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Marxist or historical materialist historiography is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography are the centrality of social class and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes.
Marxist historiography has made contributions to the history of the working class, oppressed nationalities, and the methodology of history from below. The chief problematic aspect of Marxist historiography has been an argument on the nature of history as determined or dialectical; this can also be stated as the relative importance of subjective and objective factors in creating outcomes.
Marxist history is generally teleological, in that it posits a direction of history, towards an end state of history as classless human society. Marxist historiography, that is, the writing of Marxist history in line with the given historiographical principles, is generally seen as a tool. Its aim is to bring those oppressed by history to self-consciousness, and to arm them with tactics and strategies from history: it is both a historical and a liberatory project.
Historians who use Marxist methodology, but disagree with the mainstream of Marxism, often describe themselves as marxist historians (with a lowercase M). Methods from Marxist historiography, such as class analysis, can be divorced from the liberatory intent of Marxist historiography; such practitioners often refer to their work as marxian or Marxian.
Marx and Engels
Frederick Engels's most important historical contribution was the German Peasants War, which analysed social warfare in early protestant Germany in terms of emerging capitalist classes. The German Peasants War is overdetermined and lacks a rigorous engagement with archival sources. It does however indicate the Marxist interest in history from below and class analysis, and it attempts a dialectical analysis.
Marx's most important works on social and political history include The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, The Communist Manifesto, and The German Ideology.
Marxist historiography in the Soviet Union
Marxist historiography suffered in the Soviet Union, as the government requested overdetermined historical writing. Marxist historians tended to avoid contemporary history (history after 1905) where possible and effort was predominantly directed at premodern history. As history was considered to be a politicised academic discipline, historians limited their creative output to avoid prosecution.
Notable histories include the Short Course History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), published in the 1930s, which was written in order to justify the nature of Bolshevik party life under Joseph Stalin.
The Historians group of the Communist Party Great Britain
A circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) formed in the 1950s. They shared a common interest in 'history from below' and class structure in early capitalist society. While some members of the group left the CPGB after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the common points of British Marxist historiography continued in their works. They placed a great emphasis on the subjective determination of history. E. P. Thompson famously engaged Althusser in The Poverty of Theory, arguing that Althusser's theory overdetermined history, and left no space for historical revolt by the oppressed.
Thompson's Making of the English Working Class is one of the works commonly associated with this group. Eric Hobsbawm's Bandits is another example of this group's work.
C.L.R. James was also associated with British and Commonwealth Marxist history.
The effect of Marxist historiography
Marxist historiography has had an enormous influence on historiography, and compares with empiricist historiography as one of the basic and foundational historiographic methodologies. Most non-Marxist historians make use of tools developed within Marxist historiography, like dialectical analysis of social formations, class analysis, or the project of broadening the scope of history into social history. Marxist historiography provided the first sustained efforts at social history, and is still highly influential within this area.
Marxism was one of the key influences on the Annales tradition of French historiography.
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