3. Dieterich and historical materialism¶
Core Argument¶
Heinz Dieterich’s critique of historical materialism is fundamentally flawed, substituting scientific analysis with sentimental moralism and an idealist conception of history. Historical materialism holds that the development of the productive forces—humanity’s power over nature—is the ultimate driver of historical change. Humans distinguish themselves from animals by producing their means of subsistence; the mode of production and exchange determines social structure, class divisions, and the distribution of wealth. Marx and Engels did not reduce everything to economics; the economic element is the ultimate, not the sole, determining factor. Men make their own history but not under conditions of their own choosing. Class society, though exploitative, was a necessary stage to develop the productive forces to the point where a classless society becomes feasible. Socialism requires a massive development of productive forces to abolish scarcity; without this, the struggle for necessities revives and “all the old crap” returns. Between capitalism and communism lies a transitional period of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
Dieterich, by contrast, defines historical transformations as “projects”, standing history on its head. He treats capitalism as a 200-year aberration based on exchange value, ignores the progressive role of earlier class societies, and substitutes sentimental moralism for scientific analysis. His moral condemnation of capitalist exploitation is rejected as unscientific; his claim that “property is theft” is attributed to Proudhon, not Marx. Dieterich’s division of history into phases of “exchange of equivalents” and “unequal exchange” is critiqued, as the appropriation of surplus has taken different forms under slavery, feudalism and capitalism, each with distinct laws of motion. Historical transitions—from primitive communism to class society, slavery in Rome, feudalism, and capitalism—are explained through material conditions, not conscious “historical projects”. The English Revolution is examined: Cromwell had no plan for capitalism; his motivation was religious. Objectively, he laid the basis for bourgeois rule, but the outcome was determined by objective conditions and class relations, not subjective intentions. Dieterich’s analysis of the English Revolution is riddled with factual errors: Cromwell did not overthrow the Vatican, Charles I was a Protestant, not a Catholic, and Cromwell did not establish the national church but abolished it. He did not substitute monarchy for parliament; he dissolved both and ruled as dictator. The constitutional monarchy emerged only after his death, through the 1688 Glorious Revolution. Dieterich’s errors serve to smuggle in the unscientific notion of a “historical project”. Capitalism arose spontaneously from the development of productive forces, not from a conscious plan. Unlike socialism, which requires conscious working-class control, capitalism functions blindly and automatically. Marx and Engels did not produce blueprints for future society; they derived their theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat from the actual historical experience of the Paris Commune.
Marx distinguished the dictatorship of the proletariat from later totalitarian regimes, basing it on the Roman Republic’s temporary wartime powers. A workers’ state, unlike minority-ruled bureaucratic states, represents the majority against a small minority, giving it an entirely different character. The Paris Commune exemplified proletarian democracy with revocable delegates and mandated instructions. Soviets were not invented by Lenin or Marx but arose spontaneously from workers’ struggle in the 1905 Russian Revolution as extended strike committees. Lenin and Trotsky grasped their significance, unlike St. Petersburg Bolsheviks who bureaucratically demanded the Soviet join the Party or dissolve. In Venezuela, workers’ control emerged from below; reformists obstruct it by claiming workers are backward, despite the masses repeatedly proving their revolutionary consciousness. Marxism is philosophically incompatible with religion but opposes its repression, advocating complete separation of church and state. Marxists welcome dialogue with progressive Christians and the Theology of Liberation. Early Christianity was a revolutionary communist movement of the poor, but from the 4th century the church was co-opted by the state. There are now two churches: one serving the rich, one the poor. Marxists extend friendship to the latter while fighting the former. Dieterich anachronistically recasts early Christianity as a precursor to 21st-century social democratic reformism, portraying Jesus as a reformist and the early Christian communities as models of participative democracy derived from Athenian assemblies. This is factually incorrect: Karl Kautsky demonstrated a century ago that the early Christian communities originated from the Essene sect, a revolutionary Jewish communist group whose founder was