Marx treats culture as accumulated human mastery over nature, not mere description

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)

The politics, religion, philosophy, and art of any epoch in human history are, according to Marx, an outcome of its methods of production, and, to a lesser extent, of distribution. … The doctrine is called the ‘materialist conception of history’. — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2845 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Historical specificity, not mere materialism, defines Marx’s theory of culture; Marx treats culture as a productive force materialized in labor and language; Marxist culture is the objectified human design on existence under definite conditions (+4 more)

Related

• Historical specificity, not mere materialism, defines Marx’s theory of culture (similarity 0.96)
• Historical specificity distinguishes Marx’s materialism from vulgar or technological determinism (similarity 0.91)
• Marx’s concept of historical specificity deepened between German Ideology and Capital (similarity 0.90)
• Marx held that production methods determine an epoch’s culture (similarity 0.90)
• Historical materialism is fundamentally historicist, not metaphysical (similarity 0.87)
• Marx rejected any universal concept of production outside history. (similarity 0.86)
• For Marx, human labor’s relation to nature is always socially organized and mediated. (similarity 0.86)
• Mature Marx employed structural rather than sequential causality (similarity 0.86)
• Marx treats culture as a productive force materialized in labor and language (similarity 0.85)
• Culture is accumulated productive force transmitted through language and labor (similarity 0.85)
• For Marx, human culture arises only through socially organized labor. (similarity 0.84)
• Marx’s later development changed how production determines, not whether it does (similarity 0.83)
• Marx defined culture as accumulated human mastery over nature transmitted through language and labor. (similarity 0.83)
• Immanentism is progressive only when historicised and materialist (similarity 0.83)
• Marx distinguishes material economic transformation from ideological forms of consciousness (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Marxist culture is the objectified human design on existence under definite conditions #corroborates (0.75)
• Marx held that production methods determine an epoch’s culture #expands (0.60) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2845
• Historical specificity distinguishes Marx’s materialism from vulgar or technological determinism #corroborates (0.60) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 881
• Culture is a process of creating and transforming reality, not an environment. #expands (0.55) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 323