INTRODUCTION TO MARXISM-LENINISM

SECTION I: The Fundamentals of Marxist Philosophy

Lesson 3 - The Materialist Conception of History

TEXTS FOR DISCUSSION

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces.

The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or -what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relation turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we cannot judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production....”

[7] (Marx, preface to Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy)

Questions:

1. What are the processes of production in capitalism?
2. How do these processes of production set the parameters of people’s social relations and ideas?
3. What causes an epoch of social revolution? Has capitalism reached that stage? Give reasons.
4. Primitive communal, slave, feudal capitalist and socialist systems have all been stages in humankind’s progress. What are the main factors that have brought these changes about?
5. How do the laws of dialectical materialism apply to human society?

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Further and Recommended Reading

Historical Materialism (Marxist Internet Archive: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of Terms)

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