Historical materialism (historical materialism)
Historical materialism is a science about the general law of human social development. An important part of Marxist philosophy. Scientific view of social history and general methodology of understanding and transforming society. Also known as historical materialism.
Conceptual description
Historical materialism was founded by Marx and Engels. They call it "historical materialism" or "historical materialism". In the introduction of the English version of 1892 Socialism from Utopia to Science, Engels used the term "historical materialism" to express this scientific view of social history. Lenin called historical materialism "scientific sociology", "the only scientific view of history" and "the only scientific method of social science is materialistic method". E Bernstein and others distorted it as economic materialism.
Historical view is people's fundamental view of social history. Before the birth of historical materialism, people always explained historical events and historical development from the will of God, the thoughts of outstanding figures or some secret reason, that is, some spiritual factor. The result is either a misinterpretation of human history or a complete disregard for human history. The bourgeois view of history interprets history from the viewpoint of "man", which is a great progress compared with the theological view of explaining history with the will of God in the Middle Ages. But the person it understands is an abstract person, that is, a biological person who stands in front of nature in isolation from historical development conditions and specific social relations, or a mysterious "self-consciousness" that loses perceptual existence. Starting from such an abstract person, the motive force of historical development and social progress must be attributed to the goodness of human nature or mysterious rationality. This is still to explain history with non-historical factors and things people imagine and think about, so it is impossible to correctly understand history and the objects of historical research.
The method of historical materialism to observe social history is different from all previous historical theories. It recognizes that the subject of history is people, and history is only the activities of people who pursue their own goals. However, historical materialism says that people are not abstract people in some fantasy isolation and loneliness, but living people in the process of development that can be observed through experience in reality. Historical materialism holds that realistic people are just personification of certain social relations, and all their properties and activities always depend on their material living conditions. Only by examining people and their activities from the surrounding material living conditions that make people like this can we describe the real process of human development on the basis of real history. The method of historical materialism to investigate problems clearly stipulates that its research object is the general law of social development. Unlike the specific social science, which focuses on a local field and an individual aspect of social life, it focuses on the study of the general structure and development law of society as a whole. Its task is to provide the theoretical basis of historical view and methodology for each specific social science.