Historical Materialism: Society & Social Theory

• Scientific knowledge of society includes general social theory, but converting this theory into a suprahistorical system imposed on historical reality should be avoided.
• Historical materialism is a guide for studying society, not a magical key; it studies general laws of social development and provides orienting principles.
• It's not applicable uniformly across countries or systems, as specific conditions vary.
• Historical materialism is integral to Marxism, translating philosophical principles into social theory as a basis for social research.
• These philosophical principles enable general social theory to serve as a scientific method for investigating social life.
• The core of scientific social theory is the materialist principle which involves:
  • Understanding social life through a materialist lens

Materialism in History and Society

• Recognition of society's material life, especially material production, as fundamental to social phenomena and the spiritual sphere
• The concept of materialism in history has various interpretations
• Some view it as self-evident, others as primitive or reject it entirely.
• Lenin emphasized the principle of materialism in history as crucial to sociology.
• Rejecting mythological explanations paved the way for natural sciences, similarly, moving beyond human consciousness to materialism is essential for objective social understanding.
• Materialism must be expressed through a conceptual system.
• Developing these concepts is a scientific endeavor similar to formulating the laws of mechanics by Galileo, Newton, and Lagrange.

Categories in Historical Materialism

• Historical materialism uses specific concepts, called categories, to express its laws and use natural forces in human endeavors.
• Categories are science's fundamental concepts reflecting essential aspects of its object of study.
• Social research, more than any science, examines society as a unit with diverse aspects and connections.
• Systems of concepts are needed to represent concrete reality in its diversity, movement, and development.
• Categories are derived from analysis and dissection of the object, reflecting aspects, properties, and connections.
• The development of categories enables an integral and concrete understanding of the research object
• Creating categories allows an understanding of the laws of the objective world
• Knowledge aims to reveal those laws and relationships
• Theoretical understanding is needed to move pass the surface phenomena
• Classifying them helps progress knowledge
• Objective laws are relationships between essences, reflected in scientific laws through category relationships, making category creation a logical necessity for defining scientific laws.
• Historical materialism's object must also be reflected in scientific categories; society has objective laws.
• Society is a unique research object.
• Natural science categories and general philosophical concepts can’t reflect social life's specific character.
• Historical materialism develops its categories using advancements from all social sciences.
• Research determines the composition of historical materialism categories either:
  • Aspects of social life common to all historical development (social being, consciousness, mode of production)
  • Internal unity and integrity of society at each stage (socioeconomic formation, primitive community system)
• Historical materialism uses categories reflecting aspects of social life specific to some formations (classes, State, politics, war) to understand their development.
• Society appears as a network of interconnected phenomena and processes.
• Categories are steps to understanding the world, helping to understand and dominate it.
• Historical materialism categories balance knowledge and provide support for further understanding of the unknown.
• Social categories help to assimilate real-world diversity and dominate complex social phenomena, which are both a result and a means of the knowledge process.
• Unlike other social sciences, historical materialism studies society as a whole, and is therefore a philosophical and methodological.
• The value of historical materialism lies in methodology to help understand social life alongside the practical activities of people.
• Historical materialism's categories and laws guide to understand the concrete reality with analysis from the categories and laws.
• Focus is to define the essential categories of science from the perspective of its objective content, and methodological value.
• This will serve to recognize and transform social life in the pursuit of understanding internal connections and integrity of historical processes.
• Broad concepts are translated into theory using the concepts of social being and social consciousness which are not the same as social being and individual consciousness.
• Social being is the life and character of society. In doing this Marx highlights objective special qualities of the object of study and how physics, biology, life, and society are linked.
• Material processes exist because of particular objective laws. Social being as the base of existence paves the way to understand society, and it shows materialism is important in society.
• Based out of societal material life we can extract ideas, conceptions, and theories which shape individual existence, spirituality.
• Consciousness is vital to social life, and the behavior of man is a result of active thought. Social character is a product of conscious being. Material dictates how we act, and it is complex and diverse

The Role of Activity

• The essence of the concepts regarding the social are a key question to sociologic theory; what is primary (material or spiritual).
• The answer is a base for the materialist conception of materialism
• Although key, the the concept of how we analyze social life is only possible by understanding fixed concepts.
• Society is in a constant state of flux which leads to our understanding of how our way of thought.

