HISTORICAL MATERIALISM. — The term historical materialism (m. s.) is commonly used to designate the materialist conception of history, founded by C. Marx and F. Engels, according to which the historical development of human society, and in particular the spiritual creations of man in the fields of the State, law, morality, etc., are conditioned by the material circumstances of life. In Soviet terminology, the term m. s. embraces both the materialist conception of history and the entire social and economic doctrine.
It is not easy to define the concept of m. s. precisely, since even within Marxism, and even among its founders themselves, different conceptions are held; here we shall consider first the most important formulations of Marx and Engels, then the conceptions of German Social Democracy, and finally the formulation, today the most important on the political level, of Leninism-Stalinism.
I. ORIGIN OF M. S. — Historical materialism is the product of a spiritual process of departure from Hegel, undertaken by Marx in his youth under the influence of the Left Hegelians, especially L. Feuerbach, and which unfolded essentially between 1838 and 1845.
For Hegel (v.), all reality, in its innermost essence, was Idea; the Idea is the substratum that determines the entire process of development: in Nature, as Idea externalized to itself; in the various spheres of Spirit, as Idea that returns to itself from that externalization. BACH (v.) had reversed this order: it is not the Idea that is the fundamental reality, but Nature; idea and spirit are nothing more than externalizations of man, a splitting of the reasonable material individual from itself: they are not essence, but a pale reflection of true reality. Feuerbach applied this conception particularly to the field of the philosophy of religion: in the concept of God, man externalizes his own essence and sets it before himself as a reality foreign to him; to heal the weakening that results for man, it is necessary to destroy the illusion of religion and restore to man his essence, which he has externalized.
This fundamental conception of Feuerbach is of decisive importance for understanding Marx’s m. s. (v.). Marx too reverses the relationship established by Hegel and sees primary reality in Nature and in man, of which he is a part; what is spiritual is only externalization. However, he transfers this anthropological principle of Feuerbach from the field of the philosophy of religion to that of social doctrine. Just as, according to Feuerbach, man externalizes his own essence in the concept of God, so, according to Marx, society externalizes its own essence, collective life, in the State: from this results its current abnormal, pathological condition, which manifests itself in the institution of private property with the egoism connected to it (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right). With this externalization in the social and economic field, Marx intends to provide an explanation for the other stabilization by Feuerbach regarding the field of religion, namely, of consciousness. According to Marx, society manifests, in religion, an inverted world-consciousness (in which illusion becomes reality and reality illusion) precisely because it itself, under a regime of private property, is a similar inverted reality. And here the fundamental motif of the materialist conception of history resounds with sufficient clarity for the first time: the processes that unfold in the field of consciousness are nothing other than reflections of processes unfolding in the economic and social field (v. the article: Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right).
Moreover, Marx examines more acutely the course of externalization with regard to the economic and social base. Just as primary reality is not the Idea, but Nature (and man as its concrete component), so too primary activity is not thought, but labour, i.e., the concrete action of man on nature for the purpose of creating material means of subsistence. This does not mean merely the transformation of nature: while man adapts nature to his needs, he himself is changed. In praxis, social man, to a certain extent, creates himself. Just as “knowledge” in Hegel, “praxis” in Marx has a dialectical character. In the production of material goods, in praxis, man externalizes his forces, i.e., his self, into the products. This externalization should be followed, as a further moment, by the reintegration of man’s essence, externalized in the product: a reintegration that should enable the overcoming of the “alienation” of the product with respect to the producer. But this is not the case under a regime of private property, inasmuch as, as a consequence of the private ownership of the means of production, the product becomes the property not of the worker who produces it, but of the capitalist. The failure to reintegrate man’s (social) essence in praxis is the deepest root of the pathological state of present society. Since, in the final analysis, praxis concerns social man, the dialectic of praxis corresponds to the dialectic of the historical development of humanity. The impossibility of reintegrating man’s essence, externalized in the product of labour, which occurs under a regime of private property, a regime of “alienated labour,” leads to that pathological state of present society, to that weakening of man which has reached its extreme limits in the formation and in the fate of the proletariat and which becomes the negation of true humanity. For this very reason, a dialectical reversal in the process of the development of social man becomes a historical necessity. In the social revolution, the proletariat will destroy the social order built on private property and will make possible the reintegration of human essence (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844).
