Marx's Materialist Conception Of History
The case for Socialism as argued by the SPGB from its foundation in 1904 rests firmly and squarely on principles derived from Marx, especially from his argument that what leads to historic change is the Class Struggle, and that "every class struggle is a political struggle" (THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO).
It is really stating the obvious to say that Marx was a revolutionary. Although the social revolution he worked for has not yet been achieved, he did succeed in another revolution: he revolutionised the way we look at history, and since his time few serious historians have not been influenced by his emphasis on the importance of economic and social conditions. His thinking has also influenced archaeologists, biographers, art historians, and many others.
For instance, Patrick Gardiner, an American professor of philosophy, though clearly no admirer of Marx, acknowledged somewhat grudgingly Marx's huge influence.
By stressing the relevance to historical explanation of technical and economic factors in the particular way he did, Marx in effect redrew the map of history. In doing so he made it difficult for historians ever to look at their subject in quite the same fashion as they had done before; this is surely the mark of a considerable and original thinker.
Frank Gardiner, THEORIES OF HISTORY, 1959, p125
Among 20th century British historians, clearly influenced by Marx's theory of history though not themselves Socialists, were A L Rowse and G M Trevelyan (author of ENGLISH SOCIAL HISTORY, 1942). Another historian who is little known today was Pirenne, who studied the emergence of capitalism from late medieval developments in trading and production. Also E H Carr who argued that:
The more sociological history becomes, and the more historical sociology becomes, the better for both.
WHAT IS HISTORY? (1961)
A number of other historians were of the Left, and all too often Leninist/Stalinist: e.g. E P Thompson (THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS), Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill, and others. The Communist Party influence led to many of these trying to fit their histories into a dogmatic, doctrinaire, orthodox straitjacket. If an account did not tally with what Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin had said, the writer was anathematised.
In response, other historians took up positions opposing this approach. Alfred Cobban (THE SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1964) took issue with the way Leftwing historians rode roughshod over the French Revolution, trying to twist the facts to fit their theory and preconceptions.
Cobban quoted E H Carr who saw that these Leftwing historians were following, not Marx's theory of history but Lenin's vanguard theory of political revolution, hence their obsession with the sans culottes in the French Revolution.
Obviously every historian, anyone who comments on history, has a certain perspective on history. Everyone selects certain points as important, and sees others as less significant.
A common but naive view is that history is made by the actions of 'Great Men'. For instance, in Central London, there are plenty of statues as visual reminders - most recently, an outsize bronze figure of Thatcher, towering over MPs in the Lobby of the House of Commons. Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square is another reminder.
One who held this view was the conservative politician, Edmund Burke, who wrote that "great men are the guide-posts and landmarks in the state." However the 'Great Man' view was very ably answered by Plekhanov in his booklet, THE ROLEOF THE INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY. He argued that, whatever Napoleon's abilities, unless the historic conditions of his time allowed it, Napoleon could not have become a war-leader, and later Emperor.
The so-called 'Great Man' theory is always open to the "What If" argument. Take Hitler and Churchill for instance: if Hitler had been killed in World War I or if Churchill had died in the Boer War, though some details of World War II might have been different, in general the outcome would probably have been very much the same, since no individual is irreplaceable.
Wilberforce is credited with having put an end to the slave trade. But what if Wilberforce had not taken up the cause of those, like Tom Clarkson, who were already campaigning for the abolition of the slave trade? Contrary to the myth, Wilberforce did not initiate the campaign, nor could he have got his Bill passed without the aid of a strong campaign waged by Clarkson and many others, not to mention the numerous slave revolts which made the slave trade less and less profitable. But the Wilberforce myth is a convenient one: Wilberforce was an evangelical Christian, and his son, Soapy Sam, later became a Bishop. Melvin Bragg concluded, in his superficial discussion of Wilberforce (BBC - RADIO 4), that the case of Wilberforce would justify resurrecting the "so-called Great Man Theory of History". Yet the law to abolish the slave trade was not passed till after Wilberforce's death, and not implemented till some time later, and slave trading in the British Empire actually went on at least till the late 1920s.
