Marxist Theory Essays (5467 words) - Marxist Theory,

Marxist Theory Introduction to Marxist theory on history Historical Materialism: the marxist view of history The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed stood in constant opposition to each other, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the mutual ruin of the contending classes. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: The Communist Manifesto Section A: How society works 1. Making sense of history: looking behind the 'story' The ruling class portrays history as the doings of "great men", the role of governors and explorers, lists of wars and invasions and other "important events". History in school books is like a story - a succession of events without any general pattern. Marxists say that in order to make sense of the story of history - what people, famous or not, actually did - we have to understand the overall economic and social context to show why they acted in the way they did. Take for example the American Civil War of 1861-65. What do most people know about this war? Northern Americans, the Union, fought against the Southern Confederates; Bluecoats fought Greycoats. Why? Most people would say, well, it was about slavery. The Union president, Abraham Lincoln, was against slavery, while the southerners were in favour of it. That's the myth; the northerners fighting slavery out of the goodness of their hearts. But Marxists would say there was a lot more to it than that. In fact the northern industrialists behind the Union were in bitter conflict with the big southern farmers who owned the slaves; most of these industrialists were racists and not very sympathetic to black slaves. The basic causes of the war were in this economic conflict between the to different sections of the US ruling class. Let's take the example of the English civil war of 1641-49. Most people know it was cavaliers against roundheads, parliament versus the crown, Oliver Cromwell versus Charles 1. But why? Who did parliament represent - whose interests? And who backed the king, and why? When we investigate this, we find that different class forces were involved. So, a Marxist analysis of the English civil war would try to explain the story of the war in terms of the class interests involved. This method of looking at things to discover the real class and social interests involved in events, of course is relevant to more contemporary events. Why did the US president George Bush start the Gulf war? To defend plucky little Kuwait against the monster Saddam? Marxists say no, this was just the propaganda; Bush started the war to defend the economic and political interests of the US, including the oil supplies from the area. Another example of how we try to look behind the surface events at the real story. So this is the first idea: Historical materialism is about discovering the class interests which determine how people act in history. Now read the following quote about the English civil war from someone who fought in it, and think how it relates to what we have discussed so far: "A very great part of the knights and gentlemen of England ... adhered to the King. And most of the tenants of these gentlemen, and also most of the poorest of the people, whom the others call the rabble, did follow the gentry and ere for the king. On the Parliament's side were (besides themselves) the smaller part of the gentry in most of the counties, and the greatest part of the tradesmen and freeholders and the middle sort of men, especially in those corporations and counties which depend on such manufactures". (Colonel Baxter: Autobiography) What Baxter is saying here is that the conflict was between the king and the aristocracy (supported by those most dependent on them) on the one hand: and the rising middle classes on the other. This of course is exactly the Marxist explanation of the Civil War. (See Christopher Hill: 'The English Revolution 1640'). 2. Different types of society The type of society we have now - capitalism - only started to come into existence about 350 years ago, first in Holland and England. But human society existed for hundreds of thousands of years before that. In societies before capitalism, the way people lived was different to what we know now. Before capitalism, in Western