Power, agency and historical change in historical materialism

Core Readings:

Karl Marx, ‘PrefaceLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Karl Marx, Selected Writings (ed. D. McLellan, Oxford, 1977), read preface.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Link opens in a new window, Link opens in a new windowread preamble and chapter 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians

Walter L. Adamson, 'Marxism and Historical Thought', in, A Companion to Western Historical Thought, ed. by Lloyd Kramer and Sarah Maza, pp. 205-222 ( CWHTLink opens in a new window) Link opens in a new window

Further Readings:

Cohen, G.,Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978).

Elster, J., An Introduction to Karl Marx (1986)

Fromm, Erich, Marx's Concept of Man (1961).

Giddens, A., Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber (1971)

Hall, S., ‘The “Political” and the “Economic” in Marx's Theory of Classes’, in A. Hunt (ed.), Class and Class Structure (1977), 15-60.

Stuart Hall, For A Marxism Without Guarantees (1983)

Hobsbawm, E. ‘Karl Marx's Contribution to Historiography’, in R. Blackburn (ed.), Ideology in Social Science: Readings in Critical Social Theory (1972), pp. 265-83

Hobsbawm, E., ‘Class Consciousness in History’, in I. Meszaros (ed.), Aspects of History and Class Consciousness (1971), pp. 5-21

Hobsbawm, E., ‘Introduction’, to K. Marx & F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition (1998), pp. 3-29

Hobsbawm, E., ‘Marx and History’, in E. Hobsbawm, On History (1997), pp. 157-70

Kellner, D., ‘The Obsolescence of Marxism?’, in B. Magnus & S. Cullenberg (ed.), Whither Marxism? Global Crises in International Perspective (1995), 3-30

Krieger, L., ‘Marx and Engels as Historians’, in B. Jessop & C. Malcolm-Brown (eds), Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought: Critical Assessments, Vol. II: Social Class and Class Conflict (1990), pp. 49-72.

McLellan, D., Marxism after Marx: An Introduction (1998).

Miller, R.W., Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power and History (1984).

Rigby, S., Marxism and History: A Critical Introduction (1987).

Schofield, Philipp, 'History and Marxism', in Peter Lambert and Phillipp Schofield (eds.), Making History, pp. 180-191.

Singer, Peter, Marx: A Very Short Introduction (2000).

Sperber, Jonathan. Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life (2013).

Whittam, J., ‘Karl Marx’, in J. Cannon (ed.), The Historian at Work (1980), pp. 86-103.

Seminar/Essay questions and gobbets:

Explain and discuss human agency and historical change according to historical materialism.
What is historical materialism? Is it simply a 'reductionist' view of human life?
Is historical materialism 'dead' today or are its ideas worthwhile to keep?
What is the concept of power in historical materialism?
'Today we are more alienated from ourselves as ever before.' Discuss.

‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848)
‘Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.’ (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848).
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” (Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859).
'Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.’ (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848).