Dialectical Approach to Knowledge

• Some sociologists, historians, and politicians have taken inflexible approaches to concepts and expressions to understand events within society.
• They use specific terms as a means to categorize society, when the alternative is to use a philosophical premise and base arguments on evolution of society
• This is called the dialectal method

Dialectics and Social Study

• The dielectrics study of the human experience can inform social study. Impose an understanding of the subject through an examination, explaining what is going on, the impact of evolution
• The historical principle shows itself inside social examinations the society and human experience. As society always has a defined form, stability with its key concepts are important
• Using dialectical knowledge from society makes the application of the use of relativity. Reducing the dialectical view to relativity is fundamentally wrong; Lenin points out acknowledging the relativeness of human knowledge in the sense of being conditionally historical to our understanding
• Scientific knowledge gives objective truth that is delivered in relative incomplete ideas which allow progression and development
• Only recognising the relativity is exaggerated and idealism that negates objective facts
• Historical knowledge has the ability to achieve social and content through objective facts
• This convergence of the concept leads to the knowledge of the study of something. Dialectual materialism makes an organic union by combining principles

Material World

• Society exists to evolve by itself. Separation of the material world can identify particular systems
• Society as the focus contains the human subject. Social science must investigate society and understand the individual as a creator
• An understanding of science allows indifference and can use that ability to harm others
• Understanding of human affairs is crucial to understanding research, one that science must employ. Can social science make man the subject, and show their nature, world views
• That is the field of art and literature, science can examine those things through observation and action. Human activity must be broad
• This perspective turns man form thoughtful to thoughtless. Transformation of society and social character becomes evident as a result of material work
• Without activity there is no history, people, or society. Humanity is essentially practical and that understanding is vital to research
• In Marxist though action is linked with dialectics
• The most important is a dialectic-materialist interpretation itself
• The principles highlight the focus of object, the subject of the activity, and uses as an instrument to improve conditions of the subject

Society as Interconnected

• Action is not an easy element, but a collection of interaction between subjects of the material world like society and nature.
• In that action man has the ability to carry out objectives
• What is ideal becomes material. Action is characterized by the connection of ends that align with material
• Action also can determine the point of being able to understand subject and understanding the difference between the two concepts. This is paramount in a scientific theory
• Comparing the material and idealism is relative because both meet at an indestructible point. Action, in that unit causes the absolute argument of materialism to lose sense.
• Looking at the connection cannot be avoided and the rules of the material world
• Marx presents to incompatible ideas that are contradictory:
  • Historical process is a result of human action
  • societal life and development obey objective laws apart from human consciousness
• Man creates history and creative activity has be thought as an idea to explain the way things can evolve and progress.
• Victory in war, can the process be altered?
• A concept has to be a result of men's efforts and be reduced to non-objective values. Understanding the objective law and activity are essential, as well understanding that what's occurring is on a set path
• Social science exhibits both sides of the argument. To acknowledge is inevitable and what that entails is to place blind faith within luck. Rejecting that premise means action itself makes the law.

Dialectical Approach to Society

• What is that truth? Reject to unite effectively or otherwise? It can be only that one is the truth. The view that promotes fate as inevitable is wrong.
• Only those that recognize needs are the basis to know real history. This shows the absurd reality of the situation
• It is a result of action and there are issues to unravel. If there is good, there might be bad, that perspective leads to hell. The differences in the goals and objective are not controlled by the human being, but are the end result
• Objective laws do exist both around and society. To combine the work of men within the laws do not take away sense from creation, which requires the dialectic that unilateral thinking does not.
• Both societal and actions reproduce what had been. Conditions produce determined potentials and those depend on factors
• Progress requires to find the sum of the problems and turning into action. To say that we can separate is not correct
• The relation also creates a connection and laws within that history. Understanding leads to the key understanding of historical reality
• The theory regarding connections lies where there is indispensable work to live, improvements, and the need to secure the objective
• The material is modified through circumstances, that require specific methods to explain the context