Historical materialism is fundamentally historicist, not metaphysical

Evidence

Marx’s “materialism” adds to this premise at least one other requirement: that the relationship must be thought within determinate historical conditions. It must be made historically specific . It is this second requirement which distinguishes a historical materialist theory of human society and culture from, say, a materialism grounded in the simple fact of man’s physical nature (a “vulgar,” or as Marx calls it, an undialectical materialism) or one which gives the determining instance to technological development alone. What Karl Korsch, among others, has called “the principle of historical specificity” in Marx’s materialism is clearly enunciated in The German Ideology (where Marx’s theory becomes, for the first time, fully “historical”) and afterward in his mature work. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 881 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Historicism held that each culture forms a coherent whole penetrable only by sympathy; A rational, historicist will grounded in objective necessity grounds philosophy; A historical epoch’s philosophy is the ensemble of all its tendencies, not one system (+23 more)

Related

• Immanentism is progressive only when historicised and materialist (similarity 0.93)
• Historical specificity, not mere materialism, defines Marx’s theory of culture (similarity 0.92)
• Historical specificity distinguishes Marx’s materialism from vulgar or technological determinism (similarity 0.92)
• Historical materialism requires no metaphysical-materialist foundation (similarity 0.92)
• Marx’s concept of historical specificity deepened between German Ideology and Capital (similarity 0.91)
• Historical materialism is a break with rather than an inversion of Hegel. (similarity 0.89)
• Marx treats culture as accumulated human mastery over nature, not mere description (similarity 0.87)
• Material conditions condition but never fully determine historical practice. (similarity 0.85)
• Mature Marx employed structural rather than sequential causality (similarity 0.84)
• Marx distinguishes material economic transformation from ideological forms of consciousness (similarity 0.84)
• Material conditions are necessary but not sufficient for all historical practice. (similarity 0.83)
• Historical materialism requires retaining economic determination without economic reductionism (similarity 0.83)
• Marx rejected any universal concept of production outside history. (similarity 0.82)
• Marxism’s historical materialism reflects only European bourgeois experience, not universal history. (similarity 0.82)
• Marxist analysis needs both material grounding and historical specificity to avoid twin errors (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Historical specificity distinguishes Marx’s materialism from vulgar or technological determinism #corroborates (0.90) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 881
• Historical materialism requires retaining economic determination without economic reductionism #expands (0.85)
• Historical specificity, not mere materialism, defines Marx’s theory of culture #corroborates (0.85)
• Marxism is not economic reductionism and requires attending to ideas in their own terms #corroborates (0.85)
• Immanentism is progressive only when historicised and materialist #expands (0.82)
• Economic abstractions are historically determined, not universal or extra-historical #corroborates (0.80)
• Ideology and material practice relate through systematic disjuncture, not correspondence #expands (0.75)