Historical Materialism

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 creations of the human spirit in the fields of the State, law, morality, etc., are conditioned by the material circumstances of life. In Soviet terminology, the term historical materialism encompasses both the materialist conception of history and the entire social and economic doctrine.

It is not easy to define the concept of historical materialism precisely, as even within Marxism—including by its very founders—divergent conceptions are upheld. Here, we will first consider the most important formulations by Marx and Engels, then the conceptions of German social democracy, and finally the formulation, today the most politically significant, of Leninism-Stalinism.
I. ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM – Historical materialism is the product of a spiritual process of distancing from Hegel, undertaken by Marx in his youth under the influence of the Left Hegelians, particularly L. Feuerbach, and which essentially unfolded between 1838 and 1845.

Hegel (v.), the entire reality was, according to its innermost essence, Idea; the Idea is the substratum that determines the entire process of development: in Nature, as Idea exteriorized to itself; in the various spheres of Spirit, as Idea returning to itself from that exteriorization. BACH (v.) had inverted this order: the fundamental reality is not the Idea, but Nature; idea and spirit are nothing but self-exteriorization, the splitting of the material reasonable individual from itself: they are not essence, but a pale reflection of the true reality. Feuerbach applied this conception particularly to the field of the philosophy of religion: in the concept of God, man exteriorizes his own essence and posits it before himself as an alien reality; to heal the weakening that results for man, it is necessary to destroy the illusion of religion and restore to man the essence he himself has exteriorized.

This fundamental conception of Feuerbach is of decisive importance for the understanding of Marx’s (v.) historical materialism. Marx also inverts the relationship established by Hegel and sees the primary reality in Nature and in man, its part; what is spiritual is merely exteriorization. However, he transposes Feuerbach’s anthropological principle from the field of the philosophy of religion to that of social doctrine. Just as, according to Feuerbach, man exteriorizes his own essence in the concept of God, so, according to Marx, society exteriorizes its own essence, collective life, in the State: from this results its current anomalous, pathological condition, which manifests itself in the constitution of private property with the egoism connected to it (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right). With this exteriorization in the social and economic field, Marx intends to provide the explanation for the other established by Feuerbach regarding the field of religion, that is, 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 the regime of private property, is an analogous inverted reality. And here, for the first time, the fundamental motif of the materialist conception of history resounds with sufficient clarity, according to which the processes that unfold in the field of consciousness are nothing but 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 more sharply examines the course of exteriorization with regard to the economic and social base. Just as the primary reality is not the Idea, but Nature (and man as its concrete component), so too the primary activity is not thought, but "praxis," that is, the concrete action of man on nature with the aim of creating means of material existence. This does not mean only the transformation of nature: while man adapts nature to his own needs, he himself changes. In praxis, social man, in a certain measure, creates himself. As "knowledge" in Hegel, "praxis" in Marx has a dialectical character. In the production of material goods, in praxis, man externalizes his forces, that is, his Self, in the goods produced. This externalization should be followed, as a further moment, by the reintegration of the essence of man externalized in the product: a reintegration that should consist in the overcoming of the "alienation" of the product with respect to the producer. But this is not the case under the regime of private property, since, as a consequence of the private ownership of the means of production, the product becomes the property not of the worker himself who produces it, but of the capitalist. The failed reintegration of the essence of (social) man externalized in praxis is the deepest root of the pathological state of the current society. Since praxis ultimately concerns social man, the dialectic of praxis corresponds to the dialectic of the historical development of humanity. The impossibility of reintegrating the essence of man externalized in the product of labor, as occurs under the regime of private property, the regime of "alienated labor," leads to that pathological state of the current society, to that weakening of man which has reached its extreme limits in the formation and fate of the proletariat and which becomes the negation of true humanity. For this very reason, a dialectical reversal in the process of development of social man becomes a historical necessity. In the social revolution, the proletariat will destroy the social order built on private property and 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 the true social man for whom the private sphere of individual interests coincides with the public sphere of interests of society: as a consequence, the State becomes superfluous and is doomed to disappear. As a necessary culmination of social and political emancipation, religious emancipation is immediately realized of itself. Religion, too, will disappear since its roots will 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, its most extensive and lucid exposition was given by Marx in the introduction to his work A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), defined by Kautsky as "classic": "In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material productive forces. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and spiritual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, ... and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, 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 may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development 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 arising from the individuals' social conditions of life; but the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create at the same time the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation" (K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Stuttgart 1897, preface, p. x ff.).

