Historical Materialism within Western Marxism: The Reflections on the Fate of the Concept

Occupation: Leading Research Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the RAS, Deputy Director of the Eurasian Center for Big History and System Forecasting, Senior Research Associate of the Laboratory of monitoring the risks of social and political instability
Affiliation:
The Institute of Oriental Studies of the RAS
The Eurasian Center for Big History and System Forecasting
The Laboratory of monitoring the risks of social and political instability at National Research University Higher School of Economics

Journal name

Voprosy filosofii

Edition

Issue 10

Pages

90-101

Abstract

The article presents a survey on the history of the Western studies within historical materialism framework starting from the end of the 19th century at the general background of the fate of the Western Marxism and its crisis after the collapse of socialism. The author shows the waves of the Western Marxists' attenuating and increasing interest in historical materialism. The article also studies academic and intellectual merits of historical materialism. The author argues that the methodology of historical materialism has many valuable findings and conclusions. A peculiar attention is paid to Marx’s conclusion that the changing developmental level of productive forces inevitably leads to changes in all other spheres of societal life; moreover, these changes proceeds far from automatically and immediately but via the resolution of structural and systemic crisis in a society.

The author makes a conclusion that today one can hardly work within the framework of historical materialism conception since many of its postulates should be revised. On the other hand, today the fate of historical materialism and Marxism is defined by a certain paradox: its influence increases along with the merge with other theories, therefore they, nevertheless, continue to exist. There are defined three directions within social science which are clearly associated with historical materialism. Since it has become a part of the general intellectual legacy one can figuratively speak about its genetic drift.

Keywords

Karl Marx, historical materialism, Western Marxism, productive forces, productive relations, basis, superstructure, Marxist historiography, post-historical materialism, methodology, general intellectual legacy, driving forces of historical process

Publication date

23.11.2018

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GOST	Grinin L. Historical Materialism within Western Marxism: The Reflections on the Fate of the Concept // Voprosy filosofii – 2018. – Issue 10 C. 90-101 [Electronic resource]. URL: http://ras.jes.su/vphil/s207987840000439-1-1-en (circulation date: 05.11.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S004287440001153-3
MLA	Grinin, Leonid "Historical Materialism within Western Marxism: The Reflections on the Fate of the Concept." Voprosy filosofii 10 (2018):90-101. DOI: 10.31857/S004287440001153-3
APA	Grinin L. (2018). Historical Materialism within Western Marxism: The Reflections on the Fate of the Concept. Voprosy filosofii (10), pp.90-101 DOI: 10.31857/S004287440001153-3

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