The great man theory runs up against the need we have to explain historical events.
If the 'great man' Wilberforce is to be applauded for having achieved the abolition of the slave trade, one has to ask: why just then? Why not earlier? The 'great man' theory has no answer to this.
After Lenin's death in 1924, the claim was made by the Independent Labour Party that Lenin was a great leader, a man whose "naked will" had "changed the course of history". Not so, as the SPGB replied:
Despite his claims at the beginning, he was the first to see the trend of conditions and adapt himself to these conditions. So far was he from “changing the course of historyâ€... that it was the course of history which changed him, drove him from one point after another till to-day Russia stands halfway on the road to capitalism.
Socialist Standard, March 1924, RUSSIA SINCE 1917, p35
Lenin, far from changing history, was in fact driven by the constraints and conditions of the time and, due to the lack of large-scale industry in the towns and the peasants' opposition in the countryside, found himself forced to adopt state capitalism and the New Economic Policy .
Lenin was seen by the SPGB not as a great man, a giant of the times, but rather as simply one who adapted quicker to the conditions than others. Far from changing the course of history, it was the course of history, which changed him.
An older belief was that everything that happened was a reflection of the Divine Will, or Providence. You find this in the Bible - Old and New Testaments, also in Islam. You find it throughout the Middle Ages. For instance, Gutenberg, the 15th century German inventor of the process of printing with movable type, saw his invention as God's work:
With the help of the Most High at whose will the tongues of infants become eloquent and who often reveals to the most lowly what he hides from the wise, this noble book CATHOLICON has been printed and accomplished without the help of reed, stylus or pen but by the wondrous agreement, proportion and harmony of punches and types...
S H Steinberg, FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF PRINTING, Pelican, 1955, p23
This remained the accepted view till about the end of the 18th century. For Hegel (early 19th century), history was simply the working out of God's divine plan.
God governs the world; the actual working of his government – the carrying out of his plan – is the history of the world.
Hegel, INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY,
see BASIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY, US, 1955, p188
In 19th century Britain, that view became superseded by a more secular notion of Progress or the growth of Civilisation, exemplified in growing industrial technology, the rapid growth of vast cities, and the expansion of Empire.
In Macaulay's HISTORY OF ENGLAND - described by Asa Briggs (THE AGE OF IMPROVEMENT, p2) as "the most important and influential English history book of the 19th century" - Macaulay wrote:
...the history of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement.
Another influential 19th century historian, Buckle, echoing John Stuart Mill, also held that historic progress was dependent on intellectual developments:
[We have] resolved the study of the dynamics of society into the study of the laws of the mind...
Gardiner, op cit, p128
Then there were some who became totally confused and gave up on any attempt to make any sense of history. Lytton Strachey, writing ironically of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, suggested that it was simply chance which decided how things turn out.
The English Constitution... is the child of wisdom and chance... The wisdom of Lord Grey set it upon the path of Democracy. Then chance intervened once more; a female Sovereign happened to marry an able and pertinacious man... But what chance gave, chance took away. The Consort perished in his prime; and the English Constitution, dropping the dead limb with hardly a tremor, continued its mysterious life as if he had never been.
Queen Victoria, THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH PROSE, p1055
And finally there have been and still are those who claim that history is simply down to the power of great ideas. This idea is echoed in talk today of. the 'clash of civilisations' - though some would say this is simply the old notion of the will of God, Divine Providence. Early in the 20th century, Lord Acton wrote that "ideas... are not the effect but the cause of public events". R H Tawney, a Catholic and a Fabian, had the same view:
the children of the mind are like the children of the body. Once born, they grow by a law of their own making
[quoted by A L Rowse, ON HISTORY, 1927]
Neither of these opinions are of much use. Neither Acton nor Tawney gave an explanation of where ideas come from, or how and why they change, or why some ideas take root while others are soon forgotten or bypassed. As for the 'clash of civilisations', that is a mere slogan which explains nothing.
