why do we study historical materialism?

Question

how can historical materialism help in better understanding of the evolution of history?

Answer 1

It helps in many cases, I'll give you two examples:

- the Civil War: A fight for freedom and democracy? Well, the northern states were experiencing fast industrialization, and modern corporations needed a working class, not slaves. You do the maths to find out the real reasons for the war now.

-the French Revolution: a question of Human Rights and Equality?
Well, maybe those who had gathered all the economic power ("les bourgeois", who were running trades or industries) were just pissed that all the political power was in the hands of the Nobles and the Clergy, who were quite unproductive, so they just manoeuvered very cleverly to use the popular discontents and turn their revolt for food into a Revolution...

Hope it helped.

Answer 2

Only to get a grasp of an influence that mattered for some people from c1870 to c1990, Communism.

From Wikipedia:
Frederick Engels wrote: "I use 'historical materialism' to designate the view of the course of history, which seeks the ultimate causes and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, with the consequent division of society into distinct classes and the struggles of these classes".

The idea of "class conflict" had just enough truth in it to be influential during the age when manufacturing dominated the economy. It is therefore worth historians' study.

The other answerer raises points well worth discussing historically, and those who agree with him/her might well say with similar cynicism that the US invaded Iraq so as to destabilise oil security and put up oil prices, in the interests of oil companies and of its allies in the House of Saud. Certainly there has to be some strange reason for trying to impose democracy on a country that has a Shiite majority and then trying to prevent the Shiites from taking power.

With the same cynicism, I wonder why the US backs Israel when oil stability and the end of terrorism in the West could both be achieved by selling that country down the river.

Answer 3

it can be a contemplate whether all of us could supply you a definitive reaction. The college the place I studied sociology seen itself to be Marxist/Marxian. instructors often decried the 'language of the pupil' and yet we, extra beneficial than the different branch, i'm attentive to used the main technical verbiage - jargon. i visit aim to describe Marx's concept of historic materialism for you yet once I became to texts on the project - initiating with a short article by way of Marx and Engels (in Fremantle, referred to under) they do no longer use the word 'materialist' or 'materialism' in the text textile and talk rather of 'aesthetics' - which to my ideas are actually not one and the comparable element. to that end, the two Marx and Engels couched their own writings in jargon. it may seem, that throughout the time of accordance to Engels, in the quantity edited by way of Feuer, the human universe is pushed completely by way of those issues that are 'tangible' and that human beings get section-tracked while emotions get into our way. back, one has to sift by way of verbiage and jargon to discover the 'meat' of those papers or short essays by way of Marx and Engels. Ourchronic to attempt for materialistic issues each and every so often ought to be readdressed or recommended in a diverse course. to that end materialism and the will for revolution could bypass hand-in-hand. in the 2d article, I cite, Engels expenditures many diverse philosophers, a lot of whom belong to the Age of the Enlightenment - contemporaries of Engels and Marx. One ought to be somewhat acquainted with the works of those philosophers (besides as a results of fact the artwork of Hegel) to have the skill to examine Engels and Marx with adequate of a 'serious eye' to appreciate despite if one consents with all it somewhat is being argued by way of those gents.