This economic emancipation is necessarily followed by social and political emancipation. The healing of society will realize true social man, for whom the private sphere of individual interests coincides with the public sphere of the interests of society: as a consequence, the State becomes superfluous and is condemned to disappear. As a necessary crowning of social and political emancipation, religious emancipation is realized immediately, of itself. Religion too will disappear once its roots have been cut.
II. MARX AND ENGELS
The first clear formulation of the materialist conception of history is already found in the Communist Manifesto. However, the fullest and clearest exposition was given by Marx in the introduction to his work For a Critique of Political Economy (1859), defined by Kautsky as “classic”: “In the social production of their existence, men enter into definite, necessary relations, independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations ofIt constitutes the economic structure of society, that is, the real basis upon which a juridical and political superstructure is erected and to which correspond determinate forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions, in general, the social, political, and spiritual process of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain point in their development, the material productive forces of society come into contradiction with the existing relations of production, that is, with the relations of property (which is the juridical equivalent of this expression) within which they have hitherto moved. These relations, which were forms of development of the productive forces, become their fetters. Then an epoch of social revolution ensues. With the change of the economic foundation, the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. When studying such upheavals, it is always necessary to distinguish between the material disruption of the economic conditions of production... and the juridical, political, religious, artistic, or philosophical—ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out...» (from G. Stalin, *Problems of Leninism*, Moscow 1946, p. 607).
«In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production—antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the social conditions of the individuals’ life—but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for the solution of this antagonism. This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of human society to a close» (K. Marx, *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*, Stuttgart 1859, preface, p. X ff.).
This “classical” formulation clearly expresses the fundamental idea, but it is not distinguished by excessive conceptual precision. Substantial questions, beginning with the economic base itself, were never definitively clarified by Marx and Engels; in the text just cited, Marx speaks promiscuously of “relations,” “mode,” and “conditions” of production; elsewhere he refers to “material conditions of existence,” to “relations and modes of production and property,” even to “relations and modes of exchange” (“modes of exchange,” “conditions of exchange,” “means of exchange”). What is least clear of all, however, is how the mode of production “conditions” the social, political, and spiritual process of life—is this a causal relation or a kind of parallelism? Marx’s position on the question of “ideologies” is likewise fluctuating and uncertain. At times, especially in his earlier formulations, he almost denies them any positive significance (only the conditions of production are “real”); then he considers them a mere reflection; later, however, he attributes greater importance to them: in the first volume of *Capital* he assigns a far more essential function to purposive spiritual activity; in the third volume he even concludes that political power, determined by the economic form, in turn “reacts upon it in a determining way.” Engels is equally uncertain. In *Anti-Dühring* he posits production as the basis, and immediately afterward the exchange of its products, the “mode of production and exchange”; in *The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State* he even speaks of “the production and reproduction of immediate life... On the one side the production of the means of subsistence, of food, clothing, and shelter and the tools necessary for this; on the other side the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species.”
Of particular importance, however, is the retraction Engels made around 1890 of the materialist conception of history in response to objections raised from various quarters, in which ideologies are accorded far greater essential significance. In a letter of 21 Sept. 1890 Engels admits that the production and reproduction of real life is the decisive factor in history only in the *last instance*, but not the only one. The economic situation would indeed be the basis, but the various moments of the superstructure (political forms of class struggle, constitutions, juridical forms, even the reflections of these struggles in the minds of those who participate in them: political, juridical, and philosophical theories, religious conceptions and their dogmatic developments) also exercise their influence on the course of historical struggles and in many cases determine their form in a predominant way. “It is a matter of the interaction of all these moments in which, in the final analysis, through the infinite multitude of accidents... the economic movement asserts itself as necessity.”
The materialist conception of history, as confirmed by its founders, can therefore be summarized in the following propositions: the fundamental presupposition is the “mode,” the negation of the dualism (v.) of Spirit and Matter; the true reality is Matter. On the social plane, the genuine reality that conditions the entire social development must be placed in the material conditions of production: they are the only true reality or, at least according to later formulations, what determines historical development in the last instance. From the varying evolutionary rhythm of the economic base, on the one hand, and of the political and ideological superstructure, on the other, there arises, at determinate moments, a conflict between the degree of development of the productive forces and the conditions of production (or the relations of property), which conditions the emergence of the stage of social revolution. From this it follows that the history of the evolution of human society, divided into social classes by reason of private property, is a dialectical process of class struggles which, in the end, through the class struggle of the proletariat, leads to the abolition of private property and, with this, to the overcoming of class society itself.
III. THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY IN GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
The imprecisions noted in the formulations of the materialist conception of history by its founders made inevitable, soon after their death, strong divergences of opinion among those who succeeded them in the leadership of German Social Democracy—divergences that often led to bitter polemics. Thus, within German Social Democracy, a revisionist current formed, intended, above all, to overcome the weak points of the philosophical formulation of Marx and Engels. Some wished to detach the materialist conception of history from the materialist philosophy that underlay it and advocated a return to Kant (Bernstein, Vorländer, Max Adler...); others emphasized principally that the materialist conception of history was not intended to present itself as a theory of reality nor to offer an explanation of individual historical facts, but was to be regarded as a formal method for the scientific elaboration and explanation of history (Cunow and others; even R. Stammler, who nevertheless raises important objections against this way of understanding it).E. Bernstein rejected not only the philosophical materialism that underlay the materialist conception of history, but also the materialistic conception of history in its intransigent form. “Any materialist conception of history cannot resolve the fact that those who make history are men, that men have heads, and that the disposition of the head is by no means so mechanical as to be governed solely by the economic situation.” For him, economic conditions constitute neither the sole nor the ultimate determining factor in the course of historical evolution; individuals and peoples can free themselves from the “elemental” power of economic forces. Among the non-economic factors he acknowledges the history of the political evolution of a country, nature, the history of its parties, and even of its religious communities, and especially the influence of ethics: “Moral concepts are more enduring than (economic) evolution and, to a certain extent, even independent of it.”
Even Kautsky, the most zealous defender of the materialistic conception of history, understood the latter in a very broad sense, in which the spiritual factor enters largely into the concept of “economic conditions.” According to him, the materialist conception of history is far from denying the driving force of the human spirit in society; the spirit does indeed move society, but not as the dominator of economic conditions, rather as their servant. In the final analysis, economic evolution is, for Kautsky, nothing other than technical evolution, that is, the succession of inventions and discoveries; and by “technique” one must understand not only the creation of tools and machines, but also chemical methods and even mathematics: the present state of mathematics belongs to the economic conditions of contemporary society to the same degree as the present stage of mechanical technique or of world commerce. In conclusion, Kautsky goes so far as to recognize, in contrast to the original doctrines of Marx, even morality and nationality.
IV. THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY IN LENINISM-STALINISM
Already in the last years of the life of Marx and Engels, a Russian Marxism arose, first abroad, in emigration, and then, from 1890 onward, also in Russia, where it was spread especially by two works: P. Struve’s Critical Observations and Proposals on the Economic Evolution of Russia (1894) and G. Plekhanov’s On the Problem of the Evolution of Monistic Historical Theory (v. 1895). The first Russian Marxists, in their polemic against the “subjective method” in the field of history and sociology defended by the Narodniks (v. 1895), understood the materialistic conception of history in the sense of an extreme, almost fatalistic, economic determinism: economic conditions constitute the ultimate and sole foundation of all social and political evolution; the dependence of the superstructure (political institutions, law, philosophy) on the economic base must therefore be understood in a strictly causal sense. The character of the necessity of historical evolution was sometimes understood in so absolute a sense that the struggle against capitalism was considered even devoid of meaning, since capitalism, even without struggle, is headed toward destruction by virtue of its immanent contradiction. These considerations led some to the paradoxical formula: “the worse, the better”: the more social conflicts are sharpened, the greater the misery of the masses, the better, the sooner evolution will arrive at socialism.Toward the end of the century, however, the influence of revisionism began to operate in Russia as well. As Bernstein did in Germany, so too N. Berdyaev, P. Struve, and S. Bulgakov wished to detach Marxism from philosophical materialism and return to Kant, or respectively to neo-Kantianism. They retained the materialist conception of history as a mere methodological principle, but no longer as an explanation of reality; the causal connection between base and superstructure (law, philosophy) was denied. Economic conditions are certainly a factor of great importance in social evolution, but always and only one group of social facts among others. Against this critical tendency in Russian Marxism, the “unshakable principles” of the materialist conception of history were defended, taking the side of “orthodox” Marxism, especially by Plekhanov, in a series of articles collected in the volume Critique of Our Critics (1906), and by L. Axelrod. Plekhanov dealt with the materialist conception of history in a special writing, On the Materialist Conception of History (1897). These circumstances decisively influenced the idea that Lenin formed of the materialist conception of history. He held tenaciously to orthodox Marxism against the revisionists, including the philosophical presupposition of dialectical materialism (v.), especially in the form that it had taken from Engels, which he defended in a special work, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, above all against the infiltration of empirio-criticism into Marxist circles. From then on, one of the fundamental dogmas of Bolshevik theory has been that dialectical materialism and the materialist conception of history form an inseparable unity, a “monolith.”
