The Materialist Conception of History

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

Plekhanov's central thesis is that the materialist conception of history is fundamentally misunderstood by both its critics and many of its purported defenders. The article argues that what passes for "economic materialism" — the claim that the economic "factor" predominates over other social factors — is in fact a variety of idealism, not materialism at all. The genuine materialist conception, by contrast, rejects the entire framework of separate "factors" competing for primacy. Instead, it insists that society constitutes a single, indivisible historical process determined by the development of the productive forces, and that the so-called factors (law, morality, politics, economics) are merely abstractions from this unified whole.

The argument proceeds through a critical engagement with Antonio Labriola's book, using it as a springboard to clarify what dialectical materialism actually entails. Plekhanov distinguishes sharply between:

1. Economic materialists (like Thorold Rogers or Louis Blanc) who treat economics as the dominant factor but ultimately ground it in human nature or consciousness — thus remaining idealists
2. Dialectical materialists who understand economic relations themselves as functions of the productive forces, and who reject the factor-theory entirely as an unscientific abstraction

The article further contends that the materialist conception, properly understood, makes social science a natural science — not by reducing society to biology (as in social Darwinism), but by discovering objective laws of social development analogous to those in nature.

Theoretical Grounding

Plekhanov draws on and synthesises several key Marxist theoretical traditions:

The base-superstructure relation — The article grounds itself in Marx's 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, treating the productive forces as the ultimate determinant of all social relations. Economic relations are themselves subordinate to the state of the productive forces, a point Plekhanov uses to distinguish dialectical materialism from vulgar "economic materialism."

The critique of the factor-theory — This is the article's most original theoretical contribution. Plekhanov traces the origin of the factor-theory to the division of labour in social science, where different disciplines (jurisprudence, political economy, ethics) each abstract one aspect of social life and treat it as an independent force. The theory of factors was historically necessary — a stage in the development of social science analogous to the theory of separate physical forces in natural science — but must now be superseded by a synthetic view. This argument situates Marxism within the history of social science rather than treating it as an external imposition.

Hegelian dialectics — Plekhanov explicitly invokes Hegel's synthetic view of social life as a predecessor to dialectical materialism, while noting that Hegel's version remained teleological (explaining history by the attributes of the Universal Spirit). Dialectical materialism eliminates this teleology, explaining history instead through man's need to satisfy his needs and the development of the means to do so.

The critique of social Darwinism — Following Labriola, Plekhanov rejects attempts to merge historical materialism with biological evolutionism. While man is an animal, the "artificial environment" of society — tools, language, customs, institutions — fundamentally transforms the relation between man and nature. Historical science must study this artificial environment, not reduce it to biology.

Social psychology — The article develops a sophisticated account of how economic relations determine consciousness indirectly, through the mediation of "social psychology" — the prevailing state of sentiment and thought in particular classes at particular times. This is not a mystical "national spirit" but a concrete object of analysis. Ideologies (art, science, philosophy) are determined by economics only indirectly and mediately, requiring careful study of the psychological links.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in 1897, a period of intense theoretical struggle within the Russian revolutionary movement. The immediate context is the polemic between Russian Marxists ("the disciples") and the Narodniks (populists) and subjectivist sociologists (Mikhailovsky, Kareyev, Krivenko). These opponents accused Marxists of "economic materialism" — of reducing all history to economics and ignoring human agency, morality, and ideas.

Plekhanov's intervention is conjunctural in several senses:

Theoretical clarification — The article aims to clear up what he calls "confusion of concepts" that had reached its limit when Mikhailovsky could classify both Louis Blanc and contemporary Marxists as "economic materialists." By showing that economic materialism is actually a form of idealism, Plekhanov deprives the Narodniks of their main line of attack.

Political stakes — The debate was not merely academic. The Narodniks argued that Russia could bypass capitalism and move directly to socialism based on the peasant commune. The Marxists insisted that capitalism was historically necessary and that the working class, not the peasantry, was the revolutionary agent. Plekhanov's theoretical clarification — that the productive forces determine social relations, and that these cannot be wished away — directly supports the Marxist position on Russia's development.

