The Materialist Conception of History 43

The following is excerpted from Chaptrr 2 of Challengers to Capitalism: Mar

Lenin and Mno by JomN G. GuRL.EY. Copyriyht 1, 1976 by John GGurley, San
Francisco: San Francisco Book Company, 1976. Reprinted by permissio of
the author and the publisher.

THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION rclationships are what Marx callcd thc

OF HISTORY (social rciations nl production. The prrduc-
tive forccs plus thc relations of productivn
Marx, and Engcls developed a thcory about which larx rcfcrrcd to as "the cconomic
the movement of history that purports to structure of socicty," shape the "supcrstrc-
Cxplain why feudalism gave way to capitalism ture of pcople's religious, political, and irgal
and why the latter will be succeeded bysocial systems and thcir modes of thoughi and views
ism. It is cssential to understand this view of of life. That is, people's material lives deter-
social development, which they called "the mine their idcas and their supporting institu-
materialist conception of history," if one is tions.
to have any grasp of Marxism, for it lies at In a famous passage, which descrves care-
the heart of almost all Marxian reasoning ful attention, Marx summarized the theory
today. that became the guiding principle of my
According to this theory, which is princi studies
pally Marx's, people in a society, at any given
time, have a certain level of productive abil- In the social production of their existence, people
ity. This depends on their own knowledge and inevitably enter into definite relations, which are
skills, on the technology (machines, tools, independent of their will, namely elations of produc-
draft animals, and so on) available to them, tion appropriate to a given stage in the develobmn! of
and on the bountifulness of the natural envi- their material forces of production. The totali; of
ronment in which they live. These together these relations of production constitules the eronomic
structure of sociely, the real foundation, on which
are called "the material forces of production"
arises a legal and political superstructure and to which
or, in short, thc productive forces. Marx
correspond definiie forms of secial consciousness. The
alleged that the productive forces determine mod: of production of material life conitions the gen-
the. way people make their living (for exam- eral process of social, political and intellectual life. It
in
ple, hunting and gathering, agriculture,
industry) and, at the same time, the way they
or is not the consciousness of people that deter1mines their
existence, but their social existence that determines their
relate to one another in producing and consciousness.
exchanging the means of life (for example, as
lord and serf, master and slave, or capitalist The key relationships are depicted below,
and worker). These production and exchange with the main causal connections shown run-

Superstructure

Society or
Social Relations of Production
The Social
Formation
Economic
Structure

The Productive Forces of Society

,

44
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND THE RISE OF
CAPITALISM
ning upward but with downward rcciprocal sciously and not instinctively. At any one
relations also prescnt. These components arc timc, this purposivc labor is perforncd with
separatcd purcly for expository purposes; in a certain technology, in a given environment,;
fact, cach is by no mcans indepcndent of thc and within a particular class socicty-that is,
others. it is performed within a certain mode of
pro
That is essentially the materialist concep- duction. Human nature, according to larx
tion of history. Each of its major and Engcls, is dctermined by the mode of
components
will now be discusscd more fully to production that people work in to maintain
give
rcaders an opportunity to get their bear1ngs. human
After that, the thcory will be illustrated in
life, and since the mode of production
changcs, so does human nature.
several ways. Feudal man, for example, within his own
mode of production, had different values,
The Productive Forces aspirations, abilities, and necds than has capi-i
talist man within his higher mode of produc-?
The productive forces are the material tion. The change from the feudal to the
means of production that people fashion and capitalist mode of production, however, was
use to gain a livelihood from nature. Produc- made by human beings themselves, as they
tive forces include machines, instruments and fashioned better tools, altered and controlled
tools, raw materials, and natural resources; their environment, and, in this very process,
they also include human beings themselves changed themselves. Thus, capitalism could:
their knowledge, talents, aspirations, and succeed feudalism not only because people de-
needs. Productive forces develop through the signed superior technology, but also because,?
labor and activity that people expend in in the process of doing this, they changed
extracing a living from their natural environ- their values and skills, their outlook on what
ment. Part of their development includes the is important, and so on.
growth of human abilities and needs. As peo This Marxian view of social development is
important because it stresses that such devel-
ple change their world, they develop their
own capabilities as well as their desires to opment is not imposed on us from the "out-
change the world still further. People thus side," nor do we simply adapt, in passive
make their living and themselves simultane- ways, to social changes. VWe in fact, initiate
those changes and, by so doing, make our
ously. Human activity is, therefore, an inte selves worthy of the new conditions. Thus,
gral part of the productive forces; an interpre- human nature, as seen by Marx and Engels,
tation of the Marxian theory as being a form is essentially subject to change: man makes
of "technological determinism"
emasculates it
himself through productive activity.
by excising the human factor.animals in that The scheme below races out these relation
Human beings difer from the productive forces of
activity ships which underlie
they engage in purposeful productive the previous diagram.
of subsistence,
con-
-they produce their means
New Means of
New Human Needs Praduetion
and Abilities

