What is the materialist conception of history?

Friedrich Engels, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Friedrich Engels answers

The ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in their growing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.1 That sentence contains the whole of it, if you know how to read it. Production and, next to production, the exchange of things produced — this is the basis of every social order.2

In every society that has appeared in history, the distribution of wealth and with it the division of society into classes or estates are dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged.3 The causes of social transformation are to be sought not in philosophy but in the economics of each particular epoch.4

What follows from this is decisive. The growing recognition that existing social institutions are irrational and unjust — that reason has become unreason, and kindness a scourge — is only a sign that changes in the modes of production and exchange have silently been taking place, with which the social order adapted to earlier economic conditions is no longer in keeping.5

The sense of injustice is real; but it is the symptom, not the cause. And from this it also follows that the means of eliminating the abuses that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed relations of production themselves. These means are not to be invented out of one's brain, but discovered by the brain in the existing material facts of production.6

The historical confirmation came from the class struggles themselves. In 1831, the first working-class uprising took place in Lyons; between 1838 and 1842, the first national working-class movement, that of the English Chartists, reached its height.7 Facts more and more strenuously gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeois economics on the identity of the interests of capital and labor, on the general harmony and general prosperity flowing from free competition.8

The old idealist conception of history knew nothing of class struggles based on material interests — production and all economic relations appeared in it only as incidental, subordinate elements in the "history of civilization." Once we cleared that away, it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles, and that these warring classes are always the products of the relations of production and exchange — in a word, of the economic conditions of their time.910

The economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period.11 Hegel had freed history from metaphysics and made it dialectical; but his conception remained essentially idealistic.

Now idealism was driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history, and a method found of explaining man's "knowing" by his "being," instead of, as heretofore, his "being" by his "knowing." What remains of all earlier philosophy, once this is grasped, is the science of thought and its laws — formal logic and dialectics.12 Everything else merges into the positive science of nature and history.13

The materialist conception of history is not a doctrine to be memorized; it is a method of investigation, and its results are only as good as the empirical study of actual production relations that it demands.

Sources

  1. the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in their growing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.
    Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 65
  2. The materialist conception of history starts from the principle that production and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of every social order.
    Anti-Dühring, p. 295
  3. in every society that has appeared in history, the distribution of wealth and with it the division of society into classes or estates are dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged.
    Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 65
  4. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.
    Anti-Dühring, p. 295
  5. The growing recognition that existing social institutions are irrational and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and kindness a scourge, is only a sign that changes in the modes of production and exchange have silently been taking place with which the social order adapted to earlier economic conditions is no longer in keeping.
    Anti-Dühring, p. 295
  6. the means of eliminating the abuses that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed relations of production themselves. These means are not to be invented out of one's brain, but discovered by the brain in the existing material facts of production.
    Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 65
  7. In 1831, the first working-class rising took place in Lyons; between 1838 and 1842, the first national working-class movement, that of the English Chartists, reached its height.
    Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
  8. Facts more and more strenuously gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeois economics on the identity of the interests of capital and labor, on the general harmony and general prosperity flowing from free competition.
    Anti-Dühring, pp. 24–25
  9. the old idealist conception of history, which was not yet dislodged, knew nothing of class struggles based on material interests, indeed knew nothing at all of material interests; production and all economic relations appeared in it only as incidental, subordinate elements in the 'history of civilization.'
    Anti-Dühring, pp. 24–25
  10. it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange--in a word, of the economic conditions of their time.
    Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
  11. the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period.
    Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
  12. Hegel had freed history from metaphysics--he had made it dialectic; but his conception of history was essentially idealistic. But now idealism was driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history; now a materialistic treatment of history was propounded, and a method found of explaining man's 'knowing' by his 'being,' instead of, as heretofore, his 'being' by his 'knowing.'
    Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
  13. All that remains in an independent state from all earlier philosophy is the science of thought and its laws—formal logic and dialectics. Everything else merges into the positive science of nature and history.
    Anti-Dühring, pp. 24–25