Marx’s concept of historical specificity deepened between German Ideology and Capital

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)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Marx reaffirmed economic determination was universal across all epochs including feudal and antique ones; Marxist analysis needs both material grounding and historical specificity to avoid twin errors; Historical specificity, not mere materialism, defines Marx’s theory of culture (+5 more)

Related

• Historical specificity, not mere materialism, defines Marx’s theory of culture (similarity 0.94)
• Historical specificity distinguishes Marx’s materialism from vulgar or technological determinism (similarity 0.94)
• Historical materialism is fundamentally historicist, not metaphysical (similarity 0.91)
• Mature Marx employed structural rather than sequential causality (similarity 0.91)
• Marx treats culture as accumulated human mastery over nature, not mere description (similarity 0.90)
• Historical materialism requires no metaphysical-materialist foundation (similarity 0.87)
• Immanentism is progressive only when historicised and materialist (similarity 0.86)
• Historical materialism is a break with rather than an inversion of Hegel. (similarity 0.86)
• Comparing the German Ideology with Capital shows how Marx specified historicity further. (similarity 0.85)
• Marx distinguishes material economic transformation from ideological forms of consciousness (similarity 0.85)
• Marx’s early historical-specificity claims are general where Capital specifies them (similarity 0.85)
• Marx’s later development changed how production determines, not whether it does (similarity 0.85)
• Marx rejected any universal concept of production outside history. (similarity 0.85)
• Marxist analysis needs both material grounding and historical specificity to avoid twin errors (similarity 0.85)
• Conjuncture names what is historically specific within each capitalist phase (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Historical specificity distinguishes Marx’s materialism from vulgar or technological determinism #expands (0.70) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 881
• Mature Marx employed structural rather than sequential causality #complicates (0.50)