Marxism: historical materialism

   Marx was a materialist is the sense that he believed we humans need material goods to survive, such as food and shelter. Different societies have different ways of obtaining these material goods. Marx believes that it is the necessity to satisfy these material needs, as opposed to the development of new ideas, that is the primal engine for the advancement of history. This is because humans will come together in groups in order to be more effective at obtaining material goods - it is self interest that motivates social relations - and therefore changes to social structures are impulsed by the same goal; when a better way to produce goods is found, this causes relations to change, but, as we will see, a "better way to produce" is not necessarily "better" for all individuals.

   Tribal societies had what he calls primitive communism, a system where all members work to obtain their necessities, which are shared more or less evenly because all goods were owned communally, since there was no concept of private property. They would do this through hunting or gathering. Marx views humans as animals that create instruments as a force of labour. These would include tools such as spears and axes, but with the emergence of private property the means of production become privatised, and this gives place to a ruling class that dominates over villagers. Colonial expansion then creates a new type of society: Marx calls it the ancient society, and it's the first to have exploitation; in its case, of slaves. Legally, the slaves are owned by the nobles and aristocrats, and they are seen as the means of production, instruments to produce material goods. For example, they'd build houses and castles and cultivate the land. In feudalism the exploited class would be the serfs who are legally owned by the feudal lords who own the land. In all societies, Marx argues, there is alienation: an alienated worker is set apart from the final product of his or her work and has little to no control over what this work is. In this way, a slave is forced to produce for the aristocrat and the serf for the lord, not for themselves. Nevertheless, since their owners want to preserve them healthy enough to continue working, they will provide them with basic necessities which they'll take from what they produced themselves, so in this sense they are not totally separated from their work. In capitalism, on the other hand, workers are the most alienated; the exploitation is from the bourgeoisie, who own the factories, to the proletariat, who although legally free, are obliged to sell their force of labour to the bourgeoisie in their pursue of subsistence. Division of labour has reached its maximum expression, so that each worker is a meaningless piece of a larger system of meaningless pieces that do the same over and over each day. They are stripped away from their humanity because they are only machines. Moreover, it is in capitalism that workers are completely separated from the product of their work. For example, a worker who participates in the creation of a watch doesn't receive anything from the watch: they are working for a salary with which they can buy whatever they want, and even if it is the watch they built, at the time of purchasing it they are consumers no different from anyone else who did not participate in its creation.