Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Categories: Home -> Political Science
Last updated: 2026-08-26
This article is part of the Intermediate course on Libertarianism and the Austrian School of Economics -> Marxism
Marxism structures its interpretation of reality, society, and history in two fundamental and interconnected concepts: dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
1. What is Dialectical and Historical Materialism?
Dialectical Materialism (Diamat)
It is the general philosophical foundation of Marxism. It adopts the dialectical logic of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel —which conceives change and development through internal contradictions (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis)—, but inverts its premise: instead of starting from Spirit or the Idea (idealism), it starts from matter.
- It holds that matter is the only existing reality, which is in constant movement, transformation, and development by means of the contradiction inherent in its elements.
Historical Materialism (Hismat)
It is the application of dialectical materialism to the evolution of human societies. Its central theses affirm that:
Base and Superstructure:
The foundation of society is the economic base (composed of the productive forces, such as technology and labor, and the relations of production, such as property). This base determines the superstructure (laws, the State, religion, culture, and philosophy).
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
Modes of Production and Class Struggle:
Human history advances through a succession of modes of production (slavery, feudalism, capitalism) driven by the material conflict between the exploiting classes (owners of the means of production) and the exploited classes.
Marx’s memorable phrase: the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.
From this follows the political program: capitalism generates its own gravedigger (the proletariat); the socialization of the means of production resolves the contradiction; the State withers away.
Critiques of these ideas
Subjectivism vs Materialism
The materialism proposed by Marx is the complete opposite of the ideas of Libertarianism and the Austrian School of Economics.
Libertarianism and the Austrian School of Economics are based on (follow the links for the details):
Critique of Historicism and Prophetic Determinism (Karl Popper):
In works such as The Open Society and Its Enemies, the liberal philosopher Karl Popper harshly criticized Marxism for considering it a form of historicism: the false belief that there exist inexorable scientific laws that make it possible to predict the course of human history (such as the inevitable collapse of capitalism and the arrival of communism).
Popper argued that this confuses historical trends with natural laws and logically justifies totalitarian regimes.
The “productive forces” do not explain their own origin (Mises, Rothbard)
If technique determines social relations, who invents technique? Marx cannot answer without destroying the scheme.
If it is individuals who think, save, try, and err, then consciousness and action precede the “material forces,” not the reverse.
Murray Rothbard puts it dryly: technological determinism leaves technological change without a subject. The steam-mill does not “engender” the capitalist; concrete persons build it, with time preferences, calculation, and property.
For Austrian praxeology (human action), the ultimate given of the social sciences is not “social matter,” but intentional human action (Mises).
Institutions —market, law, language— are orders emergent from actions, not epiphenomena of a blind economic base.
Polylogism: logic is not of a class (Mises)
Historical materialism implies that thought is “impregnated” by class. There is, in Marxist practice, a bourgeois logic and a proletarian logic.
Mises calls that polylogism: denying the unity of human reason.
It is an immunological shield. If Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk or Carl Menger refute the labor theory of value, one does not answer the argument; one says that it is class ideology.
But the Marxist never exhibits the distinct rules of that “proletarian logic.”
He uses the same non-contradiction, the same modus ponens, when it suits him.
Polylogism is not epistemology; it is a device for not being refuted.
Historicism versus methodological individualism (Hayek, Mises)
Friedrich Hayek attacks methodological collectivism: treating “the class,” “the mode of production,” or “history” as subjects that act.
Those who act are persons. Classes are analytical groupings, not agents.
Marxist historicism seeks “laws of stages” analogous to those of physics; Hayek replies that the social sciences deal with phenomena of organized complexity: the relevant knowledge is dispersed, tacit and local, and cannot be assembled by a theorist who claims to see “the totality.”
Hence the link with the calculation debate: if history “demands” socialist planning, it collides with the argument of Mises (1920) and Hayek: without private property in the means of production there are no factor prices, and without prices there is no rational calculation of costs.
Historical materialism promises a superior stage of productivity; Austrian theory shows that that stage cannot compute scarcity.
Broken predictions and dogmatic elasticity
Popper and the Austrians underline the empirical balance: the revolution did not occur where Marx situated it:
- the working-class standard of living rose with capitalism
- the most “advanced” societies did not socialize the means of production
- the real socialist experiments produced scarcity, political calculation, and concentration of power, not the withering away of the State (See -> List of Collectivist Catastrophes).
Historical materialism can rewrite each failure (“imperialism,” “labor aristocracy,” “bureaucratic deformation”). That confirms, for Popper, its unscientific character.
The millenarian tone (Rothbard)
Rothbard insists that, under the “scientific” apparatus, Marxism operates as eschatology: history of suffering → vanguard → classless kingdom.
Historical materialism gives a secular form to a narrative of fall and redemption.
That explains, according to him, the resistance to abandoning the system when the economy and the predictions fail.
How the contrast looks, in a phrase
| Classical Marxism | Critical Austrian / liberal tradition |
|---|---|
| Social being determines consciousness | Conscious action (preferences, plans, errors) constitutes the social |
| Laws of historical development | There are no laws of the total course of history; there are regularities of human action |
| Classes as subjects | Individuals, Persons; classes do not act |
| Dialectical contradiction as motor | Interaction, Scarcity, Dispersed Knowledge, Spontaneous Order |
| Socialism as a necessary and superior stage | Impossibility of Economic calculation and of the use of Dispersed Knowledge |
| Class ideology | Unity of logic; error is refuted, not “classified” |
This article is part of the Intermediate course on Libertarianism and the Austrian School of Economics -> Marxism
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|---|---|---|
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Categories: Home -> Political Science
Last updated: 2026-08-22
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