Understanding Historical Materialism

Historical materialism is the science of Marxism. It’s the theory developed by Marx and Engels that explains how human societies develop and change over time based on economic organization. Like Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection, historical materialism serves as a powerful tool in understanding the world around us. It explains why societies are arranged the way that they are, why there are classes, why revolutions happen—and when taken together with the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism, historical materialism becomes a rigorous scientific tool for analyzing the entire world and, most importantly, acting within it. 

Everybody on this planet would benefit greatly from having a clear understanding of historical materialism, and every Marxist should at least understand the basics of it. And in this episode, we’re going to provide an introductory exploration of historical materialism, along with dialectical materialism, which is deeply intertwined with the former. And we’ve brought on the perfect guest to help us to do this. 

Torkil Lauesen is an activist and a writer from Denmark who has spent the last fifty years immersed in the study and praxis of historical materialism. Torkil spent many years in his youth engaged in both legal and illegal activities with the purpose of materially supporting anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World, including in Palestine. He spent a decade in prison for this work. 

This episode is part of our ongoing series on Marxist philosophy and theory. The first episode in this series takes a close look at dialectical materialism with Josh Sykes as our guest and was published in June of 2024. This episode serves as a follow-up to that episode, but can also be listened to on its own. Historical materialism and dialectical materialism are deeply intertwined, so having a solid understanding of dialectics will help you understand historical materialism—but we do explore both dialectics and historical materialism in this episode. 

We also explore concepts from Torkil’s latest book, The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism, published this last November by Iskra Books, along with many fascinating topics related to historical materialism that span from Marx’s concepts of use value and exchange value, the history of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, anti-imperialism, neoliberalism, the rise of China, and much more. 

Further Resources

• The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism
• Iskra Books
• International Forum (Copenhagen)
• Arghiri Emmanuel Organization
• Anti-Dühring Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, Frederick Engels
• Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature, by John Bellamy Foster
• Monthly Review
• On Contradiction, Mao Zedong
• The Commodity (Capital Vol. 1), Karl Marx
• Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
• The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism, Joshua Sykes
• Fossil Capital:The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, Andreas Malm
• Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), Karl Marx
• Forget Eco-Modernism, Kai Heron
• The Accumulation of Waste: A political economy of systemic destruction, Ali Kadri
• How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all? Insights from needs-based analysis, Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan

Related Episodes:

• Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes
• A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things with Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore
• Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism: An Introduction
• Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly
• The Liberal Virus 
• Degrowth vs Eco-Modernism
• Climate Leninism w/ Jodi Dean and Kai Heron
• Better Lives for All w/ Jason Hickel

Cover art: Carolyn Raider Intermission music: "gl0om" by heavy lifter

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