Marxist historiography

Historical materialism

Historical materialism is a methodology for understanding human societies and their development over time. Marx's theory of history locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the ways humans labour together to produce their livelihoods. He argued that new technologies and methods of production eventually create new social classes, leading to political crises that can threaten the established order. This view contrasts with the "great man" theory of history, which attributes historical change to the actions of kings, queens, emperors, generals, or religious leaders, as well as with the idea that history is primarily shaped by great ideas such as reason or democracy.

Marx asserted that the material conditions of a society's mode of production—its productive forces and relations of production—fundamentally determine its organization and development, including its political commitments, cultural ideas, and values. He saw a fundamental conflict between the class that creates society's wealth and the class that owns or controls the means of production, decides how resources are used, and holds political and military power.

Historical materialism challenges the notion that capitalism is the end of history, and since Marx's time the theory has been modified and expanded into many Marxist and non-Marxist variants.

In the West

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels initially worked in relative isolation from the mainstream, but by the turn of the twentieth century Marxist thought had become a prominent opposition to idealist traditions. An early historian working in this tradition was R. H. Tawney, whose works The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism reflected ethical concerns in economic history, focusing on the enclosure of land in England and Max Weber's thesis on Protestantism and capitalism.

In 1946, a circle of historians within the Communist Party of Great Britain formed, becoming an influential cluster of British Marxist historians interested in history from below and class structure in early capitalist society. Some members, notably Christopher Hill and E. P. Thompson, left the CPGB after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, but their work continued the common points of British Marxist historiography, emphasizing the subjective determination of history.

Thompson engaged Althusser in The Poverty of Theory, arguing that Althusser's theory overdetermined history and left no space for revolt. Hill's studies on 17th-century English history, including Puritanism and Revolution, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, and The World Turned Upside Down, were widely recognized as representative of Marxist historiography. Thompson pioneered history from below in The Making of the English Working Class, focusing on the forgotten history of the first working-class political left in the late-18th and early-19th centuries.

In the Soviet Union

Soviet-era historiography was deeply influenced by Marxism, maintaining that the moving forces of history are determined by material production and the rise of different socioeconomic formations. Applying this perspective to slavery and feudalism was a major methodological principle of orthodox Marxist historiography, which predicted the abolition of capitalism through a socialist revolution by the working class. Soviet historians believed Marxist–Leninist theory permitted the application of dialectical and historical materialism in studying historical events.

However, strict control by authorities for propaganda purposes significantly influenced Soviet historiography, leading to overdetermined historical writing. Historians tended to avoid contemporary history after 1903, focusing instead on pre-modern history before 1850, and limited their creative output to avoid prosecution. Since the late 1930s, Soviet historiography treated the party line and reality as identical, serving a specific political and ideological agenda and commonly employing historical negationism.

In the 1930s, historical archives were closed and original research severely restricted. Historians were required to pepper their works with references to Stalin and other Marxist–Leninist classics and to pass judgment on pre-revolution Russian figures as prescribed by the Party. Nikita Khrushchev commented that historians were dangerous and had to be watched. The Soviet interpretation of Marxism predetermined much research, and scholars could not offer non-Marxist theoretical explanations that did not fit the party's official ideology, even when alternate theories had greater explanatory power.

In China

Most Chinese history published in the People's Republic of China is based on a Marxist interpretation, first applied in the 1920s by scholars such as Guo Moruo and becoming orthodoxy after 1949. This view holds that history is governed by universal laws and that a society moves through stages driven by class struggle: slave society, feudal society, capitalist society, socialist society, and world communist society. The official historical view associates each stage with a particular era in Chinese history, from labour society in the Xia to Shang dynasties, through feudal and semi-colonial periods, to capitalist society in the Republican era and socialist society from 1949 onward.

Because of the Chinese Communist Party's strength and the importance of this interpretation in legitimizing its rule, it was for many years difficult for historians to argue for non-Marxist or anti-Marxist interpretations. However, the Marxist historical framework is surprisingly flexible, allowing alternative theories to be modified with language that does not challenge it. Partly due to Mao Zedong's interest, historians in the 1950s took a special interest in peasant rebellions and compiled documentary histories to examine them.