Historical Materialism

Early Beginnings

Marx developed his theory of history as a critique of the idealism dominant in Germany when he began his career. Idealism asserts that human consciousness is independent of the world in which it exists. Within environmental constraints, human life is seen to be a product of human ideas, not of the material ways in which that life is lived. However, historical materialism shares G.F.W. Hegel's idea of historical “development.” Hegel argued that society developed through the progressive overcoming of contradictions in human consciousness. Marx agreed with that assumption, but felt that “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” For Marx, what people are even capable of comprehending is a product of their material–historical life. An approach like political ecology, which attends to the myriad ways in which the environment is both a site of politics and highly politicized, is unimaginable without this central tenet.

Although Marx did not use the term historical materialism himself, there are several key ideas upon which historical materialism depends. The most contentious of these is the so-called base-superstructure model. Marx claimed that the “sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.” Also at issue is the process of social change. Marx argues that “at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production.” This dynamic has massive repercussions [Page 871]for individual and collective life, since during “the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.” Further, Marx states the “epoch of social revolution” is driven by the “conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production,” which transforms “the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.”

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