Di non minore importanza per la formazione del concetto leninista di materialismo storico fu la lotta da lui condotta contro l’«economismo», continuazione di quella formulazione estremamente fatalistica del materialismo storico, che si muove nell’ambito di un determinismo economico assoluto. L’economismo voleva rinunciare alla lotta politica contro l’assolutismo, abbandonandola alla borghesia liberale e lasciare che il potere «elementare» delle condizioni economiche provvedesse all’edificazione del socialismo (teoria della stichijnost); cf. BOLSCEVISMO; LENIN). Lenin, in una lotta appassionata contro questo atteggiamento passivo, elaborò la sua teoria della «coscienza» (sostantel’nost’) nella quale l’attività cosciente, la lotta indirizzata allo scopo della realizzazione del socialismo assumono importanza essenziale (v. LENIN) per l’evoluzione storica e sociale. Ricolleggendo alle tante rettifiche del materialismo storico contenute nelle lettere di Engels del periodo dopo il 1890, assegna importanza dominante al fattore soggettivo dell’iniziativa rivoluzionaria delle masse, alla coscienza socialistica del proletariato, alla teoria marxista e alle istituzioni politiche, soprattutto al partito come longa manus della direzione del movimento operaio. È caratteristico della concezione leninista del materialismo storico un passo dell’articolo Contro il boicottaggio (1907): «Il marxismo si distingue da tutte le altre teorie socialiste per l’ammirevole unificazione di una sobrietà del tutto scientifica nell’analisi dei dati di fatto obiettivi e del corso obiettivo dell’evoluzione con il più deciso riconoscimento dell’importanza... dell’iniziativa rivoluzionaria delle masse e anche, naturalmente, di singole persone, gruppi, organizzazioni, partiti che sappiano rintracciare e realizzare la connessione con questa o quella classe. Da tutte le vedute storiche di Marx nella loro totalità risulta un alto apprezzamento dei periodi rivoluzionari dell’evoluzione umana: appunto in questi periodi trovano la loro soluzione le numerose contraddizioni che lentamente si accumulano nei periodi di cosiddetta pacifica evoluzione. Proprio in questi periodi si dimostra in tutta la sua forza la funzione immediata delle diverse classi nella determinazione delle forme di vita sociale e vengono gettate le fondamenta della «soprastruttura» politica, che si mantiene poi a lungo sulla base dei rinnovati rapporti di produzione» (Opere, 4a ed., vol. XIII, p. 21 sgg.). Riguardo a problemi particolari, l’importanza di Lenin nella elaborazione del materialismo storico è connessa dai sovietici con la formulazione della legge dell’evoluzione disuguale del capitalismo nell’epoca dell’imperialismo, legge secondo la quale questa disuguale evoluzione del capitalismo nei vari paesi rende possibile lo sfondamento di esso in un punto e giustifica la possibilità della vittoria del socialismo in un solo paese e l’impossibilità della sua vittoria contemporanea in tutti i paesi. Inoltre l’importanza di Lenin per il materialismo storico sta nella scoperta del sistema dei soviet come la forma più adatta per la realizzazione della dittatura del proletariato (v. BOLSCEVISMO).