This "classic" formulation clearly expresses the fundamental idea but does not stand out for excessive conceptual precision. Substantial questions, beginning with the very economic base, never received definitive clarification in Marx and Engels; already in the cited text, Marx speaks interchangeably of "relations," "mode," "conditions" of production; elsewhere he speaks of "material conditions of existence," of "relations of production and property," even of "relations of production and traffic" ("modes of traffic," "conditions of traffic," "means of traffic"). Least clear of all, however, is how the mode of production "conditions" the social, political, and spiritual process of life; is it a causal relationship or a kind of parallelism? Marx's position on the question of "ideologies" is also oscillating and uncertain. At times, especially in the early 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 much more essential function to purposeful spiritual activity; in the third volume, he even concedes that political power, determined by the economic form, in turn "reacts upon it in a determining manner." Equal uncertainty is found in Engels. In the Anti-Dühring, he posits production and, immediately after, the exchange of its products, the "mode of production and exchange," as the base; in the work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, even "the production and reproduction of immediate life... On the one hand, the production of the means of subsistence, of food, clothing, shelter and the tools necessary for that production; on the other hand, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species."

Of particular importance, however, is the retraction that Engels makes, around 1890, of the materialist conception of history in response to objections raised from various quarters, with which ideologies assume a much more essential importance. In a letter of September 21, 1890, Engels admits that the production and reproduction of real life is the decisive factor in history only in the final instance, but not the only one. The economic situation would indeed be the base, but the various moments of the superstructure (political forms of the class struggle, constitutions, legal forms, even the reflections of these struggles in the minds of those who participate in them: political, legal, philosophical theories, religious conceptions and their dogmatic developments) also exert their influence on the course of historical struggles and, in many cases, determine their form in a preponderant manner. "It is a case of interaction of all these moments in which, in the final analysis, through the infinite multitude of contingencies... the economic movement asserts itself as necessity."

The materialist conception of history, as shaped by its founders, can therefore be summarized in the following propositions: the fundamental presupposition is philosophical materialism, dualism (v.) of Spirit and Matter; true reality is Matter. On the social plane, the genuine reality, which conditions the entire social development, is to be found in the material conditions of production: these are the only true reality or, at least according to later formulations, what determines historical development in the final instance. From the varying evolutionary rhythm of the economic base, on the one hand, and the political and ideological superstructure, on the other, arises, at certain moments, a conflict between the evolutionary stage of the productive forces and the conditions of production (or property relations), which conditions the emergence of the stage of social revolution. From this it follows that the history of the evolution of human society, fragmented into social classes due to 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. HISTORICAL MATERIALISM IN GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

The imprecisions noted in the formulations of the materialist conception of history by its founders made inevitable, immediately after their deaths, strong divergences of opinion among those who succeeded them in the leadership of German social democracy: divergences that often led to harsh polemics. Thus, within German social democracy, a revisionist current emerged, aimed primarily at overcoming the weak points in the philosophical formulation of Marx and Engels. Some sought to detach historical materialism from the philosophical materialism that underpinned it and advocated a return to Kant (Bernstein, Vorländer, Max Adler...), while others emphasized that the materialist conception of history did not intend to present itself as a theory of reality nor to offer an explanation of individual historical facts, but was to be considered a formal method of scientific elaboration and explanation of history (Cunow and others; also R. Stammler, who nonetheless raised significant objections against this interpretation).

