HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2009

Historical materialism elevates the principle of the dialectical relationship between the particular and the general, which reveals the essence of phenomena, to the theoretical foundation of the dialectical understanding of history. – Leo Kofler, Geschichte und Dialektik

Historical materialism is the central concept of social analysis in the work of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Frederick Engels (1820-1895).

The core idea is that the political and intellectual history of human societies is shaped most importantly by the social and technical organization of economic production and exchange.

This view suggests that it is not principally intellectual ideas and knowledge that shape the structure and cultural values of social life, but rather the shape of social life, especially in the social organization of economic production, that chiefly shapes intellectual ideas and knowledge.

Historical materialism posits that relations of production which become stabilised and reproduce themselves are structures which can no longer be changed gradually, piecemeal. They are modes of production.

Historical materialism does not deny the individual’s free will, his attempts to make choices concerning his existence according to his individual passions, his interests as he understands them, his convictions, his moral options etc. What historical materialism does state is: (1) that these choices are strongly predetermined by the social framework (education, prevailing ideology and moral ’values’, variants of behaviour limited by material conditions etc.); (2) that the outcome of the collision of millions of different passions, interests and options is essentially a phenomenon of social logic and not of individual psychology. Here, class interests are predominant.

"For historical materialism, there exist no eternal, unchangeable forms in any social phenomena. For historical materialism, the “being” of each social phenomenon can only be recognized and understood in and through its “becoming”. - Ernest Mandel

Historical Materialism - Karl Marx - Part 2 - Ernest Mandel - internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article282

Historical Materialism and Supervenience
COLIN FARRELLY, University of Waterloo - Department of Political Science 
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Forthcoming
Abstract: In this paper, I put forth a new interpretation of historical materialism entitled the supervenient interpretation. Drawing on the insights of Analytical Marxism and utilizing the concept of supervenience, I advance two claims. Firstly, that Marx's synchronic materialism maintains that the superstructure supervene naturally on the economic structure. Secondly, that diachronic materialism maintains that the relations of production supervene naturally on the forces of production. Taken together, these two theses help bring to the fore the central tenets of historical materialism. Furthermore, they help resolve what I call the problem of reductionism and the problem of verification. - papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=586505

Mergers, Taxes, and Historical Materialism
AJAY K. MEHROTRA, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington - June 2006
Abstract: With the imminent revival of the corporate merger and acquisition (M&A) cycle, legal scholars and practitioners will surely be turning their attention to the broader legal conditions that can facilitate and frustrate corporate consolidations. Among the most salient legal issues, the tax treatment of corporate M&A transactions is one topic that is certain to garner increased consideration. More specifically, legal and financial professionals, as well as academics, will be concentrating on the economically significant tax benefits provided for specific types of corporate reorganizations. 
Under the current Internal Revenue Code, neither shareholders nor corporations recognize gain or loss on the exchange of stock or securities in transactions that fall under the tax law's definition of a corporate “reorganization.” In such transactions, taxpayers are permitted to exchange certain types of property without an immediate tax liability. Instead, they are taxed when they subsequently dispose of the exchanged property. In the context of corporate reorganizations, this tax preference, in effect, allows corporations and shareholders to defer the tax on the exchanges of stock and securities related to a reorganization. 
Since its enactment in 1919 at the end of World War One, scholars, lawyers, and policymakers have been debating the justifications for this corporate tax benefit. While there has been considerable disagreement over the years, the standard account contends that this provision was created to remove the tax frictions associated with, what the 1918 legislative history vividly referred to as, “purely paper” transactions. The conventional reasoning suggests that this exception was initially meant only for those minor corporate readjustments that were mere changes in form not substance – those transactions where shareholders simply traded different types of paper certificates of ownership without substantively altering the economic stake, and thus the risk, inherent in their original investments. 
In discounting more materialist explanations, the existing scholarly literature on the tax treatment of corporate reorganizations has elided the incremental historical processes that have radically transformed this tax law. Today, most legal commentators acknowledge that the tax rules governing corporate reorganizations provide managers and shareholders, as well as their legal and financial advisors, with a tremendous amount of flexibility in structuring these transactions. Through a gradual process of revision, the corporate reorganization tax rules have essentially been transformed from their origins as a narrow and formalistic exception to a modern version of elective corporate welfare. The primary purpose of this paper is to explain how and why this transformation came to be. 
This historical story about the reorganization preference, moreover, has present significance beyond explaining the development of American business law. For this narrative is also a case study of the larger legislative process. It shows how a typical legal regime is molded by the interactions of democratic institutions; that is, how the lawmaking process is shaped by the negotiations between Congress, the courts, and executive agencies. This historical tale illustrates, furthermore, the on-going dynamic that exists between law, economy, and society, revealing how laws can unwittingly create special interests - interests that often not only defy glib, easy categorization but also reshape the laws that created them. - papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913810

Historical Materialism and the repudiation of subjectivism
Paul Cockshott
I am an engineer, so I was naturally pleased when the leading materialist philosopher of today, Daniel Dennet came out in defence of the significance of the engineering viewpoint to philosophy1 . In what follows I will present some observations on the Materialism of Marx, from an engineers viewpoint - the materialism of a Watt, Shannon and Turing. - reality.gn.apc.org/polemic/op-phil.htm

The time Marxist philosophy was introduced into China and had its great influence was near the time of the foundation of CCP. As Marx put it: “A theory will only be realised in a people in so far as it is the realisation of what it needs.” Marxist philosophy, especially historical materialism, brightened the Chinese intellectuals who were seeking truth about the liberation of China at that time, and drew them to such a common understanding that “only Marxism can save China”. And the fact that Marxism was quickly taken to be the principle of CCP well demonstrated its political feature from the beginning. - Ye Ruxian

The politicizing of soviet philosophy led to academic hegemony and discrimination, which resulted in the abnormal development of Marxist philosophy in the soviet era. Although dialectical materialism and historical materialism thrived, the rest subjects didn’t achieve suitable attention, such as historical philosophy, cultural philosophy, philosophy of law, ethical philosophy, scientific philosophy, economic philosophy, administrating philosophy, political philosophy, social philosophy. - Li Shangde

Retrospection and Perspective of the Studies of the Controversy on the Social Nature in China
By Tan Qunyu
Abstract: From the end of 1920s to 1930s, with the influence of the historical materialism, a controversy on the social nature took place in China. It was the result of thought conflicts on the past and the present of China and the quality of the Chinese rural society, among many people and groups with different political and academic backgrounds. During the controversy, different factions included The New Life, The New Ideological Trend, The Motive Force, The Chinese County, and so on. According to different sociological theories at home and abroad, they gave various understandings about the social nature of China and reflected their dissimilar standpoints on the social future of China. The controversy offers us plenty of thought resources. To this important thought controversy, a mass of scholars from different countries, based on their different political requirements, the topics of their time and the popular international theories, analysed and explained the controversy from different perspectives. Their studies provide us lots of inspirations, but unfortunately, they failed to focus on the deep relationship among these facts and the changes of interpretation happened in different theories. Maybe what was neglected before can tell us more abundant and deep inspiration about the controversy.