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.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) was, in his time, the leading voice of intellectual culture in the United States. He remains widely influential
to this day through his essays, lectures, poems, and philosophical writings.
In the later eighteen-twenties Ralph Waldo Emerson read, and was very significantly influenced by, a work by a French philosopher named Victor Cousin.
A key section of Cousin's work reads as follows:
"What is the business of history? What is the stuff of which it is made? Who is the personage of history? Man : evidently man and human nature.
There are many different elements in history. What are they? Evidently again, the elements of human nature. History is therefore the development of humanity,
and of humanity only; for nothing else but humanity develops itself, for nothing else than humanity is free. …
… Moreover, when we have all the elements, I mean all the essential elements, their mutual relations do, as it were, discover themselves. We draw from the
nature of these different elements, if not all their possible relations, at least their general and fundamental relations."
Introduction to the History of Philosophy (1829)
Even before he had first read Cousin, (in 1829), Emerson had expressed views in his private Journals which suggest that he accepted that Human Nature, and Human Beings, tend to display three identifiable aspects and orientations:
Imagine hope to be removed from the human breast & see how Society will sink, how the strong bands of order & improvement will be relaxed & what a deathlike stillness would take the place of the restless energies that now move the world. The scholar will extinguish his midnight lamp, the merchant will furl his white sails & bid them seek the deep no more. The anxious patriot who stood out for his country to the last & devised in the last beleagured citadel, profound schemes for its deliverance and aggrandizement, will sheathe his sword and blot his fame. Remove hope, & the world becomes a blank and rottenness.
(Journal entry made between October and December, 1823)
In all districts of all lands, in all the classes of communities thousands of minds are intently occupied, the merchant in his compting house, the mechanist over his plans, the statesman at his map, his treaty, & his tariff, the scholar in the skilful history & eloquence of antiquity, each stung to the quick with the desire of exalting himself to a hasty & yet unfound height above the level of his peers. Each is absorbed in the prospect of good accruing to himself but each is no less contributing to the utmost of his ability to fix & adorn human civilization.
(Journal entry of December, 1824)
Our neighbours are occupied with employments of infinite diversity. Some are intent on commercial speculations; some engage warmly in political contention; some are found all day long at their books …
(This dates from January - February, 1828)
The quotes from Emerson are reminiscent of a line from another "leading voice of intellectual culture" - William Shakespeare.
There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee.
William Shakespeare: Henry IV (Pt 1), Act I, Scene II
"The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents;
and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions."
Georg Hegel, 1770-1831, German philosopher, The Philosophy of History (1837)
On another of our pages ~ Understanding the Past and the Present ~ suggestions are made that such
"Tripartism" would support persons living out their lives long, long ago in tribes and in city-states.
Capacities of Honesty, Manhood and Good-fellowship would all be highly beneficial to persons living in such small-scale Human groupings as tribes and in city-states.
Individuals would tend to behave considerately towards their group-fellows, be capable of co-operation in defence of their group and be capable of entering into personal relationships and economic activity.
City-states can be held to have been more viable than hunter-gatherer tribes because there could have been greater food security through stored agricultural surpluses and more opportunity
to enter into trade within and between city-states.
More recently Europe featured Monarchies and Empires - where some men worked,
some men fought (Knights) and some men prayed (Priests). Such dynastic sovereignty being displaced in time by Constitutional Monarchies and Republics where democracy applies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that:-
"...man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots,
whose flower and fruitage is the world..."
~ Should this be true it would follow that Human Societies often tend to arise out of the Human Condition as directly influenced by Human Nature!
N. B. The page mentioned in the graphic ~ roots.asp ~
has been replaced by this page
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.