Purposeful
Productive
Activity

Natural
Environmnent
Human Beings
 45
of History
Tho Materialist Conception
ible with the superior productive forces are
Social Relations of Production
established. Thus, the bourgcoisie alter 1500

According to Marx's lormulation, the stage gradualy gained strcngth on thc basis ot
new productive torces, such as sailing ships,
of development ol society's material ncans improved weaponry, ncw enerAY sourccs,
of productionits productivc forces-deter-
mines the social relations of production and1 machinery, factory processes, accumulation
of tcchnical knowledge, and so on. Thesc pro-
exchange.The latter are the institutions and
practices most closcly associated with the way uctive forces under their controi cnabled
goods are produccd, exchanged, and distrib them to challenge successfully the older fcudal
uted. This includes property relations; the ruling classes, wlhose privileged positions had
way labor is recuited, organized, and com- depended on land rights and control of rural
pensated; the nmarkcts or other means for work processcs as well a5 the judicial and
cxchanging the products of labor; and the military systems. The mode of productior.
methods used by the ruling classes to capture was changed, in a series of revolutions, some-
and dispose of the surplus product. The social times spreading ovcr a century or morc, from
relations of producion are; in effect, the class fcudalism to capitalism, from a class structure
structure of a society that is revealed in the oflords and vassals, guildmasters and appren-
work prcess. THhe mode of production of a tices, to one of capitalists and wage-laborers.
society is secn principally through its class As Marx once putit, "The handmill gives you
structure. A mode of production could be of a society with the feudal lord; the
steam-mill,
the slave type, feudalist, capitalist, or any- society with the industrial capitalist." Even
thing else which describes the dominant man- though coming from Marx, this is a grossly
ner in which people organize to make their simplified aphorism that overemphasizes the
living. Although societies may contain more technological to the neglect of the dialectical.
than one mode of production, one mode is Marx has expressed thesc transformaions
usually domiñant. in the following passage known by heart to
As people change the world, they develop many pcople around the world:
their own abilities and needs to change it
further. Thus, productive forces grow over A' acertain stage of development, the maierial
time. Sooner or later, the developing produc- productire jorces of society come into corfict with the
tive forces come into conflict with the prevail existing relations of þroduction orthis merely ex-
ing_class structure-the social relations of presses the same thing in legal terms-with the prop-
production. The newly developed ways that erby relations within the framework ef which they have
people extract a living from their natural operaled hitherto. From forms ef developnernt of the
environment becomc incompatible with the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.
Then begins dn era of social revoiution. Tke
older ways they relate to one another in the n the
changes
work process. For instance, the rise of trade economic foundation lead sooner or later to the
and commercial activity in the 16th century
tranformation of the whole îmmense superstructure.
became incompatible with feudal relations in The Superstructure
the countryside and with guilds in the towns.
This growing contradiction takes the form Mlarx
of a class struggle between the rising class ture of
postulated that the econoie struc-
associated with the new means of production
society molds its superstructure ot
and the old ruling class whose doninance
soCial, political, and intellectual lite, including
sentiments, morality, illusions, modes ot
was based on its control of the older, Wanngthought, principles, and views of life.
forces. This class struggle, under appropri The,
ate conditions, intensifhes ihe conriadcu011 superstructure contains the ideas and systems
of auihority (political, legal, military, ctc.)
between the means of productjon and the class wich support the class
stricture of that
structure until, as a result of revolutlon, new socictythat is, the dominant
relations of production which are compat. position of the,
ruling class. In brief, how people
make
their
 46
