Historical Materialism by Karl Marx - Essay Example

Historical Materialism by Karl Marx 1) Historical materialism is the theory that Karl Marx developed in order to analyze society, economics, and history. The purpose of the theory is to look for the causes of historical developments and changes in human society. An emphasis is given to the way in which humans provide a means of living for themselves collectively. Social classes, political structures, and ideologies, that which has an economic base in society, is examined through historical materialism. The basis for this theory comes from Marx when he said, “It is not the consciousness of man that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” Marx meant that merely being conscious could not determine to the extent that a person existed within the world. There was a context that existed within the world that exists before people come into the world, and this context will shape the person. Without this context, there would be no boundaries in which people would be able to create their existence; they could decide to whatever they wished, such as king, a general, or a venture capitalist. Obviously, people must deal with circumstances outside of their control, and this is the context in which their social existence exists that will ultimately shape their consciousness. It is because of this social existence, this context in which we live, that people are inevitably able to become a person that has an identity based in what is actually possible. Obviously, a person living in the U.S. today would not be able to become a king. This particular facet of social classes is not in existence in modern day America. One would be able to become a venture capitalist, but one could not become a venture capitalist during the times of feudal systems when kings the single power in the land. In this way people are limited in the ways in which they can determine their consciousness, and therefore it is their social existence and that context that determines a person consciousness. As far as the term itself, while Marx didn’t actually refer to it as this himself, there are two aspects to the word, historical and materialism. It was called this because Marx was ultimately attempting to determine why history has taken the path that it has. If he could determine the reasons for why certain historical trends took place, then he would be able to make predictions as far as future historical trends. As far as the materialism aspect of this idea is concerned, this referred to the fact that that the path that history had taken was mostly due to the materials available to the people at the time. Materials included tools, technology, the actual raw materials, and knowledge. For instance, copper weapons might have made wood and stone weapons obsolete, but iron and steel weapons made copper weapons obsolete also. In this way the path of history allowed those with access to these kinds of materials to be dominant over people that did not have access to them. Also, technology, such as guns and ammunition, gave a decided advantage to people that had them compared to people that were fighting without them. In this way, we can see how the people in possession of certain materials were able to use them in order to determine the path of history. As far as the terms relation to capitalism and communism, Marx felt that, once he had thoroughly examined historical trends, the workers, the proletariats, would rise up and overthrow the upper/ruling class, the bourgeois; ultimately, he thought that communism would be the people’s choice and it would in a sense overthrow capitalism. He felt that this was inevitable. With the downfall of many of the large communist states, most notably the U.S.S.R., and the continuation of capitalism in the U.S., it would seem as though Marx was incorrect. The idea of alienation also plays into historical materialism. Marx began with the idea that humans must produce those materials that are necessary for life to continue: “In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production.” In order for this to be possible, people must then enter into social relations. Within these social relations, labor is divided up amongst different people. The division of labor depends upon the type of society. For instance, in pre-Industrial revolution agricultural based societies, more people were involved in agriculture as opposed to any other sort of trade. This is what is referred to as modes of production . Marx saw the historical trends of modes of production as tribal society, ancient society, feudalism, and capitalism. This correlates with alienation. In tribal society, people were hunter-gatherers. In this way all political and economic forces were the same. All decisions having to do with the politics of the tribes had to do with the economy of the tribe; in this way they were intertwined. In capitalism, with private ownership, Marx felt that there was a complete separation of political and economic forces. This led to people feeling alienated from political and economic factors. As opposed to a governmental body dealing with the economy, the capitalist government was now forced to deal with conflict between classes. This conflict would lead to civil unrest and would be part of the deciding factor when he felt that people would eventually overthrow their capitalist regimes and replace them with communist regimes. As economic factors are controlled by a communist government, there was not this divide between politics and economics. Finally, when there was no need for government and people could move onto pure communism, economic and political factors would once again be one and the same. 2) Nietzsche was known for having attacked reason, seemingly with the intentions of destroying it. However, another view of Nietzsche was that he found what was regularly referred to as human reason to be “not all that reasonable” (Zarathustra 189), and what he was really attempting to do was to restore reason. To this effect, we can say that Nietzsche was merely giving his own version of reason. The same too can be said for Nietzsche’s view of morality. Nietzsche felt that the standard view of morality was so twisted that he preferred to call himself an immoralist than to align himself with morality as it was commonly referred to as. In particular, the morality that Nietzsche took issue with did several things. First, it had inherent in its assumptions that all people were the same, and in this morality could be applied in the same way to everyone: “Morality in Europe today is herd animal morality,” says Nietzsche, “in other words…merely one type of human morality beside which, before which, and after which many other types, above all higher moralities, are, or ought to be, possible” (BGE 202). Nietzsche felt that if people were, in fact, all the same, then there would be no such thing as free will. If everybody was held to the same standard because everybody acted in the same way because everybody thought in the same way, then this does not allow for free will. Without free will, then it would be possible to not hold people responsible for their actions. So, by treating people all the same and applying the same codes of morality to all people, Nietzsche felt that was relieving people of the responsibility of their actions. Also, Nietzsche took issue with any sense of morality that harmed the “highest” man while benefiting the “low” man. This idea stems from his views of what he calls slave-morality. This is the kind of morality that he felt Christianity held. In it, as a slave, people would critique their masters, and in this they would attempt to define the world in terms of “good” and “evil.” This is the morality of weak people and their attempts to gain an advantage over their masters. Their masters were “evil,” and they were “good,” and by defining themselves thus, they had gained a moral superiority over their masters. This kind of thinking then became widespread, and resulted in people being extremely judgmental. Then, Nietzsche thought, this kind of thinking then critiqued people for their natural desires and placed people in an unnatural state of wishing to deprive themselves of what they naturally desired. Also, slave morality depended upon utility, what was good for the largest number of people (BGE 121). This, he felt, was absurd, as there is no one way to be a human and as such there is no way that one way could be “good” for a large number of people. Nietsche also took issue with the idea of free will. If a person were to have a completely free will, then that would have required a person to have, in a sense, created oneself: desire for “freedom of the will” in the superlative metaphysical sense…the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and…to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness. (BGE 21) Nietzsche felt that it was rather absurd to think that people could cause their own existence. There was a world in which people were born into. This world was not created by people as they are born. In this sense, there is a context that people are born into. Therefore it would not be impossible to have created oneself, and since we have not created ourselves, there is a certain amount of responsibility for our actions that we cannot take credit for, since it is only possible to act within a certain way within the context in which we have been created. Since this is the case, it would mean that we don’t have a completely free will. Nietzsche felt that there were different “types” of people, and in this, these types defined what kinds of constitutions people had. Since this was the case, he felt that there were certain amounts of facets about people that they could not control. Just as much as people are not able to control whether or not their nose grows to be either enormous or tiny, people are not able to determine their own personal traits and unconscious drives. In this we can see that “moralities are…merely a sign language of the affects” (BGE 187). As the opposite of slave morality, in master morality, value was created by the individual. As opposed to slave morality which is based on utility, master morality favored those who were strong and had the ability to decide for themselves. It states “what is harmful to me is harmful in itself...it is value creating” (BGE 39). Since there are different types of people and the same morality cannot be used to make judgments on other people, it is therefore necessary for people to be able to create their own morality. In this way Nietzsche replaced one view, slave-morality, with his own view of what is right, master morality. Works Cited Baird, Forrest, Kaufman, Walter. From Plato to Derrida. Prentice Hall, New York, 2007. Marx, Karl, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, available online from Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil. Penguin Classics, New York, 2003. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Penguin Books, New York, 1978. Read More