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Unit 11: Karl Marx: His Life and Works, Materialism and Dialectical Materialism

11.6 Economic Determinism Notes

Marx and Engels developed the materialistic conception of history to explain the law of human
development. Engels specifically linked the enterprise to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The
underlying assumption of the materialistic conception was the role played by economic factors,
which formed the base. Everything else belonged to the superstructure, which consisted of the
state, the law, government, art, culture and philosophy. Like Hegel, Marx saw history as progressing
towards a definitive and inevitable goal. In the sequence of world history, England represented
the “unconscious tool of history”.

Political Economy regards the proletarian ... like a horse, he must receive enough to
enable him to work . It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working as
a human being. —Marx

Our conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real processes of
production, starting out from the simple material production of life, and to comprehend
the form of intercourse connected with this and created by this (i.e., civil society in its
various stages), as the basis of all history; further, to show it in its action as state, and
so, from this starting point to explain the whole mass of different theoretical products
and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc., and trace their origins
and growth.
Marx regarded the mode of production as the economic base, the real foundation of society. The
mode of production consisted of the means or techniques of production, and the relationships that
people entered into with one another for production of goods and services. The economic base
conditioned and determined the superstructure. Writing in the German Ideology, he observed : “It
is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social
existence determines their existence”.
When the economic basis of society changed, there was a change in consciousness. Changes
within the economic base brought about consequent changes within the superstructure. Marx
observed :
At a certain stage of their development the material forces of production in society
come into 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 had
been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these
relations turn into their fetter. Then comes the period of social revolution. With the
change of the economic foundation the entire superstructure is more or less rapidly
transformed .
Marx’s materialism referred not only to matter, but also to economic and social relations. He said
the material forces of production came into conflict with the relations of production, but did not
explain the nature of that conflict, other than alluding to the fact that it could be a moral one. It
was moral, for it desired to create a humane and decent society free of exploitation, domination
and oppression.
Marx identified five stages of economic development known to history. These were Primitive
Communism, Slavery, Feudalism, Capitalism, and Communism. In each of these stages (except for
the final one), there were forces of contradiction which made revolutions inevitable. The given
status quo would be the thesis with conflict(s) symptomatic of an antithesis, and a solution in the

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