The question of progress — The article concludes by noting that the "formulas of progress" beloved by the subjectivists had been conspicuously absent from the debate about whether Russia could skip capitalism. This is a pointed observation: the utopians who claimed to be dialectical materialists while advocating "popular industry" were using Marxism as a sophistry. The materialist conception of progress, Plekhanov promises to develop elsewhere, is something quite different.

International context — The article also engages with Italian Marxism (Labriola, Loria, Ferri), showing that the same theoretical confusions were playing out across Europe. The reference to Enrico Ferri's attempt to synthesise Spencer, Darwin and Marx is a warning against eclecticism.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is explicitly positioned as a review of Labriola's book, but it opens up several lines of argument that Plekhanov signals he will develop elsewhere:

The theory of progress — Plekhanov promises "at a more convenient opportunity" to systematically expound the materialist view of progress, which Labriola's book illustrates but does not fully develop. This is taken up in Plekhanov's later works, particularly The Development of the Monist View of History (1895) and his essays on the role of the individual in history.

The history of ideologies — The article's critique of Labriola's treatment of race, tradition, and symbolism points toward a more developed materialist account of ideology. Plekhanov's later Fundamental Problems of Marxism and his essays on art (e.g., "Art and Social Life") continue this work.

The state — Plekhanov's brief remarks on the Oriental state (Egypt, China) as an organisation called into being by the needs of the productive process — not merely class rule — open a question about the state's role in societies where large-scale irrigation works were necessary. This connects to debates about the "Asiatic mode of production" that continued within Marxism.

The critique of economism — The article's distinction between dialectical materialism and economic materialism anticipates later Marxist critiques of economism and determinism. It connects to the work of Gramsci on hegemony, Lukács on reification, and the broader tradition of Western Marxism that insisted on the irreducibility of ideology and politics.

Connections

Primary texts: - Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859 Preface) — the canonical statement of base and superstructure - Marx and Engels, The Holy Family (1845) — the "Critique of Critical Criticism" Plekhanov references - Engels, Anti-Dühring and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy — Engels' own defences of historical materialism - Labriola, Essays on the Materialist Conception of History — the book under review

Within the IDOM corpus: - Plekhanov's The Development of the Monist View of History — expands the argument about the factor-theory and the history of materialism - Plekhanov's The Role of the Individual in History — develops the materialist view of agency and necessity - Trotsky's The ABC of Materialist Dialectics — a later, more popular presentation of similar themes

Broader Marxist tradition: - Lukács, History and Class Consciousness — the critique of reification and the insistence on totality, which parallels Plekhanov's critique of the factor-theory - Gramsci, Prison Notebooks — the critique of economism and the development of hegemony theory - Althusser, For Marx and Reading Capital — the critique of the "expressive totality" and the development of structural causality, which engages with similar problems

Key Quotes

1. "We thus find that economic materialism does not necessarily preclude historical idealism. And even that is not quite accurate; we say that it does not necessarily preclude idealism but what we should say is that perhaps — as it has been mostly hitherto — it is nothing but a variety of idealism."

2. "A historico-social factor is an abstraction, and the idea of it originates as the result of a process of abstraction. Thanks to the process of abstraction, various sides of the social complex assume the form of separate categories, and the various manifestations and expressions of the activity of social man — morals, law, economic forms, etc. — are converted in our minds into separate forces which appear to give rise to and determine this activity and to be its ultimate causes."

3. "The idealists of all species and varieties held that economic relations were functions of human nature; the dialectical materialists hold that these relations are functions of the social productive forces."

4. "Men do not make several distinct histories — the history of law, the history of morals, the history of philosophy, etc. — but only one history, the history of their own social relations, which are determined by the state of the productive forces in each particular period. What is known as the ideologies is nothing but a multiform reflection in the minds of men of this single and indivisible history."

5. "Where a scientific conception of history is concerned, for the investigator to talk of ignorance only testifies to his own ignorance."

6. "The modern materialists teach that any economic system that is conformable to the state of the productive forces at the given time is conformable to human nature. And, conversely, any economic system begins to contradict the demands of human nature as soon as it comes into contradiction with the state of the productive forces. The 'predominant' factor is thus found to be itself subordinate to another 'factor.' And that being the case, how can it be called 'predominant'?"