Marx's interpretation of history

Description

The purpose of the present book is mainly to clarify rather than to criticize Marx’s interpretation of history. To write an adequate criticism would be a far-ranging and formidable task. It would be necessary to criticize his holistic method and use of heuristic models, his attempt to find laws of historical development, his predictions on the basis of these laws, his concept of man as an historical agent, and the relation of his theory of history to human values. Before undertaking such a criticism, one would need to understand what Marx says. There has been so much misunderstanding that the preliminary task of clarification is as difficult as it is essential. This task has been sufficient to undertake in the present book. Base and superstructure 3 1. The fundamentalist and the dialectical versions of the base-superstructure model 2. Summary of Marx's "materialist interpretation of history" 3. A non-reductive interpretation of the preface 4. Nature and human person 5. The conflict between the productive forces and the productive relations 6. The interpenetration of "science" and the economic base 7. The role of education in the productive process 8. Property, law, and the state 9. Ideology 10. The relation of art to base and superstructure 11. Other spheres of culture: religion, morals, and philosophy 12. Base-superstructure and organic totality Organic Structure 56 1. The organic totality model 2. How the conception of organic totality took shape in Marx's thought 3. Internal and external relations 4. Hierarchy 5. Lingering questions and an attempted answer Organic development 86 1. Historicism 2. Plato and Marx 3. Dialectic in Hegel and Marx 4. The historical dialectic of essence and existence 5. Alienation 6. The relation of alienation to the two models of historical interpretation 7. The objective stages of historical explanation 8. A multilinear and organic theory of history The abstract and the concrete 137 1. Marx and the expressivist movement 2. The expressivist influence of Schiller 3. Feuerbach on abstraction and concreteness 4. Hegel and Marx on abstraction and concreteness 5. Concreteness and abstraction in human life 6. The polemic against political abstraction 7. The polemic against economic abstraction Crisis and revolution 179 1. The relation of revolutionary crisis to models of historical explanation 2. Differing interpretations of Marx 3. The organic way of thinking about crisis 4. The concept of historical crisis 5. The outer dialectic: conflict between productive forces and productive relations 6. The inner dialectic of powers and needs 7. The economic system in the light of human needs 8. The future as history: revolution and reconstruction 9. Unsituated and situated freedom 10. The resurgence of the dialectical model 11. A backward glance Index 235