Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–1883) as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. Social classes and the relationship between them, plus the political structures and ways of thinking in society, are founded on and reflect economic activity.
Since Marx's time, the theory has been modified and expanded by thousands of Marxist thinkers. It now has many variants.
Read more about Historical Materialism: Key Ideas, Key Implications in The Study and Understanding of History, Marx's Materialism, Historical Materialism and The Future, Marxist Beliefs About History, Alienation and Freedom, The History of Historical Materialism, Warnings Against Misuse, Historical Materialism in Marxist Thought, Recent Versions of Historical Materialism, Criticisms
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or materialism:
“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)
“The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)