E. Bernstein rejected not only the philosophical materialism underlying historical materialism but also the materialist conception of history in its uncompromising form. "Any historical materialism cannot resolve the fact that those who make history are men, that men have a head, and that the disposition of the head is not at all so mechanical as to be dominated solely by the economic situation." For him, economic conditions do not constitute either the sole or the ultimate determining factor in the course of historical evolution; individuals and peoples can escape the "elemental" power of economic forces. Among the non-economic factors, he recognized the history of a country's political evolution, its nature, the history of its parties and even 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 materialist conception of history, understood the latter in a very broad sense, in which the spiritual factor entered extensively into the concept of "economic conditions." According to him, historical materialism is far from denying the driving force of the human spirit in society; the spirit does indeed move society, but not as a master of economic conditions, rather as their servant. Ultimately, for Kautsky, economic evolution is nothing other than technical evolution, that is, the succession of inventions and discoveries; where by "technique" one must understand not only the creation of tools and machines but also chemical methods and even mathematics: the current state of mathematics belongs to the economic conditions of contemporary society on an equal footing with the current stage of mechanical technique or world trade. In conclusion, Kautsky went so far as to recognize, in contrast to Marx's original doctrines, even morality and nationality.
IV. HISTORICAL MATERIALISM IN LENINISM-STALINISM. — Already in the final years of Marx’s and Engels’s lives, a Russian Marxism emerged, first abroad, among émigrés, and then, from 1890 onward, also in Russia, where it was disseminated primarily through two works: Critical Observations on the Economic Evolution of Russia by P. Struve (1894) and On the Problem of the Evolution of the Monistic Theory of History by G. Plechanov (v. 1895). The first Russian Marxists, in polemic against the “subjective method” in history and sociology defended by the Russian Narodniki (v.), interpreted the materialist 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 was thus understood in a strictly causal sense. The character of necessity in historical evolution was then understood in such absolute terms that the struggle against capitalism was considered entirely meaningless, since capitalism, even without struggle, collapses under the weight of its immanent contradictions. These considerations led some to the paradoxical formula: “the worse, the better”: the more social conflicts sharpen, the greater the misery of the masses becomes, the better, the sooner evolution moves toward socialism.

At the turn of the century, however, the influence of revisionism also began to operate in Russia. Just as Bernstein in Germany, so too N. Berdjaev, P. Struve, and S. Bulgakov sought to detach Marxism from philosophical materialism and return to Kant, or rather to Neo-Kantianism. They retained historical materialism 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 historical materialism were defended, aligning with “orthodox” Marxism, above all by Plechanov, in a series of articles collected in Critique of Our Critics (1906), and by L. Akselrod. Plechanov addressed historical materialism in a dedicated work, On the Materialist Conception of History (1897). These circumstances decisively influenced Lenin’s conception of the materialist view of history. He adhered unconditionally to orthodox Marxism against the revisionists, including dialectical materialism (v.), especially in the form it had taken from Engels, which he also defended in a special work: Materialism and Empiriocriticism, primarily against the infiltration of empiriocriticism into the ranks of Russian Marxists. From then on, one of the fundamental dogmas of Bolshevik theory was that dialectical materialism and historical materialism form an inseparable unity, a “monolith.”

Of no less importance for the formation of Lenin’s concept of historical materialism was the struggle he waged against “economism,” a continuation of that extremely fatalistic formulation of historical materialism which operated within the framework of absolute economic determinism. Economism sought to renounce political struggle against absolutism, leaving it to the liberal bourgeoisie and allowing the “elemental” power of economic conditions to provide for the construction of socialism (theory of stichijnost’; cf. BOLSHEVISM; LENIN). In a passionate struggle against this passive attitude, Lenin elaborated his theory of “consciousness” (soznatel’nost’), in which conscious activity, the purposeful struggle for the realization of socialism, assumes essential importance (v. LENIN) for historical and social evolution. Drawing on the late corrections to historical materialism contained in Engels’s letters after 1890, he assigned dominant importance to the subjective factor: the revolutionary initiative of the masses, the socialist consciousness of the proletariat, Marxist theory, and political institutions, especially the party as the longa manus of the leadership of the workers’ movement. Characteristic of the Leninist conception of historical materialism is a passage from the article Against Boycotting (1907): “Marxism is distinguished from all other socialist theories by the admirable unification of a completely scientific sobriety in the analysis of objective facts and the objective course of evolution with the most decisive recognition of the importance... of the revolutionary initiative of the masses and also, naturally, of individuals, groups, organizations, and parties that know how to trace and realize the connection with this or that class. From all of Marx’s historical views taken as a whole emerges a high appreciation of revolutionary periods in human evolution: it is precisely in these periods that the numerous contradictions that slowly accumulate in periods of so-called peaceful evolution are resolved. It is precisely in these periods that the immediate function of the different classes in determining the forms of social life is demonstrated in all its force, and the foundations of the political ‘superstructure’ are laid, which then endures for a long time on the basis of the renewed relations of production” (Works, 4th ed., vol. XIII, p. 21 ff.). Regarding particular problems, the importance of Lenin in the elaboration of historical materialism is connected by Soviet scholars with the formulation of the law of the uneven evolution of capitalism in the era of imperialism, a law according to which this uneven evolution of capitalism in various countries makes possible its breakthrough at a single point and justifies the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country and the impossibility of its simultaneous victory in all countries. Furthermore, Lenin’s importance for historical materialism lies in the discovery of the Soviet system as the most suitable form for the realization of the dictatorship of the proletariat (v. BOLSHEVISM).

