Historical materialism is a set of premises for the analysis of social reality that explains historical phenomena on the basis of the social, material structure, of the social organization of production and the social relations that derive from it, that is, the mode of production in which they unfold. These modes of production are defined by certain social relations which, in turn, reflect and drive a certain development of the productive forces of society. This development and these conflicting relations materialize in struggles between the social classes they define, in the form of ideologies, parties and political clashes that express those contradictory interests and which, in turn, once a certain development of the productive forces of society has been reached, transform the whole social structure.
Origins
The first work I undertook was a critical revision of Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie, a work whose preliminaries appeared in the "Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher" published in Paris in 1844. My investigations led to this result: that legal relations, like forms of State, cannot be explained by themselves, nor by the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather have their origin in the material conditions of existence which Hegel, following the example of the English and French of the 18th century, grouped together under the name of "civil society"; and that the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy. I had begun studying it in Paris and continued it in Brussels, where I had settled as a result of an expulsion order issued against me by M. Guizot. The general result at which I arrived and which, once reached, served as a guide for my studies, can be briefly formulated as follows:
In the social production of their existence, men enter into definite, necessary relations, independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces.
The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite social forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the process of social, political and intellectual life in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines reality; on the contrary, it is social reality that determines their consciousness.
In the course of their development, the productive forces of society come into contradiction with the existing relations of production or - what is but a legal expression of the same thing - with the property relations within which they had moved until then. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into fetters on those forces. Then begins an era of social revolution. The change that has taken place in the economic foundation more or less slowly or rapidly transforms the whole immense superstructure. In considering such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production - which must be faithfully ascertained with the help of the physical and natural sciences - and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophical forms, in short, the ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and resolve it. Just as one does not judge an individual by the idea he has of himself, so one cannot judge such an epoch by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social productive forces and the relations of production.
No society ever disappears before all the productive forces it can contain have developed, and new, higher relations of production never appear in it before the material conditions of their existence have matured within the very womb of the old society. Therefore mankind only ever sets itself such problems as it can solve, since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.
In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as so many progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production - antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of an antagonism arising from the social conditions of existence of individuals; the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create at the same time the material conditions for the resolution of this antagonism. With this social formation, therefore, the prehistory of human society comes to an end.
Karl Marx. Preface to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy", January 1859.
Historical materialism and the proletariat
Historical materialism enabled the proletariat to understand itself as a class in the historical process and to give its communist perspective a scientific basis. It was a fundamental element in the development of a consciousness which, while still a class consciousness, already responds to universal interests because it is that of a universal class, and is therefore not ideology. The class consciousness of the proletariat, by arming itself with and merging with historical materialism, becomes the first universal conception of society and history, and therefore the antechamber of a truly human consciousness, neither biased nor limited.
Revolutionary theory pursues a social transformation that will abolish the working class too (...) That transformation, however, will not abolish theory; on the contrary, it will give it a generalized human dimension, opening up to it vast, unsuspected, infinite domains. The communist validity of revolutionary theory today, and its absorption by the social whole tomorrow, allow it to correct and broaden itself ceaselessly. It is the clearest expression of the human being in possession of itself. Proletariat and revolutionary theory are, respectively, the key to economic emancipation and to intellectual emancipation; together, the key to disalienation.
G. Munis. Acendremos camaradas, 1975
The Communist Manifesto of 1848 marks the moment when the materialist conception of history is incorporated into and merges with the communist program.
The basic thought running through the whole "Manifesto" - namely, that economic production and the structure of society that necessarily follows from it in every historical epoch constitute the foundation on which the political and intellectual history of that epoch rests; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of the primeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social development; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggles.
Frederick Engels. Preface to the German edition of the Communist Manifesto, 1883