Historical Materialism

In contrast to Hegel, who advocated a spiritual view of history and asserted that it is Idea that drives history, Marx asserted that it is material forces that drive history, and argued for the “materialist view of history,” or “historical materialism” (also called the “revolutionary view of history”). According to the materialist view of history, what drives history is the development of the productive forces, rather than the development of the Idea or spirit. Corresponding to the development of productive forces, certain relations of production are established. Whereas the productive forces develop steadily, however, the relations of production, once established, become fixed, and eventually turn into fetters against the further development of productive forces. Therefore, class struggle takes place between the class that seeks to maintain the old relations of production (ruling class) and the class that seeks new relations of production (ruled class). Accordingly, history has been a history of class struggle. In capitalist society, where this class struggle reaches its peak, revolution occurs in which the proletariat, the ruled class, overthrows the bourgeoisie, the ruling class. As a result, the classless Communist society, which is the “kingdom of freedom” without classes, is realized.

As shown by the fall of Communism, it becomes obvious that the materialist view of history was completely erroneous. When one closely examines this theory, all the laws of history presented by this view are found to be no more than sheer dogma. For example, the development of productive forces is regarded as a material development, but no materialistic dialectical explanation is given concerning how the productive forces develop. Also, according to this view, human history is the history of social changes through class struggles. Nevertheless, there was not a single case in which a society was actually changed by a class struggle. Thus, the materialist view of history has proved to be completely false.