An Examination of Some Recent Criticisms of the Materialist Conception of History

Abstract

This thesis is an examination of certain recent criticisms of historical materialism. By historical materialism I mean the application of the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of society and its history - the historical world-outlook of Marxism. However, it would be an error to regard Marxism, or any part of it, as merely an academic doctrine. The tenor of the quotations at the head of this page is enough to dispel any such misconception, if indeed, any theory of history could be regarded solely as a professional historian's tool. After all, even the denial of the possibility of a theory of history is in itself a theory of history. Marx himself firmly rejected any merely academic approach to his thought. In the first theoretical formulation of his philosophical outlook, in "The German Ideology" (completed in 1846), denying that Feuerbach was a Communist because he sympathised with Communism, he said: "…by virtue of the qualification 'common man' he declares himself a communist, transforms the latter into a predicate of 'man' and thereby thinks it possible to change the word 'communist', which in the real world means the follower of a definite revolutionary party, into a mere category."