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND THE RISE OF
living shapes thcir mental CAPITALISM
conceptions and material changes. "Lifc is not dctermined
supporting institutions. It follows
transformation of the cconomic that the consciousness, but consciousncss by lifc." by
sOCiety cventually causes tlhe structure o Thcir
thcory of history "docs not cxplain
supcrstructurc to change-aftcr charactcr of the practicc from the idea but cxplains the forma-
struggles, the ovcrthrow of older idcological tion of idcas from material practicec." This
authority,
The delcat
and attrition have systems ol lcads Marx and Engels to the conclusion
taken their toll. in that
of the fcudal ruling classes by the cvery socicty thc idcas of the ruling
bourgeoisic, for cxample, not only are the ruling idcas. This does not class
mean that,
way for the further opened the at any given time,
there is only a single set of
productivc forccs butdevclopment
in
of socicty's
addition spelled the
ideas which scrves the
ruling class. The class
doom of feudal structure of a socicty is often
-all of which values, idecas, and institutions ideas of cach class arc complex and the
supported the feudal ruling likely to be
expressed
classes but fettered the
in
complex ways in the superstructure. There
values associated with rising capitalists. The fore, revolutionary ideas may exist side
vows of
homage and side with conventional ones by
fcalty, for instance, were vital to manorial life
because of the
but simply existence of a revolutionary class.
thus explains itself by the rise of an (Marxism
got in the way of-and were
incongruent with-commerce and market industrial
transactions. proletariat in the first half of the 19th cen-
Inasmuch as human beings tury.) But these revolutionary ideas can at
selves by labor, it is clear that change them- best displace some other ideas; they cannot
by
the they alier, at themselves overthrow the
same time, at least some of their mental ,
prevailing
structure, which gave rise to the ruling ideas.
class
conceptions. They produce both material So Marx and Engels write that
goods and their ideas. Thus, productive activ- but revolution is the
"not criticism
ity and the attending class struggles change driving
From the Marxist view this
force of history."
not only the economic structure of society but means, to use our
the previous example, that the idea of "no
superstructure as well. Since this is so, growth" become dominant, not
can
interactions between the two are inevitable through
criticism of the idea of "growth," but only by .
and are, in fact, both numerous and intricate. the revolutionary overthrow of the
That is, the way people make a living deter-: class.
capitalist
mines their ideas, but these ideas in turn affect The superstructure contains not
the way they make their living. However,
only ideas
but also institutions and
modes of thought are shaped and limited, in activities that sup-
port the class structure of society-the state,
the first place, by the mode of production. legal institutions, family structures, art forms,
Accordingly, the ideas that become infuen- and spiritual processes. The Marxian presup-
tial in a society cover only the narrow range position is that the superstructure ofideas and
reflecting the material activities and interests supporting institutions, although in some
of the dominant class, Many idens do not gain respects and to some degree capable of devel
prestige because tlhey conflict with real posi oping a life of its own, strongly reflects the
tions of class domination which themselves economic structure of society. Thus, accord-
rest on a certain attained level of the produc- ing to some Marxists, the prehistoric cave
tive forces. For example, the current idea of wall paintings of animalsin southern France
"no growth" is incompaible with the fortunes and northern Spain reflected the magical
of a capitalist class that are generated by need of hunters to depict thejr prey accurately
industrial growth. and naturally. The later geometric pottery
designs ofsettled agriculturalists, it is claimed,
History is not the development of ideas, were reflections more abstract, mysteri-
of the
the.devel-
Marx and Engels tëll us, bkt rather.the lorma- ous forces that determined whether crops
opmernt of productive.1orceEand
these underlying would prosper or die. This revolutionary
tion ofideas is explained by
 47
The Materialist Conception of History

