Marx's theory, which he called "historical materialism" or the "materialist conception of history"
is based on Hegel's claim that history occurs through a dialectic, or clash, of
opposing forces. Hegel was a philosophical idealist who believed that we live in a world of appearances,
and true reality is an ideal. Marx accepted this notion of the dialectic, but rejected Hegel's idealism
because he did not accept that the material world hides from us the "real" world of the ideal; on the contrary,
he thought that historically and socially specific ideologies prevented people from seeing the material
conditions of their lives clearly.
Marx's analysis of history is based on his distinction between the means of production, literally those things,
like land and natural resources, and technology, that are necessary for the production of material goods,
and the social relations of production, in other words, the social relationships people enter into as they
acquire and use the means of production. Together these comprise the mode of production; Marx observed
that within any given society the mode of production changes, and that European societies had progressed
from a feudal mode of production to a capitalist mode of production.
The capitalist mode of production is capable of tremendous growth because the capitalist
can, and has an incentive to, reinvest profits in new technologies. Marx considered
the capitalist class to be the most revolutionary in history, because it constantly
revolutionized the means of production. In general, Marx believed that the means of production change more
rapidly than the relations of production. For Marx this mismatch between base and
superstructure is a major source of social disruption and conflict. The history of the means of production,
then, is the substructure of history, and everything else, including
ideological arguments about that history, constitutes a superstructure.
Under capitalism people sell their labor-power when they accept compensation in return for whatever work they do in a
given period of time (in other words, they are not selling the product of their labor, but their
capacity to work). In return for selling their labor power they receive money, which allows them
to survive. Those who must sell their labor power to live are "proletarians." The person who buys
the labor power, generally someone who does own the land and technology to produce, is a
"capitalist" or "bourgeois."
Marx, however, believed that capitalism was prone to periodic crises. He suggested
that over time, capitalists would invest more and more in new technologies, and less and less in labor.
Since Marx believed that surplus value appropriated from labor is the source of profits, he concluded
that the rate of profit would fall even as the economy grew. When the rate of profit falls below a
certain point, the result would be a recession or depression in which certain sectors of the economy
would collapse. Marx understood that during such a crisis the price of labor would also fall, and
eventually make possible the investment in new technologies and the growth of new sectors of the economy.
Marx believed that this cycle of growth, collapse, and growth would be punctuated by increasingly
severe crises. Moreover, he believed that the long-term consequence of this process was necessarily
the empowerment of the capitalist class and the impoverishment of the proletariat. He believed that
were the proletariat to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations that
would benefit everyone equally, and a system of production less vulnerable to periodic crises. In
general, Marx thought that peaceful negotiation of this problem was impracticable, and that a massive,
well-organized and violent revolution was required. Finally, he theorized that to maintain the socialist
system, a proletarian dictatorship must be established and maintained.
Marx held that Socialism itself was
an "historical inevitability" that would come about due to the more numerous "Proletarians" having an
interest in "expropriating" the "bourgeois exploiters" who had themselves profited by expropriating the surplus value
that had been
attributable to the proletarians labor in order to establish a "more just" system where there would
be greatly improved social relations.
Popular European History pages at Age-of-the-Sage
The preparation of these pages was influenced to some degree by a particular "Philosophy
of History" as suggested by this quote from the famous Essay "History" by Ralph Waldo Emerson:-
There is one mind common to all individual men...
Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is
illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by
nothing less than all his history. Without hurry, without rest,
the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every
faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in
appropriate events. But the thought is always prior to the fact;
all the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. Each law
in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of
nature give power to but one at a time. A man is the whole
encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in
one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie
folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp,
kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application
of his manifold spirit to the manifold world.
A particular focus on France - as the influential Austrian minister Prince Metternich, who sought to encourage the re-establishment of "Order" in the wake of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic turmoils of 1789-1815, said:-"When France sneezes Europe catches a cold".
"Germany" had a movement for a single parliament in 1848 and many central European would-be "nations" attempted
to assert a distinct existence separate from the dynastic sovereignties they had been living under.
Some instances of social and political extremism allow previously pro-reform conservative elements to support
the return of traditional authority. Louis Napoleon, (who later became the Emperor Napoleon III), attains to power
in France offering social stability at home but ultimately follows policies productive of dramatic change in the wider European
structure of states and their sovereignty.
