Historical Theory

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If the familiar organisation with its traditional routine is disrupted, it either vanishes or is rebuilt on the old pattern. In Babylon, Egypt, the Alexandrian Empire and Rome the supreme ruling force of the universe and the forceful ruler of the realm were regarded as equally divine. Hegel challenged this view and argued that human nature as well as the formulations of art, science and the institutions of the state and its codes, laws and norms were all defined by their history and could only be understood by examining their historical development. Inspired by Enlightenment thinkers, especially Condorcet, the utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) formulated his own materialist interpretation of history, similar to those later used in Marxism, analyzing historical epochs based on their level of technology and organization and dividing them between eras of slavery, serfdom, and finally wage labor.

will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. The necessities of history are not always the same; they change into their opposites as one stage succeeds another.However, his epoch-making insights have influenced all subsequent thought and writing about history. Individuals, influential or insignificant, and ideas, innovating or traditional, are essential parts of society; their roles in the making of history have to be taken into account. b) The nature of the production relations of a society is explained by the level of development of its productive forces (the Primacy Thesis proper). Yet it demonstrates how generalised thought about the historical process can retrogress after making an immense leap forward.

There is nothing, notes Professor Leo Oppenhelm, “that would attest the awareness of the scribes of the existence of a historical continuum in the Mesopotamian civilisation”. This position combines idealism with elitism, the spirit using geniuses, or the creative minority, as the agency which redeems the masses. Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French "Marxists" of the late 70s: "All I know is that I am not a Marxist. constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible, and they then deem themselves something very tremendous.

While most other thinkers did not dispute that divine providence ultimately shaped the course of events, they were far more concerned with the mundane ways and means through which history operated. This exceptionally placed personage was supposedly endowed with the capacity for moulding events as he willed. Several centuries later Herodotus, the first anthropologist as well as the father of history, gathered valuable information on the customs of the Mediterranean peoples living in savagery, barbarism and civilisation. Marx's view of history is shaped by his engagement with the intellectual and philosophical movement known as the Age of Enlightenment and the profound scientific, political, economic and social transformations that took place in Britain and other parts of Europe in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

The discrimination of the passage of time into a well-defined past, present and future is rooted in the evolution of the organisation of labour. The actual historical process is not predetermined but depends on class struggle, especially the elevation of class consciousness and organization of the working class. This was the Great God, or theological version of history which asserted that divine beings directed human affairs together with the rest of the cosmos. The French historians of the early 19th century acquired a deeper insight into the economic conditioning of the historical process through their studies of the English and French revolutions. Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other.As early as the eighth century BC the poet Hesiod talked about the copper age that had preceded the iron one. They became more and more sluggish and shortsighted in the fields of sociology and history because discovery of the underlying causes of change in these fields could only threaten the continuance of capitalist domination. This superstructure not only has its origin in the economic base, but its features also ultimately correspond to the character and development of that economic base, i.

Not until the truthful elements in these two contrary lines of thought converged and combined in the minds of Marx and Engels in the middle of the 19th century was a rounded conception of history produced that was solidly anchored in the dialectical development of the material conditions of social existence from the emergence of early man to contemporary life. Answer a handful of multiple-choice questions to see which statistical method is best for your data. An international team of experts both discuss the basis of their topic and present their own view, offering the reader a cutting-edge contribution while ensuring their chapters are of interest to both students and specialists in the field of historical theory and engaging with the very nature of historical thought, the metaphysics of historical existence, the politics of history-writing, and the intelligibility of the historical process. Every type of state is a powerful institution of the ruling class; the state is an instrument which one class uses to secure its rule and enforce its preferred relations of production and its exploitation onto society. Science has to delve into the nuclear core of society where the real forces which determine the direction of history are at work.In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!