Stalin further develops historical materialism in the direction indicated by Lenin, shifting its center of gravity so decisively toward the “reactive influence” of the superstructure on the base that he ultimately arrives at an almost complete inversion of Marx’s original conception. First of all, it must be noted that Stalinist historical materialism, today the sole and undisputed master not only in the Soviet Union and its satellite states but also among its adherents in world communism, is not merely a methodology but a theory of reality and, as such, cannot in any way be detached from its philosophical presupposition: dialectical materialism. “Historical materialism is the extension of dialectical materialism into the field of social life” (F. V. COSTANTINOPOLI, Historical Materialism); historical materialism is certainly a methodology of the social sciences, but it is so precisely because it primarily represents a scientific theory of social evolution; the contrary opinion would signify the separation of theory and practice, which is typical of the “Second International” (cf. Great Soviet Encyclopedia, XXIX, col. 709 ff.). Three points, above all, are those in which Stalin further develops historical materialism: namely, those concerning the essence of the base and the superstructure and their reciprocal relationship; the importance to be attributed to the national element; and finally, the driving forces of social evolution in socialist society, in which class struggle can no longer exist. In the work On Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), he indicates “the manner in which the means of subsistence necessary for the life of men are obtained, the manner of

Historical materialism typically designates the conception that identifies the "mode of production of material goods" as the "principal force" within the system of conditions of the material life of society and as the determining cause of social evolution. In his work On Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), Stalin indicates this "mode of production"—which he here also equates with "production"—as comprising "both the productive forces of society and the relations of production among men." The "productive forces," in turn, include: "the instruments of production with which material goods are produced, the men who set these instruments of production in motion and produce material goods, thanks to a certain experience of production and work habits: these are the elements which, taken together, constitute the productive forces of society" (Problems of Leninism, pp. 595-96). In this way, Stalin already incorporates spiritual activity into the definition of the material base of historical evolution. In his more recent work, Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics (1950), Stalin sharply distinguishes between production and the "base." The latter is defined as "the economic structure of society at a given stage of its evolution" (op. cit., p. 3); it thus comprises solely the conditions of production, no longer the productive forces and production. By "superstructure," Stalin means, in this work, "the political, legal, religious, artistic, and philosophical conceptions of society and the corresponding political, legal, etc., institutions" (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 then, in turn, bring about changes in the superstructure. In this manner, Stalin makes room for social phenomena (such as language) that belong neither to the base nor to the superstructure and that, consequently, have no class character but must serve the entire society, representing its unifying bond, directly connected with production and, in their evolution, do not follow the dialectical-leap development of base and superstructure but the continuous development of production. Regarding the relationship between base and structure, Stalin, adhering to the Leninist doctrine of "soznatel'nost'," particularly emphasizes the "organizing, mobilizing, and transformative importance of new ideas, new theories, new conceptions, new 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 Dialectical and Historical Materialism, in Problems of Leninism, p. 592). The denial of the active role of the superstructure by the "academic socialists" (Bernstein, the 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," by which he means the collectivization of the Russian countryside in 1930, whose initiative originated from above, from the State: it is thus the political superstructure that creates its economic base.

