historical materialism
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Calque of German historischer Materialismus.
Its earliest extant attestation - in German - is in Engels's letter (dated 5 August 1890) to Conrad Schmidt.[1][2][3]
Its earliest extant public attestation - in English - is in Engels's 1892 "Introduction to the English Edition"[4][5] to his 1880 booklet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
Noun
[edit]historical materialism (uncountable)
- (Marxism) A methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, looking for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life.
- 1967 [1890 August 5], “Engels an Conrad Schmidt in Berlin”, in Marx-Engels-Werke, volume 37, page 437; translated as “Engels to Conrad Schmidt in Berlin”, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, volume 49, translation of original in German, 2001, page 8:
- Instead, the only use to which the cliché (anything can be turned into a cliché) of historical materialism has been put by all too many younger Germans is hastily to run up a jerry-built system out of their own relatively inadequate historical knowledge — for economic history is as yet in its infancy — thus becoming great prodigies in their own eyes.
- [original: Statt dessen aber dient die Phrase des historischen Materialismus (man kann eben alles zur Phrase machen) nur zu vielen jüngeren Deutschen nur dazu, ihre eignen relativ dürftigen historischen Kenntnisse - die ökonomische Geschichte liegt ja noch in den Windeln! - schleunigst systematisch zurechtzukonstruieren und sich dann sehr gewaltig vorzukommen.]
- 1892, Friedrich Engels, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, in Marxists Internet Archive, 1892 English Edition Introduction (General Introduction and the History of Materialism):
- And, thus, I hope even British respectability will not be overshocked if I use, in English as well as in so many other languages, the term "historical materialism", to designate that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another.
Antonyms
[edit]Translations
[edit]Translations
References
[edit]- ^ “Preface”, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, volume 49, 2001, page xix
- ^ “Engels to Conrad Schmidt in Berlin”, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, volume 49, 2001 [1890 August 5], page 8
- ^ “Engels an Conrad Schmidt in Berlin”, in Marx-Engels-Werke, volume 37, 1967 [1890 August 5], page 437
- ^ “Preface”, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, volume 27, 1990, page xxv
- ^ Friedrich Engels (1990) [1892] “Introduction to the English Edition (1892) of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, volume 27, pages 283, 289