Stalin sviluppa ulteriormente il materialismo storico nella direzione indicata da Lenin, e precisamente spostandone talmente il punto di gravità sull’«influsso reattivo» della soprastruttura sulla base, da pervenire infine a un rovesciamento quasi totale della concezione originaria di Marx. Innanzitutto bisogna avvertire che il materialismo storico staliniano, oggi unico e indiscusso dominatore, non solo nell’Unione Sovietica e negli Stati satelliti, ma anche fra i suoi adepti del comunismo mondiale, non è soltanto metodologia, ma teoria della realtà e, come tale, non può in alcun modo essere staccato dal suo presupposto filosofico: il materialismo dialettico. «Il materialismo storico è l’estensione del materialismo dialettico nel campo della vita sociale» (F. V. COSTANTINOPOLI, M. s.); il materialismo storico è certamente una metodologia delle scienze sociali, ma lo è proprio perché in primo luogo rappresenta una teoria scientifica dell’evoluzione sociale; la opinione contraria significherebbe la separazione fra teoria e prassi che è tipica della «II Internazionale» (cf. Grande Enciclopedia Sovietica, XXIX, col. 709 sgg.). Tre sono anzitutto i punti nei quali Stalin sviluppa ulteriormente il materialismo storico: e cioè quelli riguardanti l’essenza della base e della soprastruttura e il loro reciproco rapporto; l’importanza da attribuirsi all’elemento nazionale; infine le forze motrici dell’evoluzione sociale nella società socialista, nella quale non può più esistere lotta di classe. Nello scritto Sul materialismo dialettico e storico (1938) egli indica «il modo con cui si ottengono i mezzi di
The production of material goods is the “principal force” in the system of conditions governing the material life of society and is the determining cause of social evolution. The cited “mode of production,” which Stalin also treats as synonymous with “production,” includes “both the productive forces of society and the relations of production among men”; the “productive forces,” in turn, comprise “the instruments of production with which material goods are produced, the men who set these instruments in motion and produce the material goods, thanks to a certain experience in production and work habits: these are the elements which, taken together, constitute the productive forces of society” (Questioni del leninismo, pp. 595–96). Thus Stalin already introduces into the basic material definition of historical evolution the element of spiritual activity. In his most recent writing, Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics (1950), Stalin sharply distinguishes between production and “base.” The latter is defined as “the economic structure of society at a given stage of its development” (loc. cit., p. 3); it now comprises solely the conditions of production, no longer the productive forces or production itself. By “superstructure” Stalin means, in this work, “the political, juridical, religious, artistic and philosophical conceptions of society and the corresponding political, juridical institutions, etc.” (ibid.). The superstructure is therefore not directly connected with production but through the base. Changes occurring in production first determine changes in the base, which in turn bring about changes in the superstructure. In this way Stalin makes room for social phenomena (such as, for example, language) that belong neither to the base nor to the superstructure and hence have no class character; they must serve the entire society, represent its unifying bond, are immediately connected with production, and in their evolution follow not the dialectical, spasmodic development of base and superstructure but the continuous development of production.
As regards the problem of the relationship between base and superstructure, Stalin, adhering to Lenin’s doctrine of “substantiality,” emphasizes with particular intensity the importance of the organizing, mobilizing and transforming function of new ideas, theories, conceptions and political institutions, and develops a whole theory of the reactive influence of the superstructure on the base: “Thus it happens that social ideas and theories, political institutions, aroused by the urgent tasks posed by the development of the material life of society, by the development of social being, in turn act upon social being, upon the material life of society” (On the Dialectical Materialist Method, in Questioni del leninismo, p. 592). The denial of the active role of the superstructure by the “academic socialists” (Bernstein, revisionists and Russian economists, Mensheviks, etc.) destroyed the revolutionary spirit of Marxism and made social evolution dependent on the force of a fatalistic, automatic, elemental process. In his linguistic letters Stalin develops this proposition so thoroughly as to speak of a “revolution from above,” a term he uses to denote the collectivization of the Russian countryside in 1930, an initiative originating from above, from the State: it is thus the political superstructure that creates its own economic base.
Another point of importance in Stalin’s conception of historical materialism is the significance he attributes to the national element. It is significant that even Lenin, in his last months, accused the Georgian of Great-Russian chauvinism. Stalin’s famous formula regarding “national cultures” is: national in form, socialist in content, aiming at the highest development of national cultures in the present with a view to their future fusion (v. BOLSCEVISMO). Correspondingly, a strong patriotic emphasis was introduced into Soviet domestic policy, especially from 1934 onward; the more this emphasis persists, the more it reveals not only the character of Soviet patriotism but an increasingly specific character of Russian national patriotism. This was shown with particular clarity after the Second World War with the well-known tendency to claim Russian primacy and priority in all fields of human activity and with the explicit campaign against “stateless cosmopolitanism,” etc.