Another important point in Stalin's conception of historical materialism is the significance he attributes to the national element. It is indicative that already in his final months, Lenin accused the Georgian of Great Russian chauvinism. Stalin's formula regarding national cultures is well-known: national in form, socialist in content, the highest degree of development of national cultures in the present while keeping an eye on their fusion in the future (v. BOLSHEVISM). Correspondingly, a strong patriotic accent was introduced into Soviet domestic policy, particularly from 1934 onward, which, the longer it endures, reveals not only a character of Soviet patriotism but an increasingly specific character of Russian national patriotism: this manifested itself with particular evidence after the Second World War with the noted tendency to claim Russian primacy and priority in all fields of human activity, with the explicit campaign against "rootless cosmopolitanism," etc.

The most important element in Stalin's formulation of historical materialism is the doctrine of the driving forces of social evolution in the classless society of socialism: and it is also here that Stalin's departure from Marxism is most openly manifested. Marx's doctrine, according to which class struggle represents the spring of the dialectical evolutionary process of a society divided into antagonistic classes, posed the problem of what could be the spring of social evolution after the abolition of classes; unless one believed that, with socialism, all social evolution would cease. Stalin enumerates four driving forces: the moral-political unity of the Soviet people, Soviet patriotism, the friendship of the nationalities composing the Soviet Union, and finally, criticism and self-criticism: thus, absolutely moral and spiritual factors. Consequently, the closer one approaches communism, the greater the importance of the spiritual factor becomes: under capitalism, economic necessity operates; in the period of Lenin's struggle, he recognizes the dominant importance of "soznatel'nost'": Stalin expresses this idea with the formula of the "reactive influence," of the "organizing, mobilizing, and transformative function" of ideas and political institutions, reaching as far as the "revolution from above," with which the new proletarian superstructure, "reacting," posits for itself the economic base that it still lacks. Once socialist society is realized, only purely spiritual forces remain to serve as the impulse of social evolution.

BIBL.:
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G. M.

EVALUATION

The positive significance of historical materialism lies in the fact that, starting from the conviction of a regularity that governs and pervades history, it represents the first attempt to elaborate a methodology for the social sciences. Even if it exaggerates the concept of historical necessity, it gains 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 appreciating the importance of the economic factor alongside other factors in historical development.

Criticism of historical materialism must proceed differently depending on whether it is considered as a method or as a theory of reality. In the first case, R. Stammler deems it ineffective to argue from individual historical facts and calls for a critical-gnoseological examination of historical materialism as a method. From this perspective, he concludes 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); furthermore, it is not pursued to its conclusion insofar as it is satisfied with the assertion of the necessity of a social movement without examining its intrinsic justification, which constitutes a confusion between the genetic and the systematic perspectives: astronomy arose in Egypt, according to Marx, due to the need to compute the periods of the Nile; but from this fact, the correctness of Egyptian astronomical doctrines regarding their content does not follow.

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 is based on a false philosophical presupposition; b) it implicitly presupposes the primacy of the spirit; c) it is an a priori speculation that distorts historical facts.

The philosophical foundation of historical materialism, contrary to what revisionists from the ranks of German social democracy assert, is philosophical materialism. The fundamental intent of historical materialism is, in essence, to expel the spirit from its last refuge: the field of sociality. Moreover, the founders of historical materialism declare themselves materialists. For Engels, this is beyond discussion, as he is the creator of the system of dialectical materialism (v. MATERIALISMO DIALETTICO). But Marx also occasionally (in the preface to the 2nd edition of Capital) professes his materialist faith: «For me... the ideal is nothing but the material transposed and translated in the human mind.» According to historical materialism, the products of man’s spiritual activity, the «ideologies,» are nothing but «reflections,» «images,» and the like, of material economic relations; men «derive» 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 «mind» of men of a principle substantially different from the material. The difference between economic processes and ideas such as truth, error, first cause, action, relation, good, evil, just, unjust, etc., is so radical that it is impossible to understand how these could be «mirror images» of those, or how they could be «derived» from them, unless an immaterial principle operates in the «mind» of men, capable of effecting such a radical transformation.

