historical materialism

noun

1. (in Marxist theory) the doctrine that all forms of social thought, as art or philosophy, and institutions, as the family or the state, develop as a superstructure founded on an economic base; that they reflect the character of economic relations and are altered or modified as a result of class struggles; that each ruling economic class produces the class that will destroy or replace it; and that dialectical necessity requires the eventual withering away of the state and the establishment of a classless society: the body of theory, in dialectical materialism, dealing with historical process and social causation.

historical materialism

noun

1. the part of Marxist theory maintaining that social structures derive from economic structures and that these are transformed as a result of class struggles, each ruling class producing another, which will overcome and destroy it, the final phase being the emergence of a communist society

Word History and Origins

Origin of historical materialism¹

First recorded in 1920–25

Example Sentences

Mr. Xi in speeches has praised Marx’s theories of dialectical materialism — that all progress comes from struggle — and historical materialism — that world communism is history’s predetermined end.

From Washington Times

Historical materialism, another Chinese communist ideological concept, asserts history is moving through stages from capitalism to socialism and, eventually, to an ideal communist state.

From Washington Times

The young man was George Bernard Shaw, a staunch leftist who saw no conflict between the composer’s Romantic mythology and Marx’s historical materialism.

From The Guardian

On the one hand, he was a poetic soul, whose first book had been a study of the poet Horace and who loved Shelley; on the other, he was a philosopher sharpening his applications of historical materialism.

From The Guardian

Firestone’s objective in The Dialectic of Sex was an attempt to follow the methodology of Marx and Engels in order to “enlarge historical materialism” – that is, to widen the scope of a class analysis using the “scientific approach to history” that characterised the duo’s works on capitalism.

From The Guardian