Marx and Historical Materialism

Karl Marx rejected the philosophical Idealism of Hegel and the utopianism of the early socialists in favor of a theory of history thoroughly grounded in materialism. For Marx, ideas, cultures, political systems were all part of the superstructure of society while economics and the social relations of classes represented the base that truly drove history forward. Economic forces were the motor of history, not ideas, philosophies or ideologies, much less spiritual or supernatural forces. Capitalism had already broken up the old feudal order in Western Europe, and the Protestant Reformation, the great peasant rebellions, the English, French and American Revolutions were all signs indicating that a new capitalist political economy was coming into being, and that the bourgeoisie was seizing political power from the landed aristocracy. Capitalism was destroying the old culture of honor, chivalry and paternalism, replacing it with bourgeois values of free trade, the...
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