Historical materialism requires no metaphysical-materialist foundation

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

It is from these considerations that one must start in order to establish what is meant by “regularity”, “law”, “automatism” in historical facts. It is not a question of “discovering” a metaphysical law of “determinism”, or even of establishing a “general” law of causality. It is a question of bringing out how in historical evolution relatively permanent forces are constituted which operate with a certain regularity and automatism. Even the law of large numbers, 518 although very useful as a model of comparison, cannot be assumed as the “law” of historical events. In order to establish the historical origin of the philosophy of praxis (an element which is nothing less than its particular way of conceiving “immanence”), it will be necessary to study the conception of economic laws put forward by David Ricardo. It is a matter of realising that Ricardo was important in the foundation of the philosophy of praxis not only for the concept of “value” in economics, but was also “philosophically” important and has suggested a way of thinking and intuiting history and life. The method of “supposing that …”, of the premiss that gives a certain conclusion, should it seems to me, be identified as one of the starting points (one of the intellectual stimuli) of the philosophical experience of the founders of the philosophy of praxis. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1464 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Historical materialism is fundamentally historicist, not metaphysical; Historical materialism needs hidden theology to win its game — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 601; Materialism opposes religion while realism opposes speculation and transcendence (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Historical materialism is fundamentally historicist, not metaphysical #corroborates (0.93)
• Historical specificity distinguishes Marx’s materialism from vulgar or technological determinism #expands (0.82) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 881
• Historical laws are constituted regularities, not metaphysical or causal determinants #expands (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1464
• Historical materialism needs hidden theology to win its game #contradicts (0.78) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 601
• Materialism opposes religion while realism opposes speculation and transcendence #expands (0.75)