Historical Materialism and Alienation in Marxist Theory
Historical Materialism: A Marxist Perspective
Historical materialism is the Marxist science of history and affirms man as the protagonist of history. It asserts two key ideas: First, the relationships that man establishes with nature and with other men are material relations. Men “extract” from nature their means of subsistence (e.g., minerals from mines, iron from fields, wheat from the land). Subsequently, men produce and exchange material goods to meet their material needs. Marx calls this the social production of life. These relationships ultimately give rise to the ideology and legal-political structure of the state. Therefore, it is a dialectical and historical materialism.
Marxist materialism asserts that the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods are the root of how men develop their mentality, laws, and the way they govern society. Marxist historical materialism interprets history through the material: the material, through a dialectical process, makes history. That “material” is “the system of production of material goods” or “the economic relations of production.” Historical materialism, therefore, means that what determines human history are the economic relations of production, as the mode of production of material life conditions the process of social, political, and spiritual life.
Materialism is a scientific theory about the formation and development of society. The development of society can be explained from the economic perspective, from the production of material goods. The basis of all social order is in production, and since this explains the whole of history, production is the activity that creates tangible goods for a living.
Factors of Production
Factors of production are the elements involved in the production process:
- Process of work: This is the process by which an object is transformed into a useful product. It consists of:
- The object on which one works (raw material).
- The means of labor (tools).
- The labor force: The human energy used.
- Social production relations: These are the relations established between the owners of the means of production and labor. These relationships are:
- Conflicting: Exploited vs. exploiter (master-slave, capitalist-worker). They are exploitative because the worker sells his labor at the price and conditions established by the owner of the means of production.
- Antagonistic: Some defend the ownership of the means of production as something exclusive, while others defend these means as a collective.
Alienation in Marxist Thought
For Marx, the subject of history is man who realizes himself through his work. Work is the creative activity of man. The alienated man lives, but the alienation of religion is secondary, derivative: this disappears when economic alienation, which is the root of other alienations, is removed.
Man is primarily productive work, creative work. The working man creates himself; he develops his own power and transforms nature. In work, man projects his productive activity onto the products of his labor: each product contains something of his being, his human energy, qualities, imagination, effort, and mind. Ultimately, the product has a human face. Therefore, we can understand the man of the Neolithic period because we can study what he produced (dolmens, menhirs, etc.). In these products, man is known because he is reflected in them; thus, matter is humanized: the personality of the worker is registered in the product.
If the separation between the worker and the work necessary for work to exist is not suppressed, if these distances are not reduced, if there is no reconciliation or reunion, the worker is alienated, separated from himself. This is because the work product is himself; the man at work becomes a work product, a commodity sold in the market. If there is no reunion, the personality is broken; it is alienated.
The Purpose of Work and the Reality of Alienation
What is the purpose? That man, through the use of products in the production work of life, would be helped to live (food, clothing, health, etc.). However, what happens is the opposite: examining history reveals that men are not creating themselves through productive work as it has developed historically.
Consequences of Alienation
- The product of their work: Considering the products of their work as something distinct from themselves, as a reality separate from the worker, there is a distancing from oneself, a tear in one’s own person, a split between the worker and his products.
- The owners of the means of production: The worker sells his labor to another being other than himself, who uses this labor for profit. Since a human being creates himself through productive activity, having to sell his own activity to another means selling his own personality, doing what the other wants: thus, he becomes an instrument of another man. The owner of the means of production manipulates the personality of the worker for his own profit, and therefore, the worker is a “thing” in the hands of another (this is reification). The worker, by selling himself, is converted into capital.
The worker sells his productive power, his personality, so that the owners of the means of production can manage his productive activity. The human relations established between two persons (employer-worker) become conflictual, reified relations. They form two antagonistic social classes whose opposition is irreducible: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. If the work product does not return to the worker, he is alienated. This alienation occurs primarily under capitalism and cannot cease to exist while the capitalist system lasts, until the introduction of a socialist system.