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What is historical materialism? It is simply, now that we know what dialectics is, the application of this method to the history of human societies.

In order to clearly understand this, we must clarify what history is. History implies change, change in society. Society has a history through­ out which it is constantly changing; we see great events taking place in it. So, the following question is raised: since, in history, societies change, what explains these changes?

(1) How can history be explained?

In this regard it is often asked, "For what reason must there always be war? Men ought to be able to live in peace!”

To these questions we are going to provide materialist answers. A cardinal might explain that war is a punishment from God; this is an idealist answer, for it uses God to explain events. This is explaining history by spirit. It is spirit which creates and makes history.

Speaking of Providence is also an idealist answer. Hitler, in Mein

Kampf, tells us that history is the work of Providence, and he thanks the

latter for having placed his place of birth on the Austrian border. To make God or Providence responsible for history is a convenient theory: men can do nothing and, consequently, we can do nothing to stop war, we must let it happen.

From a scientific point of view, can we support such a theory? Can we find its justification in facts? No.

The first materialist affirmation in this discussion is that history is not the work of God, but the work of men. So then, men can act on history and they

(2) History is the work of man

Men make their own history, whatever its outcome may be, in that each person follows his own consciously desired end, and it is precisely the resultant of these many wills operating in different directions and of their manifold effects upon the outer world that constitutes history. Thus it is also a question of what the many indi­ viduals desire. The will is determined by passion or deliberation. But the ievers which immediately determine passion or deliberation are of very different kinds. Partly they may be external objects, partly ideal motives, ambition, “ enthusiasm for whims of all kinds. But, on the one hand, we have seen that the many individual wills active in history for the most part produce results quite other than those they intended— often quite the opposite; their motives therefore in relation to the total result are likewise of only secondary significance. On the other hand, the further question arises: What driving forces in turn stand behind these motives? What are the historical causes which transform them­ selves into these motives in the brains of the actors? (Engels, Anti-

Du h ring, p. 49.)

This text of Engels tells us then that it is men who act according to their will (desires), but that these desires do not always go in the same direc­ tion! What is it then which determines, which decides the actions of men? Why do their desires not go in the same direction?

Some idealists will agree that it is the actions of men which make history and that these actions result from their will: it is will which determines action, and it is our thoughts and our feelings which determine our will. We would then have the following sequence: idea—will—action. In order to

explain action, we must revert back to find the determining idea-cause.

doctrine is undeniable, but that it needs to be explained. It is not the sequence "idea—will—action” which explains it. In this way some people claim that in the 18th century Diderot and the Encyclopedists, by spread­ ing to the public the ideas of the Rights of Man, seduced and won, by these ideas, the will of those men who, consequently, made the revolution. Similarly, in the U.S.S.R. the ideas of Lenin were spread and people acted in conformity with these ideas. People then conclude from this that, if there were no revolutionary ideas, there would be no revolution. This point of view leads to the conclusion that the motor forces of history are the ideas of great leaders, that it is these leaders who make history. You know the formula of Action Frangaise, "Forty kings made France” ; we might add, kings who did not have many "ideas” !

What is the materialist point of view on this question?

We have seen that there were many points in common between 18th century materialism and modern materialism, but that the former materialism had an idealist theory of history.

Hence, whether frankly idealist or disguised behind an inconsistent materialism, this idealist theory which we have just seen and which seems to explain history explains nothing. For what provokes action? Engels says:

The old materialism never put this question to itself. Its conception of history, in so far as it has one at all, is therefore essentially pragmatic; it judges everything according to the motives of the action; it divides men in their historical activity into noble and ignoble and then finds that as a rule the noble are defrauded and the ignoble are victorious. Hence it follows for the old materialism that nothing very edifying is to be got from the study of history, and for us, that in the realm of history the old materialism becomes untrue to itself because it takes the ideal driving forces which operate there as ultimate causes, instead of investigating what is behind them, . . . (Engels, Feuerbach, p. 49.) Will, ideas, it is claimed. But why did the philosophers of the 18th century have precisely these ideas? If they had tried to propound Marx­ ism, no one would have listened to them, for, at this time, people would not have understood. It is not only the fact that ideas are conveyed which counts; they must also be understood. Consequently, there are definite

times for accepting ideas as well as for forging them.

We have always said that ideas are of great importance, but we must see where they come from.

We must then search for the causes which give us these ideas, and for what are, in the final analysis, the motor forces of history.

Readings

V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (New York: International Publishers, 1970), chapter 3.

F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German

Philosophy (New York: International Publishers, 1941), chapter 4.

Control Questions

Chapter 1

1. Where does the metaphysical method come from? 2. Where does the dialectical method come from?

3. How and why did metaphysical materialism change into dialectical materialism?

4. What is the philosophical relationship between Hegel and Marx?

Chapter 2

1. What is a mechanical change?

2. How does dialectics conceive of change?

Chapter 3

1. How does dialectics conceive of change? (Compare the answer from the preceding course with that of this one.)

2. What is a historical development? 3. How and why do things change?

Chapter 4

How should we not understand dialectics?

Chapter 5

1. What is dialectics? 2. What are its laws?