I've been trying to read more of Marx lately and I've found it difficult to pinpoint exactly what his "materialist conception of history" means. I understand the base/superstructure logic but I don't really understand his broader logic of history.
From what I've gathered in the German Ideology, Marx believes that humans have needs, that they perform labour to satisfy those needs, and that because they are social animals, they enter certain arrangements in order to organize their labor. My reading of historical change was originally simply thatthis arrangement can become irrational for certain classes, and that they as such enter conflict over the control of production. For example, the feudal system was upheld by the nobility, but this arrangement wasn't rational for the rising bourgeoisie, and they as such created a period of conflict over the maintenance of feudal traditions.
However, in the preface of "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy", Marx establishes that historical changes occur when :
>"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"
This imo contradicts my reading. It's not classes which fight over control of production, because they don't want to change the system/recognize themselves in the system, it's that new technological developments are "hindered" by existing relations of production.
Any thoughts ?
>>2932622One possible explanation I've found is that technological developments enables one class to rethink the rationality of the arrangement that they've entered themselves in. A serf can recognize the logic and rationality for himself and his class of the feudal system, but might percieve it differently if he witnesses the potential unleashed by industrialization. In this sense, the "material productive forces" wouldn't be the technology or tools, but rather the people using those tools and technology. Their development would simply mean one class seeking to change production, only to be hindered by existing property rights.
>>2932622>This imo contradicts my readingI don't think so. Development is not nessecarily purely technological in the narrow sense. Development can simply be having
more than enough of stuff or developing new methods with the same tools, something you realize here.
>>2932623>In this sense, the "material productive forces" wouldn't be the technology or tools, but rather the people using those tools and technology. The development of productive forces under capitalism tend towards socializing production. The complexity and global reach of logistics networks nessecitates such organization. However, this socialized production is constrained by the whims of private ownership of the means of production, the competing interests of various national bourgeoisie and to the market in general. How irrational!
That is
>At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of productionPeople are material too!
>>2932630Yeah it might be a structural vs phenomenal discrepancy. The underlying potential and direction of production changes by virtue of the world's contingency, but this manifests itself through class struggle as new interests emerges in tandem with underlying changes. For instance, you could say that the development of naval science, of travel possibilities and trade potential created the bourgeoisie, which then sought to reorganize production around their special interest, leading to clashes over the control of production
>it's that new technological developments are "hindered" by existing relations of production. Yes – Marx for instance sees that capitalism develops from the profit motive, up to a point, but has now become limited to profit, and so the proletariat must struggle to control productivity by political power (e.g. the very medium of exchange value is the limit of production by limiting circulation – while Proudhonists seek to reform circulation by currency reforms, Marx sees that it must all begin in production itself):
<Vulgar socialism […] has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htmSo, it's about contradictions leading to concrete struggles in society:
<In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htmDutt perceives war as a result of this need to periodically destroy the means of production – the promise of peace is a promise of productivity.
>>2932640>The underlying potential and direction of production changes by virtue of the world's contingency, but this manifests itself through class struggle as new interests emerges in tandem with underlying changes.<The resolution of structural crises in a mode of production always depends on the direct intervention of the class struggle; but the germination of such crises may well take all social classes by surprise in a given historical totality, by deriving from other structural levels of it than their own immediate confrontation. It is their clash within the unfolding emergency which, as wc shall see in the case of the feudal crisis, then determines its outcomet. Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism
Maybe reading a concrete application of the materialist conception of history like his will help you develop a better understanding of it?
>The devastating effects of English industry, when contemplated with regard to India, a country as vast as Europe, and containing 150 millions of acres, are palpable and confounding. But we must not forget that they are only the organic results of the whole system of production as it is now constituted. That production rests on the supreme rule of capital. The centralization of capital is essential to the existence of capital as an independent power. The destructive influence of that centralization upon the markets of the world does but reveal, in the most gigantic dimensions, the inherent organic laws of political economy now at work in every civilized town.
<The bourgeois period of history has to create the material basis of the new world—on the one hand universal intercourse founded upon the mutual dependency of mankind, and the means of that intercourse; on the other hand the development of the productive powers of man and the transformation of material production into a scientific domination of natural agencies. Bourgeois industry and commerce create these material conditions of a new world in the same way as geological revolutions have created the surface of the earth. When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers of production, and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2026/09/08/the-future-results-of-british-rule-in-india-by-karl-marx-from-the-new-york-daily-tribune-vol-13-no-3840-august-8-1853/ There's a tension in Marxist rhetoric on whether history is just a blind procession of technology (the windmill gives you feudal lords, the steam engine gives you industrial capitalists, electrification and soviet power gives you communism) vs. at some point humans have to seize society by the throat and make history happen because history isn't a god outside society and actually depends on human will. In the former mode they write like socialism is inevitable, like when Eugene Debs said despite all the setbacks socialism is as sure to come as the rising sun.