Marx’s Historical Materialism

In this episode of Anti-Capitalist Chronicles, Prof. Harvey uses Marx’s theory of historical materialism as a means of tackling large societal problems such as climate change. Marx asserts that there are seven distinctive aspects of society which coexist and coevolve in relation to one another. These elements—technology, relationship to nature, labor process of production, reproduction of labor power, mental conceptions of the world, structure of state, and social relations—make up the totality of a society. Historical materialism asks that we not assume one element is a silver bullet answer to a problem, but rather that we look at the ways in which each element would have to shift in order to address the issue.