The Marxist conception of history

Marx, although very active, never wrote theses or writings properly dedicated to his vision of history. He never applied his method of criticism to the explanation of history. However, in many of his writings, where he focuses on the analysis of the bourgeois economic model, the application of communism and the criticism of religion or philosophy, Marx shows us that the whole of his theory is applicable to the whole of history. Marxian theory is not an explanation of the present, but rather an apprehension of the past in order to explain all the better the mass mechanisms that take place. Here, we will apply ourselves to understand the Marxist materialist conception of history. Then we will see how it is applicable in a scientific interpretation of history according to the prism of historical materialism. Three major theories of history tend to clash. The first is a theological vision of history, where God is at the origin of everything, of our acts and that Destiny is written in advance. Our condition, our actions and even our thoughts are thus turned towards that divinity. This vision was little by little marginalized over time. The second vision, majority at the time of Marx and still very present nowadays, is the idealist vision of History. That is to say that the ideas and the Reason are the engine of the History. History advances as human opinions advance. Thus, if the ideas can evolve and advance, it means that History advances. This vision of History is notably advanced by Hegel who introduces the notion of dialectic. That is to say that History is explained by the continuous opposition of two forces, two movements. Marx will not oppose it at first, however he will make it evolve, and try to push the reasoning further. He does not question the importance of ideas, opinions or even that of the great historical figures, but above all he wants to know how these emerge and evolve. According to Marx, ideas are not the cause of History but the consequence, they are not the ones that determine the condition of Humans, but the Humans that determine them. It is in the German ideology that Marx expresses his idea best: “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness that determines consciousness” (Ideology 47), or again “It shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances” (Ideology 59). Thus, according to Marx, life determines the consciousness of Man which will act on history. It is the material condition of Man that will determine his thoughts, his ideas and his reflections. However, Marx goes even further in his reasoning. The first sentence of the Communist Manifesto begins as follows: “The history of all society up to now is the history of class struggles” (“Manifesto “1). According to him, it is the class struggle that is the motor of history. Marx determines a class according to the position of each one in the system of production. In all history he determines two great categories, the dominant ones, who hold the means of production and the dominated ones who do not possess them. Humans are thus differentiated from animals, because it is the alteration of Man by unequal production relations that produces History. He affirms that: “They [Men] themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence (…). By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life. ” (Ideology 42). Thanks to his theory of historical materialism, he will explain that it is the relations of production that determine the evolution of History. Indeed, humans being obliged, in society, to establish social relations, subsistence relations which are relations of production. These productive forces will gradually develop over time, and it is this evolution of the relations of production that will determine the evolution of history. The economic infrastructure, considered as the basis of society, will thus be composed of these modes of production, that is to say, of the relations of production, the way in which humans or social classes organize themselves to work nature, but also the degree of development of the productive forces. These infrastructures will then be at the origin of the political, legal and intellectual superstructures. Once again, it is the material conditions and the confrontations between individuals with different conditions that will be at the origin of human ideas and thoughts. Materialism thus precedes historical idealism. Marx explains in this way that "(. . . ) it [the materialist conception of history] does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material practice" (Ideology 58). The general idea behind the materialist conception is that the dominant ideas are those of the dominant class. The class that owns the means of production, that dominates the material conditions, also dominates the ideological and spiritual condition. In the German ideology, Marx said: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i. e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. " (Ideology 64). In addition, Marx applies his theory of historical materialism to explain the different passages of history. First, prehistory considered as a primitive communism where the class struggle does not exist because there is a collectivization of the production and the resources. (1859 Preface, 161). Then the history begins at the dawn of the first relations of forces between two classes, those are going to continue during the whole history. Thus, during Antiquity, the freemen dominated the slaves, and during the Middle Ages, the aristocracy dominated the serfs in the feudal system. The advent of capitalism via the bourgeois revolutions of the philosophers, will then transform the relationship of domination. It is now the bourgeoisie that dominates the proletarian working class. Therefore, in order to put an end to this millennial struggle, Marx advocates the application of communism. According to him, the capitalist regime is the most unequal and that's why he wants to provoke the advent of proletarian revolution, and to allow the reversal of the power relations. He thus initiates the concept of end of the history, which would be a practical implementation of the communism and an end of the class struggle. He affirms in this sense: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. ” (“Theses”2) In conclusion, Marx in many writings takes again and embellishes the materialist theory, which affirms that it is the human material condition which determines the human. Marx, will thus apply this method to the interpretation of the history, given that it is the Man who makes the History, the material conditions and the struggles between the various dominations of the relations of production, are engines of the