Historical materialism also implicitly presupposes the primacy of the spiritual. That is, it considers the social process of production as the fundamental reality, which means an externally coordinated collaboration of men: but something similar occurs in history only on the basis of legal norms. The same primacy is presupposed by the assertion that every historical development has its roots in changes in the conditions of production. The question then arises as to what, in turn, these changes are founded upon. The evolution of production conditions certainly does not represent a process unfolding according to a blind necessity of nature but presupposes, as Marx himself and, even more so, German Marxists noted, the creative, spiritual activity of man. And this is particularly evident at the beginning of the economic process as Marx conceives II. Man would have become human from an apelike state by beginning to use and even produce tools in the course of activity aimed at securing the means of living. But precisely in the use and production of tools, man’s purposeful, that is, spiritual, thinking activity is revealed. It is thus also demonstrated that a materialistic conception of history, insofar as it is materialistic, is impossible.

Finally, historical materialism must be accused of constituting an unjustified generalization of individual historical facts and thus of distorting historical phenomena. Historical materialism has, indeed, correctly noted 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. However, it is an unjustified generalization, contradicted by undeniable historical facts, to assume the economic factor as the determining, or at least decisive, factor in the last instance of historical and social development. Already with regard to the primary social structure, the family, it must be affirmed that it is not the economy that founds the family, but rather the family that founds the economy. The instinct for self-preservation, as well as the sexual instinct and 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. There is no new means of production in this historical fact, no oppressed class struggling for its liberation, but rather free peasants, burdened by the harsh conditions due to political insecurity and the continuous struggles of the powerful, voluntarily submitting to feudal vassalage. Feudalism thus arose predominantly for political reasons, associated with ideas belonging to Germanic law. At least a mention must be made of the often enormous importance that other factors had, such as, for example, Christian ideas (abolition of slavery, Crusades), national character, and even accidental historical events, the free decision and free activity of individuals, on the course of history.

BIBL.:
R. Stammler, Wirtschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung, Leipzig 1896; W. Sombart, Der proletarische Sozialismus, Jena 1924; O. Spann, Die Haupttheorien der Volkswirtschaftslehre, Heidelberg 1923; F. A. von Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order, Chicago 1948; inoltre V. MARXISMO, SOCIALISMO, COMUNISMO.

A. Gemelli

Even greater violence is inflicted upon historical facts when it comes to the "ideological" superstructure; when it must be demonstrated that science, philosophy, morality, and religion derive from the contemporary economic order. It can certainly be conceded that subjective, personal, and collective interest may have had a certain influence on the subjective knowledge of truth; not infrequently, systems are devised to serve specific economic or political interests. But this does not negate the fact that objective, immutable truths exist, endowed with the character of absoluteness. That the sum of the angles of a triangle equals two right angles does not depend on, nor can it be altered by, any economic system. Regarding morality, it may be granted that the ethical practice of peoples often suffers greatly due to economic conditions (consider the moral decay provoked by wars); it may even be admitted that, often, the moral conscience of entire populations and epochs can be shaken in individual moral problems, and that interest, in this case, influences moral judgment. But all this does not negate the existence of objective, immutable moral norms, valid in every time and under any economic and social condition. The communist philosopher himself presupposes such moral norms, equally valid for proletarians and capitalists, when he feels morally wounded by the "unjust" exploitation of workers by capitalists.

Entirely fanciful, then, are the constructions by which, on the basis of historical materialism, attempts are made to explain the rise of religions. When Marxism traces the rise of Christianity to the need felt by the Roman Empire for a world religion, it overlooks the simple fact that Christianity came into such violent conflict with the dominant ideas of that time that it had to sustain a bloody struggle of centuries before finally asserting itself.

Gustavo A. Wetter

VI. HISTORICAL MATERIALISM IN ITALY

In Italy, Marxism initially encountered the ethical preaching of Mazzinianism, which was aware of the importance of the social question but profoundly antimaterialist and fervently patriotic. The subsequent anti-Mazzinian polemic, developed by Bakunin in the name of anarchic communism and internationalism, was at the same time an anti-Marxist polemic, dominated by libertarian individualism (v. INDIVIDUALISM), directed toward backward plebeian masses and "artisans" rather than modern "proletarians." Garibaldi held an oscillating position, predominantly shaped by sentimental impulses, both in his endorsements of internationalist socialism (proclaimed the "sun of the future") and in his critiques and reservations toward this current of thought.