Against these, we have Marx's revolutionary and very influential theory - the materialist conception of history. At one level, as Marx himself pointed out, the MCH is simply commonsense.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
Building on this materialist perspective, Marx developed a theory of history, summed up in his carefully worded 1859 PREFACE to the CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY:
In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a certain stage of development of their material powers of production.
The sum total of these relations of production constitute the economic structure of society - the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.
The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.
Earlier, in 1849, Marx argued that the superstructure, including the legal system, has a functional relationship with the material base, the mode of production, because it expresses the social needs of that system.
Society is not founded upon the law; this is a legal fiction. On the contrary, the law must be founded upon society, it must express the common interests and needs of society - as distinct from the caprice of individuals - which arise from the material mode of production prevailing at the given time.
G A Cohen, KARLMARX'S THEORY OF HISTORY, p232
To many of Marx's critics, the idea that human history - people's actions - can be in any way seen as 'determined' is anathema. Marx has been misrepresented as a dogmatic fatalist.
True, he did argue in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO that Socialism is inevitable. But against this you can find many writings where he makes it clear that historical determinism does not rule out action. For instance, in THE 18TH BRUMAIRE, he wrote that "Men make their own history."
But they cannot do this absolutely freely, without any constraints:
Men make their own history but not just as they please. They do not choose the circumstances for themselves, but have to work upon circumstances as they find them, have to fashion the material handed down by the past.
And Engels, in answer to a supporter's question, replied:
Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic base. It is not that the economic position is the cause and alone active, while everything else only has a passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of the economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself...
letter to Starkenburg, 1894, SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE, pp 517-8
For those who choose to see Marx simply as a determinist, with no room in his theory for individual action, determinism means simply a one-way causality But that is the straw Marx, Marx the economic determinist, often put up as an Aunt Sally, a soft target to attack.
Lewis S Feuer was an academic who deplored Marx's habit of writing at times as a prophet:
Marx's prophetic will dictated his prophetic intuition; he saw one sociological causal line as the inexorable law of history.
Introduction, MARX AND ENGELS, BASIC WRITINGS ON POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY, Fontana, p16
How far are these fair objections? Did Marx actually argue that Socialism/Communism would inevitably succeed capitalism? If so, why do anything to further the cause - why not just sit back and wait?
We should recall Marx's brief statement, drafted in 1864 for the First International, the PREAMBLE TO THE RULES:-
Considering,
That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves...;
That the economical emancipation of the working classes is ... the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means;
That all efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed from the want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labour in each country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working classes of different classes;...
That the present revival of the working classes in the most industrious countries of Europe, while it raises a new hope, gives solemn warning against a relapse into the old errors and calls for the immediate combination of the still disconnected movements.
Feuer and others of this school seem to forget the point made in the second sentence of the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, where Marx and Engels wrote:
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open, fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
The man who wrote that these class struggles "each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes" was definitely not a man who was blithely counting on success as the only possible outcome. Nor was Engels who wrote of "either Socialism or barbarism".
To both of them, failure was a real possibility: Socialism was not inevitable or predetermined. That remains the position for us today. Socialism is possible but to achieve it requires certain preconditions, above all class-conscious, democratic, political organisation by the working class, not just in Britain but in many other states.
The founders of the SPGB clearly had these points in mind in drafting our own DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES, and actively and energetically working to build a united, principled, class-conscious Socialist Party, working for Socialism and nothing but Socialism.
We too must warn workers to avoid the "old errors" of opportunist reformism and divisive nationalism, as well as new ones, like Leninist vanguardism and the mistaken idea that state planning or nationalisation can serve as a transition between capitalism and socialism, a stage on the way to the abolition of the wages system and class exploitation.
Marx held that the property relations of capitalism would become fetters holding back further development of the forces of production. Today this is very clear, not just from the recurrence of crises and the continuance of mass unemployment, but also from new fears about climate change fuelled by unrestrained capitalist expansion and competitive growth. The case for Socialism is as clear today as it has ever been, the need for Socialism is now more urgent than ever.