The most important element in Stalin’s formulation of historical materialism is the doctrine of the driving forces of social evolution in class society under socialism; it is also at this point that Stalin’s departure from Marxism is most openly manifested. Marx’s doctrine, according to which class struggle is the mainspring of the dialectical evolutionary process in a class-divided society, posed the question of what could be the mainspring of social evolution after the abolition of classes, unless one supposed that with socialism all and any social evolution would cease. Stalin enumerates four driving forces: the moral-political unity of the Soviet people, Soviet patriotism, the friendship of the nations, and “self-criticism”—thus factors that are purely moral and spiritual. Consequently, the closer one approaches communism, the greater becomes the importance of the spiritual factor: under capitalism economic necessity operates; in the period of struggle Lenin accords “substantiality” dominant importance; this idea is expressed by Stalin in the formula of the “reactive influence,” of the “organizing, mobilizing and transforming function” of ideas and political institutions, culminating in the “revolution from above,” by which the new proletarian superstructure creates for itself the economic base it still lacks. Once the socialist society is realized, only purely spiritual forces remain to serve as the impetus of social evolution.
V. Evaluation
The positive significance of historical materialism lies in the fact that, starting from the conviction of a regularity that governs and permeates history, it represents the first attempt to elaborate the methodology of the social sciences. Even if it exaggerates the concept of historical necessity, it has won consideration, as a method or heuristic principle, from non-Marxist and non-materialist scholars such as, for example, W. Schmidt and W. Koppers. Historical materialism has contributed to making the importance of the economic factor appreciated alongside the other factors of historical becoming.The critique of historical materialism must proceed differently depending on whether historical materialism itself is considered as a method or as a theory of reality. In the first case, R. Stammer considers it ineffective to argue from individual historical facts and requires a critical-epistemological examination of historical materialism regarded as a method. From this point of view, he reaches the conclusion that historical materialism presents substantial errors even as a pure method: it is incomplete because it does not clearly determine and elaborate the fundamental concepts it employs (e.g., the concept of economic phenomena, that of social evolution); moreover, it is not carried through to its conclusion since it contents itself with assuming the necessity of social movement without examining its intrinsic justification, which constitutes a confusion between the genetic and systematic perspectives: astronomy arose in Egypt, according to Marx, from the necessity of calculating the periods of the Nile; but from this fact it does not follow that the doctrines of Egyptian astronomy are correct in their content.
Above all, however, historical materialism must be considered in its claim to be not only a methodology but a theory capable of explaining historical reality. In this regard, it is necessary to note that: a) it rests on a false philosophical presupposition; b) it implicitly presupposes the primacy of the spirit; c) it is an a priori speculation that violates historical facts.
The philosophical foundation of historical materialism, contrary to what is claimed by the revisionists from the ranks of German social democracy, is philosophical materialism. The fundamental intent of historical materialism is, in essence, to banish the spirit from its last refuge: the field of sociality. The founders of historical materialism are also declared materialists. For Engels this is beyond dispute since he is the creator of the system of dialectical materialism (v.). But Marx also occasionally manifests (in the preface to the 2nd edition of Capital) his profession of materialist faith: «For me... the ideal is nothing but the material transposed and translated in the heads of men». According to historical materialism, the products of man’s spiritual activity, the «ideologies», are nothing but reflections, «images», etc., of material economic relations; men «draw» their political, philosophical, and religious conceptions from the relations of production. If all this is to be more than an empty metaphor, only one possibility remains, namely the admission in the «heads» of men of a substantially different principle from the material one. The difference between economic processes and ideas such as: truth, error, first cause, action, relation, good, bad, just, unjust, etc., is so radical that it cannot be understood how these could be «specific images» of those, or how they could be «drawn» from them, if in the «heads» of men there did not operate an immaterial principle capable of effecting such a radical transformation.
