Karl Marx Historical Materialism.

Marx's materialist theory of history

Marx's theory of history is called 'historical materialism' because of his belief that economics (material goods) determine how history evolves, not ideology, personality, or other popular theories of the 19th century when he wrote. "Most struggles in history are class struggles, even though the participants profess other goals. For example, Protestantism reflects the rising capitalist class" (McCarthy 1995). Marx wrote that history evolves as a series of class struggles between the haves and the have-nots. In his own era, the 'haves' were the bourgeois while the 'have-nots' were the proletariat, or the factory workers. The proletariat lived in a continual state of exploitation by the bourgeois. The bourgeois did not work but rather only owned the means of production. The proletariat slaved away, but did not own the fruits of their labor. They merely rented their labor to the factory owners...
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