Between 1891 and the end of the 19th century (roughly speaking), 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 figure of greatest intellect and philosophical preparation; his theoretical activity indeed left its mark even outside Italy: it suffices to recall Leon Trotsky, who in his youth came under his influence. Through his writings and polemics against Loria, Ferri, and others, Labriola highlighted the differences between historical materialism and the eclectic currents then in vogue (which were often a mixture of evolutionism, a compromise between socialism and "bourgeois" economics, positivism, and "vulgar" materialism). The hints from Marx (drawn from Vico) regarding History as "the work of men" appear underscored and developed by Labriola. He was always deeply annoyed by those "Marxists" who, in the name of schematic formulas, were utterly incapable of grasping the originality of historical developments in each individual nation. Having moved from Hegel to Marx, Antonio Labriola was consistently hostile to politico-economic dogmatisms and closed systems: while economics was for him the "guiding thread" of historical events, it nonetheless appeared to him as the "history of human labor." Labriola's work developed in the final years of the last century with the collaboration of B. Croce, who increasingly revealed himself as both a scholar and critic of Marxism (to which he dedicated works that gained wide resonance even outside Italy). Among Italian scholars and critics of Marxism, one must finally recall, in this same period, G. GENTILI (v.) for his early work La filosofia di Marx (Pisa 1899), cited by Lenin himself as a noteworthy contribution.

On the strictly political plane, Labriola did not achieve much prominence: however, at the end of the last century, he was an advocate of colonization and the expansion of Italian labor in Abyssinia and championed the occupation of Tripolitania a decade before the event actually occurred. Between 1896 and 1900, he made a significant contribution to Italian theoretical Marxism, which subsequently declined in tone. Against passive fatalism and the crudest forms of determinism (v. DETERMINISM), against rhetorical and empty "progressive" schemes, Labriola liked to repeat that "men must produce the future," and thus it is not possible to foresee the future nor to consider historical materialism as a magic key that opens all doors.

Not without influence on certain Italian Marxists (and on various scholars of Marxism), the thought of the Frenchman Georges Sorel (1847-1922) emerged, who had accepted Marx's classism but translated it into predominantly ethical terms (the ancient and by then extinguished "virtue" of the bourgeois-Jacobin was seen by him, in new forms, in the proletariat, which, freed from "charlatans" and "bourgeoisified reformists," would have to restore it to a grand heroic tension, practicing intransigence and violence and marching toward insurrection). For various reasons and in different respects, Sorel interested Italian Marxists and syndicalists, the philosopher Croce, and the revolutionary socialist Mussolini.

Rodolfo Mondolfo, a scholar of modern philosophy and various 19th-century socialist thinkers, revisited certain philosophical and cultural problems already posed or hinted at by A. Labriola. Against old and new "fatalists," against evolutionists and positivists who sometimes identified as Marxists, he insistently emphasized how man himself develops and creates the conditions of his life (though these react upon their creator, conditioning his work, albeit always in unpredictable ways). His "critical-practical" conception of history appears entirely animated by a vigorous demand for human freedom and reveals in Mondolfo a broad culture.

Finally, a mention of the periodical (later a daily) Ordine nuovo is indispensable. After the First World War, it believed it discerned in "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, if sometimes paradoxical, intermediary between certain aspects of Italian idealist culture and the Marxist field). Ordine nuovo combated the more passively deterministic and politically reformist tendencies within Italian Marxism, ideologically anticipating the formation of the Communist Party.

While democratic socialism, in Italy as in other countries, has increasingly distanced itself from Marxism and historical materialism interpreted as dogmas (thus opening the door to revisions, discussions of new problems, and theoretical and practical questions connected with the defense of freedom), in the communist sphere, historical materialism has only managed to reintroduce from Eastern Europe, in less profound and more heavily dogmatic forms (though oscillating according to the practical needs of the day), ideas and debates that had experienced an interesting flourishing—whatever one's judgment of it—in Italy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.