Historical materialism also implicitly presupposes the primacy of the spiritual. It considers, in fact, the social process of production as the fundamental reality, which means an externally coordinated collaboration of men: but something similar has always occurred in history only on the basis of legal norms. The same primacy is presupposed also by the assertion that every historical development has its roots in changes in production conditions. The problem then arises of the foundation of these changes themselves. The evolution of production conditions certainly does not represent a process developing according to a blind necessity of nature, but presupposes, as was noted even by Marx himself and, even more, by German Marxists, the spiritual, creative activity of man. This is recognizable with particular clarity at the beginning of the economic process as Marx conceives II. Man would be different from economic stars, but he is a true starting point for economic thought. Marx, in fact, thought that the economic revolution is a revolution of transformation, which is a revolution of transformation, which is a revolution of transformation, which is a revolution of transformation, which is a turning point of transformation, which is a turning point of transformation, which is a turning point of transformation, which is a turning point of transformations, which is a turning point of transformations, which is a turning point of transformations.
Finally, historical materialism must be accused of unjustifiably generalizing individual historical facts and thus of violating historical phenomena. Historical materialism has, indeed, correctly observed the continuous evolutionary change in social, political, and even spiritual life; it has also correctly recognized that changes in the mode of production often determine, especially in modern history, changes in social and legal life. It is, however, an unjustified generalization, contradicted by undeniable historical facts, to assume the economic moment as the determining, or at least decisive, moment in the ultimate instance of historical and social development. Even with regard to the primary social structure, the family, it must be affirmed that it is not the economy that founds the family, but on the contrary it is the family that founds the economy. The instinct of self-preservation as well as the sexual instinct, the desire to prolong one’s existence in one’s children, imperiously drove man to economic activities aimed at procuring (through hunting, fishing, and agriculture) the necessities of life and the maintenance of the family. Equally unsuitable is the schema of historical materialism for the rise of feudalism. In this historical fact there is no new means of production, no oppressed class struggling for its liberation, but rather free peasants, driven by the heavy conditions due to political insecurity and continuous struggles among the great, to voluntarily place themselves in feudal vassalage. Feudalism therefore arose predominantly for political reasons, associated with ideas belonging to Germanic law. It must at least be noted the importance, often very great, that other factors had, such as, for example, Christian ideas (abolition of slavery, Crusades), national character, often even accidental historical events, free decisions and free activity of individuals, on the course of history.
Even greater is the violence done to historical facts when it comes to the «ideological» superstructure; when science, philosophy, morality, and religion must be demonstrated as derived from the contemporary economic order. It can certainly be granted that subjective, personal, and collective interest often had a certain influence on subjective knowledge of the truth; not infrequently systems are devised to serve certain economic or political interests. But this does not alter the fact that objective, immutable truths with an absolute character exist. That the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles does not depend on nor can it be changed by any economic system. With regard to morality, it may be conceded that the ethical practice of peoples often suffers greatly under economic conditions (one need only think of the moral decay caused by wars); it can also be admitted that often even the moral consciousness of entire peoples and epochs can be shaken on individual moral problems and that interest in this case influences moral judgment. But all this does not alter the fact that objective, immutable moral norms exist, valid at all times and for any economic and social condition. The same communist philosopher presupposes such moral norms, equally valid for proletarians and capitalists, when he feels morally wounded by the «unjust» exploitation of workers by capitalists.
Entirely fantastic are the constructions with which, on the basis of historical materialism, attempts are made to explain the rise of religions. When Marxism refers the rise of Christianity to the need felt by the Roman Empire to have a world religion, it forgets the simple fact that Christianity came into such violent conflict with the dominant ideas of the time that it had to sustain a bloody struggle for centuries before finally establishing itself.
Socialism, but profoundly antimaterialistic and tinged with patriotism. The subsequent antimazzinian polemic, developed by Bakunin in the name of anarchist communism and internationalism, is at the same time an antimarxist polemic, dominated by libertarian individualism (v.), directed at backward plebeians and "artisans," more than at modern "proletarians." Garibaldi held an oscillating position, dominated predominantly by emotional impulses, both in his adherence to internationalist socialism (proclaimed the "sun of the future") and in his criticisms and reservations regarding this current of thought.
Between 1891 and the end of the 19th century (roughly), Marxist socialism spread in Italy (with the daily Avanti! and various polemical-cultural journals, the most important of which may be considered Critica sociale, edited by Turati [v.] and Kuliscioff).
