Define and explain Marx’s conception of historical materialism. Discuss how the critical theorists used this idea when formulating their own concepts. Be sure to include Hegel and Lukács in your discussion.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

According to Marx’s theoretical system, “historical materialism,” “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (1848/1978:473). In other words, the dynamics of historical changes are rooted in opposing class interests that are themselves a product of the distribution of private property. Marx argued that the mode of economic production forms the “base” of society which, in turn, determines a society’s “social, political, and intellectual life processes in general” (Marx 1859/1978:4). Marx also maintained, “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” (1846/1978:172). How can the working class develop a revolutionary consciousness when a society’s prevailing or dominant ideas serve to legitimate the very system that they are allegedly destined to overthrow? Later Marxists noted that changing economic circumstances alone are incapable of mechanically transforming the consciousness of the working class. Horkheimer and his colleagues looked elsewhere for the sources of emancipation, and, not surprisingly, they found them in critical theory. This signaled a major shift from orthodox Marxism, as the critical theorists abandoned analyses of economic conditions and no longer cast the working class in the role of savior of humanity. Lukács’s groundbreaking book History and Class Consciousness (1923) played a pivotal role in the critical theorists’ reevaluation of Karl Marx’s concept of class consciousness and ideology. The critical theorists turned away from Marx’s doctrine of historical materialism to Hegelian idealism to better focus their analysis of culture and ideology, for it was not economic arrangements that were primarily responsible for the barbarism of humanity but ideas and the irrationality of reason.