property. Marx bclieved that the bourgeois

change from hunting and gathering to scttled state would havc to be smashcd by thec
radi-
agriculture, which occurred becausc of
cally new productive forccs (which
in turn prolctariat and a dictatorship of that class
cstablished in thc ncw socialist socicty. As
transformed the relations of production), also
altered othcr elcments of the supcrstructurc, socialism gives way to communism.., thC
statc will wither away beca usc, in a classlcss
such as familystructures, rcligions, rules and
laws, governing bodies, thc gamcs playcd, socicty, no organ of class rule is rcquired.
The state, however, as an administrator of
and military organizations.
Marx regarded thc rcligious world as "thc things, such as a five-ycar plan, rathcr than
consola- an oppressor of subordinate classes, remains.
reflex ofthe real world." Religion is a

tion for man's degraded condition; it is the

Dialectical Materialism
imaginary realization of human perfection. It
will finally vanish "when thc practical rela- Marx's view of social development has
tons of everyday lifc offer to man none but been called by others ."dialectical material-
perfcctly intelligible and reasonable relations ism." The phráse refers to larx's method of
his fellowmen and to Nature."
with regard to
method that is
For capitalism, Marx reasoned, "Christianity i analyzing social change,
a

all of his major works.

with its cultus of abstract man, more especially strongly present in
Marxian materialism reverses the idealíst
in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism,
Deism, etc., is the most fitting form of reli- iapproach of viewing abstract ideas, concepts,
as divorced from real peo-
gion. Engels carried the analysis further by fand consciousness
linking some changes in views tople and their activities. According to Marx,
religious
changes in material life over a period of 2,000 materialism begins with "real, active men,
years. But Engels was careful to
note that once and on the basis of their real life-process
an ideology (such as a set of religious views) demonstrates the development of the ideolo0
and echoes of this life-process."
arises, it develops in part independently of the gical reflexes
economic structure, subject to its own laws. The ideas in the human brain (morality, reli-
the rest of ideology) do not live
In Marxian thought, the state, a product of gion, and all
society at a certain stage of development, as completely independent lives. A person, in
a rule is the institution that protects the prop- trying to understand social history, should not
start with these phantoms--with, say, the
erty and privileges of the ruling classes and and of "freedom"-for they are all subli-
preserves order .among the oppressed class concept mates of the real material ife-process. For
exploited classes. It is an instrument of example, the 16th century is not explainable
rúle, the manifestation of the irreconcilability
of class antagonisms. Nevertheless, Engels by "the idea of expansion," as though some
added: "By way of exception, however, peri- people got this idea around 1500 and then
ods occur in which the warring classes balance proceeded to carry it out. Instead, the idea
of expansion came from revolutionary
each other so nearly that the state power, as
ostensible mediator, acquires, for the moment, changes in the economic structures df Western
a certain degree of independence of both." European societies, attended by transforma
Marxists assert that over long periods the form tions of the relations of production.
of the state has changed-for éxample, from To understand. the.world, a person must
decentralized to centralized monarchies, to begin-with-what is.basic-with real human
Marx
titutional governments, bourgeois demo beings and their.activities in the world.
cracies, fascist dictatorships, and so on-in and Engels felt that work was the most basic
response to changes in economic structures. and most of all human activities.
important
The state is the guarantor of a given set of Most of people's lives are spent working and
property relations, and in capitalist society much of the rest is spent in an environment
its highest function is the protection of private which is shaped by the kind of productive
 48 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND THE RISE OF
CAPITALISM
technology available to them. For example, For Marx, matler, not spirit, is the driving force
Indians lived in huts or tents ncar the rivers lof human history). But it is maller in the peculiar
they fished, while early industrial workers sense thal we have been considering, not the wholly
lived in the company towns built around the dehumanized matler of the alomists. This means that,
factories. In both cases, the work process Sor Marx, the driving Sorce is really man's velation to
exerted an all-pervading influence on their matler, of which the most imporlanl part is his mode
lives, shaping the conditions of their cxistencc of production. In this way Marx's materialism, inj
practice, becomes economics.
and thercfore of their thoughts. Marxian
matcrialism maintains that ideas, philoso-
Marx statcd that really know an
we can
phies, religions, and so forth all take
within the infiuence of real material condi
form
object only by acting on it successtully. "And
since we change the object when we act upon
tions and are therefore determined by them.
Materialism is also at the base of the Marx- it," Russell
appends, "truth ceases to be
ian concept of social class, for classes are the static, and becomes something which is con-
result of people's lives being formed by the
the
tinually changing and develophg. That
work process within a strict hierarchical work why Marx calls his materialism 'dialectical."
structure. Marx and Engels believed that two When a person gains knowledge through
major classes, the bourgeoisie and the prole- investigation of the material world he not
tariat (along with several minor ones), only changes that world-and hence "the
emerged with capitalism. The bourgeoisie truth"-but changes himselfat the same time,
for in the process of knowing an object
and the proletariat are distinct classes because he
the former owns and controls the acquires new information, abilities, and
physical needs. This has been phrased very well by?
means of production-raw materials, energy Ernst Fischer, the Austrian poet and
and capital goods-while the latter owns only critiG
its labor-power and must sell it to the bour who wrote in The Essential Marx
geoisie to _urvive.
Although Marx believed, along with other From the very start the species man has not ap-
propriated the world passively but actively, through/
materialists, that objects exist independently practice, labor, the setting of goals, the giving of form.
ofbuman beings and their consciousness, still As men changed the world they expanded and refined
his materialism was quite different from that their ability to know it, and the growing capaciiy for
of the 18th century, as anticipated in the cognition again enhanced their abiliy to change it.
writings of John Locke. Bertrand Russell, in
hisA History ef Western Philosophy, has best What Fischer is describing is the
delineated this difference by pointing out that dialectical
relation between human beings and their
the 1older materialísm regarded sensation of natural environment, an important instance
the subject as passive, with activity attributed of the dialectical process that Marx
to the object. Russell explains that in Marx's Engels believed pervaded human societies,
and
view, on the other hand, "all sensation or In its broadest sweep, the dialectic method
perception is an interaction between subject stresses the following elements:
and object; the bare object, apart from the
activity of thepercipient, is a mere raw mate . All things are in constant change;
rial, which is transformed in the process of 2: the ultimate source of the change is withiny
becoming known." Consequently, knowledge the thing or process itself;
is not passive contemplation, as Locke and 3.this source is the struggle of opposites, the
others would have.it. Rather, Russell contin contradiction, within each thing;
ues, both subject and object, both the this struggle, at nodal points, brings about
qualitative changes, or leaps, so that the thing
knowerand the thing known, are.in a contin- is transformed into something else; and
ual process of muLual adaptatign." Russell
connécts Marx's materialism to his eco 5 . practical-critical activity resolves the con
then
tradictions.
nomics:
The Essence of Capitalism 49