Antonio Labriola ([v.], 1843-1904) was undoubtedly, among the first Italian Marxists, the exponent of the greatest intellect and philosophical preparation; his activity as a theorist left a lasting impact even outside Italy: suffice it to recall Leon Trotsky, who, in his youth, was influenced by him. Labriola highlighted, through his writings and polemics directed at Loria, Ferri, etc., the differences between historical materialism and the eclectic currents then in vogue (which were often a mixture of evolutionism, compromise between socialism and "bourgeois" economics, positivism, and "vulgar" Marxism). The references by Marx (drawn from Vico) to history as "the work of men" were emphasized and developed by Labriola. He was always greatly annoyed by those "Marxists" who, in the name of schematic formulas, were utterly incapable of understanding the originality of the historical developments of each individual nation. Having moved from Hegel to Marx, Antonio Labriola remained consistently hostile to political-economic dogmatisms and closed systems: if economics was for him like the "guiding thread" of historical events, it nevertheless appeared to him as the "history of human labor." Labriola's work developed, in the last years of the past century, in collaboration with B. Croce, who increasingly revealed himself, at the same time, as both a scholar and a critic of Marxism (to which he devoted works that gained wide resonance even outside Italy). Among the Italian scholars and critics of Marxism, mention must also be made, in this same period, of G. GENTILI (v.) for his early work La filosofia di Marx (Pisa 1899), cited by Lenin himself as a work of notable significance.
On the strictly political level, Labriola did not achieve much prominence; however, at the end of the last century, he was a forerunner of the colonization and expansion of Italian labor in Abyssinia and advocated the occupation of Tripolitania a decade before the event actually occurred. Between 1896 and 1900, he made a notable contribution to Italian theoretical Marxism, which subsequently declined. Against passive fatalism and the crudest forms of determinism (v.), against rhetorical and vacuous "progressive" schemes, Labriola liked to repeat that "the future must be produced by men," and that it is not given to foresee the future nor to consider historical materialism as a magic key that opens all doors.
The thought of the Frenchman Georges Sorel (1847-1922) also exerted some influence on individual Italian Marxists (and various scholars of Marxism), who had accepted Marx's class analysis but translated it predominantly into ethical terms (the ancient and now defunct "virtue" of the bourgeois-Jacobin tradition was by him seen, under new aspects, in the proletariat, which, freed from "charlatans" and "bourgeoisified reformists," was to be led to a grand heroic tension through practicing intransigence and violence and marching toward insurrection). For various reasons and from different perspectives, Sorel interested in Italy both Marxists and syndicalists, the philosopher Croce, and the socialist revolutionary Mussolini.
Rodolfo Mondolfo, a scholar of modern philosophy and various socialist thinkers of the 19th century, took up certain philosophical and cultural problems already addressed or hinted at by A. Labriola. Against old and new "fatalists," against evolutionists and positivists who sometimes claimed to be Marxists, he insisted that man himself develops and creates the conditions of his life (though these react upon the individual who produced them, conditioning his work, albeit in an unpredictable manner). His "critical-practical" conception of history is animated by a vigorous demand for human freedom and reveals in Mondolfo a broad culture.
Finally, mention must be made of the periodical (later a daily) Ordine Nuovo, which, after World War I, believed it saw in the "factory councils" the "Italian national form" of a proletarian and socialist revolution. Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was the most prominent figure in this movement; influenced by the incipient Russian Revolution and, on the cultural plane, by the thought of Piero Gobetti (an interesting, though sometimes paradoxical, intermediary between certain aspects of Italian idealist culture and the Marxist field). Ordine Nuovo fought against the most passive tendencies, truly deterministic and politically disrespectful of Italian Marxism, anticipating ideologically the constitution of the Communist Party.
While democratic socialism, in Italy as in other countries, has become more or less detached from Marxism and historical materialism interpreted as dogmas (thus opening the door to revisions, discussions of new problems, and theoretical and practical issues connected with the defense of freedom), in the communist field historical materialism has been unable to do more than import from Eastern Europe, in less profound and more heavily dogmatic forms (though oscillating according to the practical necessities of the day), ideas and discussions that had enjoyed an interesting flowering, from whatever perspective, in Italy around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.