Historical Theory

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But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian. They were the first to try to explain the evolution of society along materialist lines, however crude and awkward were their initial efforts. These are the durable achievements inherited from its predecessors, the special conditions required for its own maintenance, and the opposing forces at work within itself.

There is nothing, notes Professor Leo Oppenhelm, “that would attest the awareness of the scribes of the existence of a historical continuum in the Mesopotamian civilisation”. Although they may have held different opinions of what the essential qualities of humanity were, idealist and materialist thinkers alike have appealed in the last resort to permanent principles of human nature to explain social and historical phenomena. But a science of history capable of ascertaining the laws governing man’s collective activities over the ages is a relatively recent acquisition. Mary Fulbrook argues that all historians face key theoretical questions, and that an emphasis on the facts alone is not enough.In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end. While most other thinkers did not dispute that divine providence ultimately shaped the course of events, they were far more concerned with the mundane ways and means through which history operated. The Atomists, the Sophists and the Hippocratic school of medicine put forward the idea that the natural environment was the decisive factor in the moulding of mankind. Man made himself by acting upon nature and changing its elements to satisfy his needs through the labour process.

Socio-economic formations have grown out of the productive forces at hand; its members have fashioned their relations, customs, institutions and ideas in accordance with their organisation of labour. To do otherwise would flout the mandate of its own method which teaches that every school of thought, every stage of scientific knowledge, is an outgrowth of the past work of men modified and sometimes revolutionised by the prevailing conditions and concepts of their existence. Individuals, influential or insignificant, and ideas, innovating or traditional, are essential parts of society; their roles in the making of history have to be taken into account. It is the changes in the conditions of life and labour which underlie the making and remaking of our human nature. Philosopher of science Karl Popper, in The Poverty of Historicism and Conjectures and Refutations, critiqued such claims of the explanatory power or valid application of historical materialism by arguing that it could explain or explain away any fact brought before it, making it unfalsifiable and thus pseudoscientific.

This necessity keeps depriving the present necessity of its reasons for existence, expands at its expense, renders it obsolete and eventually displaces it.

However, production does not get carried out in the abstract, or by entering into arbitrary or random relations chosen at will, but instead are determined by the development of the existing forces of production. Add this content to your learning management system or webpage by copying the code below into the HTML editor on the page. No single state or people dominated world history; each was to be judged by its role in the development of the totality. As bourgeois thinkers, they were hemmed in and held back by the inescapable restrictions of the capitalist horizon. If the familiar organisation with its traditional routine is disrupted, it either vanishes or is rebuilt on the old pattern.There new classes—merchants, shipowners, manufacturers, artisans, seafarers—came to the fore and challenged the institutions, ideas and power of the old landed gentry. Marx came to his commitment to a materialist analysis of society and political economy around 1844 and completed his works The Holy Family in 1845, The German Ideology or Leipzig Councl in 1846, and The Poverty of Philosophy in 1847 along with Friedrich Engels. As early as the eighth century BC the poet Hesiod talked about the copper age that had preceded the iron one.

The Great Mind Theory easily slides into the notion that some set of brilliant intellects, or even one mental genius, supplies the mainspring of human advancement. Historical materialism turns away from the Divine Director, the Great Man, the Universal Mind, the Intellectual Genius, the Elite, and an unchanging and uniformly acting Human Nature for its explanation of history. On a much higher level of social and scientific development, historical thought from the 17th to the 19th centuries tended to become polarised, as in Greece, between idealist and materialist modes of explanation. Broadly, the importance of the study of history lies in the ability of history to explain the present. This method of interpreting history was far more correct, all-encompassing and profound than any of its predecessors.Spengler in Germany and Toynbee in England offer their re-editions of the cyclical round of history.