I deliberately stress the word revitalize to reassert the view that underpinned Marx's own doctoral dissertation on Epicurean vitalism and dissipate commonly held views of
historical materialism as an irredeemably deterministic and anthropocentric framework (see Burns, 2000; Foster, 2000, chapter 4).
Kobo turns his gaze to imperialism, US-Japan relations, literary theory, and
historical materialism,
Combining elements of German idealism or Romanticism,
historical materialism and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism, and is associated with the Frankfurt School.
Chapters six though nine each focus on a particular concept that is key to Horkheimer's views from 1931 to 1941: the concept of
historical materialism (chapter 6); the anthropology of the bourgeois epoch (chapter 7); the dialectical logic (chapter 8); and state capitalism (chapter 9).
Historical materialism still obtained on the left but structuralist enforcers of dogma had a theoretical stranglehold on Marxist history imagined as a reflex of economic forces.
David Fernbach and the Brill
Historical Materialism series should be congratulated for publishing this volume.
As always with Marx and his social theory, there is a future-oriented dimension to
historical materialism.
1) I nevertheless wish to argue, from a historical materialist perspective, that speculative realism has misplaced speculation, albeit in a manner that might prompt its necessary reconsideration within
historical materialism.
David Lockwood reinterprets Russian developments from 1905 to 1917 (the book's actual chronological range) using the tools of
historical materialism, so as "to draw some conclusions that are useful for Marxism in an era that is leaving behind the domination of states and entering the domination of capital" (243).
The publication of Red Planets was complemented by a panel at the recent
Historical Materialism conference in November 2009, chaired by co-editor China Mieville and featuring papers from contributors (and fellow co-editor) Mark Bould, Carl Freedman and Matthew Beaumont, at which the affinity between science fiction and Marxism was forcefully and often eloquently rearticulated.
According to Marx's doctrine of
historical materialism, people's consciousness is determined by the mode of production of material life.
This, it is claimed, is in fundamental conflict with Marx's
historical materialism, which emphasizes that society's economic base is the primary or only cause of social change.