Formal logic, which has dominated West- social changc occurs as a rcsult of the struggie
crn thought for some bctween thesc opposites.
2,000 years, is based
on the simplest and Dialectical thougl1t, which Marx learned
sccmingly most common
Sensc axionms, such as A is cqual to A and A is from the work of the German philosopher
not equal to non-A. But by being based on Hegel (1770-1831), has ben called the power
axioms likc thesc, which freeze reality into of negative thinking. This is because, accord-i
fixcd catcgories, formal logic loses its ability ing to the dialectical vicw, everything
toexplain structural changc. Thus, one differ- includes its opposite (its negativc); a thesis
ence betwcen the
bourgeois (traditional) and has an anithesis. The struggle of these oppo-
Marxian approach to cconomics is that the sites leads to the transformation of the thesis
former postulates only
with each element
quantitative change, into some other and higher form of being--a
maintaining its basic iden- synthesis. The development of the thesis
tity as it grows or contracts, whereas Marxian
which results from the contradiction does not
change allows for qualitalive Iransformation, stop at the opposite of what it was, but rather
with each thing capable of
turning into some- moves to a synthesis of itself and its opposite.
thing 'new by becoming a synthesis of itself Thus, a thing or process is never simply this
and its opposite. or that; it is
Marxian dialectics is the logic of constant use of the notionalways both. "The simple-minded
change: 4, which includes not only itself but 'right or wrong," English
philosopher Alfred Whitehead wrote, "is one
its opposite, non-A, is in continuous evolution. of the chief obstacles to the progress of under-
The fundamental cause of
change in all things standing." This is because right includes
lies in their internal contradictions, in the wrong and wrong contains right. Likewise,
struggle of opposites, în their self-movement. Engels wrote that one knows that which is
Whatever is has emerged frorm something else. recognized now as true has also its latent false
Capitalism has evolved out of feudalism; side which will later manifest itself, just as
socialism will emerge out of the contradictions that which is now regarded as false has also its
ofcapitalism, not because it is "a better idea." true side by virtue ofwhich it could previously
Within capitalism, wealth exists in unity with have been regarded as true. One knows that
its opposite, poverty; the very same economic what is maintained to be necesary is com-
*processes have created both wealth and posed of sheer accidents and that the so-called
poverty, and one cannot exist or even be accidental is the form behind which necessity
defined independently of the other. Similarly, hides iself."
workers in capitalism can only be discussed Marx can hardly be understood unless his
in relation to opposite, capitalists. The
their dialectical approach is kept constantly in
one is inconceivable without the other, and mind.

2.2 The Essence of Capitalism

How should we define capitalism? What are its distinguishing features? In

the foliowing reading Maurice Dobb argues irom a historical materialist per
spective that capitalisn çan be characlerized as a system of production for
the market in wlhich labor-power itsclf' has become a commodity like any
other article of exchange. With this definition, capitalism can be idenified
as a distinct historical epoch. Theprerequisite for the capitalist mode of
production was the creation ot a classoi producers separated from the means
of production and the concentration of those means of production in the|
hands of another class, the capitalists. "Thus for capitalism to exist, thérel