The Marxist view of history: Historical materialism
Published 2018-07-04
With their ideas of "scientific socialism", Marx and Engels provided the first real materialist analysis of how history develops, explaining that the motor force behind society's evolution is the class struggle and the drive to increase the humankind's productive forces.
In his talk, Josh contrasts the Marxist view of history with that traditionally taught in textbooks: on the one side, the idea that history is the product of 'Great Men'; and on the other side, the postmodern position, that history is just a series of unconnected and unrelated events.
Above all, Josh explains, it is only by understanding the forces and factors that drive history - and, ultimately, our lives - that we can hope to change the world around us and realise a revolutionary socialist alternative.
All Comments (21)
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This guy is a great speaker. Very interesting talk.
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Since our university doesn't have a Marxist society, it pleases me to listen to you all people. (From: Ambala, Haryana, India)
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Josh, this is a brilliant lecture... all cited materials were lucidly quoted and properly placed into the context.... it is very enlightening indeed to watch this... Greetings from Gaza...
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I really loved learning history as a kid and came up with the same conclusions as Marx did and just really started to realize that I was Marxist the whole time when this was discussed in Political Science class in college
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Not a marxist but quite good summary. Gave me some food for thought.
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"the accountant and the poet have the same mother" nice
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Without Marx anything is nothing. I learned thinking from him the first time. Dialectic and historic materialism is great!
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Not a Marxist but found this lecture interesting and well-delivered.
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Long live IMT❗long live Trotskyism ❗long live socialist revolution ‼
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Marxs analysis is so logical to me that its baffling how anyone could disagree.
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Workers of the world unite!! Long live Revolution!!
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Obviously this is amazing. I wish more of these amazing talks were given a visual /video overlay. I hope some comrade with the skills take time to do this.
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You should do closed captions for the hearing impaired. Or at least allow auto-captions.
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Thanks for this! I want to replay it to digest it better, but it reminds me of a talk by Evelyn Reed, author of Woman's Evolution, and a book called Historical Materialism.
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A suggestion for when you record future speeches, avoid a background with a face on it as the camera will continually switch focus between the real person and the face in the background.
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This is a beautiful video, very well done.
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A bit disappointed that the 1848 revolutions was not brought up in the analysis, as you could argue that it was a curtain raiser to the shift in capitalism and its development in relation to its inevitable contradiction involving its antagonism towards labour. A revolution that both occured to early and yet too late, as to its ramifications.
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One could say that Fuchiama's approach was 'teleological', explaining history as being determined by ,end-ststes'.
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This video really helps me and good explanation
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There is a bit of contradiction, in India Capitalism imported from West lives side by side to more ancient Feudal relations... Rather the surplus of Capitalism is enjoyed by very few who keep the rest denied to the advances. And yet there is no major revolutionary drive for people to better their lives...!
