this glossary here is a homework glossary, because it will never be more than a definition that you could even find in some Marxist dictionary out there. It’s a start, a start for you to think about a basis, and this definition won't actually be of any worth if you don't actually incorporate it into your standpoint, and start to see the world through the lens of historical materialism. And there’s no guidebook to do this.
It can be achieved with readings, political education, militancy. I know it's hard. Not everyone has time to do it, that's where the organization of the struggle comes in, promoting political education and leading the way.
But you who can study, be sure to dive in this understanding. it's not easy, it scares a little at first, but once we see the way in which our society works departing from these historical, material conditions, even in face of so many contradictions, in the constant flow of the dialectical process, we end up seeing that this has everything to do with organization and ownership in the modes of production and this gets more evident and the more evident it gets, the more we realize what we have to do to change reality. And then the more people come on board, the better.
So, please like our video, subscribe, watch the rest of the glossary, leave suggestions, invest time on reading, because I really believe that there is no way to understand historical materialism simply based on a definition. Someone said that X = 2, that's not how it works. You have to see historical materialism in action.
You have to see in which way these analyzes explain our reality so well. So, invest time on our reading suggestions and I’ll see you soon.
