British Marxism: Historical Materialism and Contributions of “British Marxism”
Author Zhang Liang is Prof. of Marxist Philosophy and Expert of Western Marxism in Nanjing University, January 2019
After the rise of the New Left Movement in 1956, two generations of British Marxist intellectuals in the humanities and social sciences fields criticized Soviet dogmatic Marxism, emphasized to inherit Marxist resources from Britain and continental Europe, and founded “British Marxism” while working hard to solve local problems in Britain.
In the diverse landscape of contemporary foreign Marxist theory, “British Marxism” is undoubtedly the most successful school of thought in terms of its influence on the mainstream Western academic community. Guided by historical materialism, it has created a number of academic works with global influence. While making substantial progress in historical materialism, “British Marxism” has greatly enhanced the theoretical reputation and influence of historical materialism in the mainstream Western academic community and has profoundly changed the map of contemporary foreign Marxist theory, making Britain a place that can compete with Germany and France in the export of innovative Marxist theories. The “British Marxists” with global influence all came from non-philosophical backgrounds: Edward Thompson, Maurice Dobb, Eric Hobsbawm, and Perry Anderson were historians, Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton were literary critics, Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall were the pioneers of British “cultural studies”, and Ralph Miliband and Bob Jessop were political scientists.
How did they achieve innovative application and development of historical materialism?
Firstly, “British Marxists” all attached great importance to philosophy and had conducted in-depth study and research on the original works of Marxist philosophy and the principles of historical materialism at different stages of their ideological development. It is particularly worth mentioning that their purpose in doing so was not to master the abstract philosophical principles themselves, but to guide their own specific research. This made it easier for them to overcome the shackles of dogmatism and grasp the methodological connotation of historical materialism.
Secondly, they all had a conscious and strong sense of local identity and tried to solve British local problems with the guidance of historical materialism.
On the one hand, this has pushed them to find local problems that are truly contemporary, and on the other hand, it has inspired them to explore the necessary theoretical resources for theoretical and methodological innovation. Finally, in the process of solving local problems, they consciously took the path of “alliance between philosophy and social sciences”, guided their research with appropriate principles of historical materialism, absorbed and integrated various beneficial ideological resources with an open attitude, and actively adopted interdisciplinary research to solve problems. It should be said that “British Marxism”‘s efforts to solve local problems are the “cause”, and the innovative application and development of historical materialism is the “result”: with the scientific solution of local problems, the application and development of historical materialism will naturally bear sweet fruits.
“British Marxism”‘s innovative application and development of historical materialism mainly focuses on four areas: social form, class, state and culture.
Is the succession of social forms a purely economic deterministic process that is separated from human subjective activities?
The dogmatic answer is yes. In his 1946 Study of the Development of Capitalism, Dobb found through convincing empirical historical research that in Britain, the capitalist mode of production, on the one hand, promoted the gradual disintegration of the feudal mode of production with low productive forces through its expansion in the agricultural field, thus paving the way for its own development. On the other hand, capitalist mode of production led to the rapid development of towns and bourgeoisie through its expansion in the industrial field; the growing bourgeoisie seized the two major historical opportunities of the Glorious Revolution and the French Revolution, and finally defeated the feudal aristocracy politically through class struggle, thus establishing the dominant position of the capitalist mode of production.
In other words, Dobb not only affirmed the ultimate decisive role of the contradictory movement of the mode of production in the process of social formation development, but Dobb also emphasized the important role of subjective practice, because the mode of production ultimately paved the way for its own development through the subjective practice of class struggle.
In Europe after the disintegration of slavery, why did only Western Europe transition to feudalism and then to capitalism?
Through his excellent answers to these questions, Perry Anderson has made the mainstream Western academic community have a stronger resonance and greater recognition of the historical materialist social morphology theory: the mode of production is the ultimate determining force in the evolution of social forms, but it always exists in a specific social and historical environment, and the exercise of its ultimate determining role is bound to be constrained by the specific social class structure and national political traditions. Only in suitable soil can advanced modes of production defeat backward modes of production and gain a dominant position.
Class and class struggle are the core of Marx and Engels’ political thought. But how did the working class form in history?
Marx and Engels did not directly discuss this issue. In his 1963 book The Making of the English Working Class, Thompson, starting from Marx’s relevant principled expositions, specifically analyzed the development of the British working class from a “class in itself” to a “class for itself”, enriching and developing the class and class struggle theory of historical materialism on a series of issues:
First, the capitalist mode of production is a prerequisite for the formation of the working class, but cultural traditions can play an objective and sometimes even decisive role in the formation and development of class consciousness; second, the essence of class is relationship. In addition to the basic relationship of capitalist production relations, the working class also has other relationship essences such as politics, ideology and culture; third, the existence of class struggle is universal, and the class struggle analysis method is an important method of Marxism.
Miliband: Classes & class struggle & State Theory
In his 1984 book Marxism and Politics, Miliband eloquently told contemporary Western readers that classes and class struggle are also prevalent in contemporary developed capitalist society; based on the status and role in the mode of production, combined with factors such as lifestyle and ideology, it is possible to redefine the working class and the ruling class, and deeply analyze the new changes in the class structure and forms of class struggle in contemporary developed capitalist society.
The main contribution of “British Marxism” to state theory was made by Miliband and Jassop.
In “The State in Capitalist Society” in 1968, Miliband showed through specific empirical analysis that: on the one hand, the modern capitalist state is still a tool of the bourgeoisie’s rule; but on the other hand, the ruling class also legitimizes its class rule by strengthening the construction of ideological hegemony. Subsequently, Miliband formed a systematic theory of state autonomy through theoretical reflection on Marx’s state autonomy thought and empirical research on the existing state autonomy.
The core of his theory is that all states enjoy a certain degree of autonomy, but this autonomy cannot change the nature of the state, that is, class nature. Unlike Miliband, who focuses on the nature of the capitalist state, Jassop’s research focuses on the formation of the contemporary capitalist state form.
On the basis of synthesizing various Marxist state theories, Jassop proposed a “strategic relationship theory” state view, the core of which is that the form of the contemporary capitalist state is determined by multiple factors. In addition to class rule, capital, political tradition, ideological hegemony, etc. will have an impact on the formation of the state form. After more than 30 years of continuous exploration, Jessop completed the construction of his critical theory of capitalist states in the era of globalization in recent years, providing us with a complete Marxist perspective for understanding contemporary capitalist states.
“British Marxism” in the field of cultural studies
For the development of historical materialism in the 20th century, the most outstanding contribution of “British Marxism” is to promote the contemporary understanding of the cultural theory of historical materialism. There are many representative works of “British Marxism” in the field of cultural studies.
In addition to the early works of Hoggart, Williams and Thompson, the most important is the large number of working papers published by the “Birmingham School” under the leadership of Hall in the 1960s and 1970s. In these seemingly fragmented works, they made important theoretical breakthroughs by specifically studying all aspects of British popular culture: first, they redefined culture on the basis of the concept of practice, understanding it as the struggle between different lifestyles based on the mode of production and its results, greatly expanding the connotation of culture; second, they broke the myth of elite culture and proved that the working class not only has its own culture, but also realized the awakening of class consciousness and the development and maturity of political consciousness in the process of cultural creation; third, they disenchanted the production, consumption and circulation process of capitalist culture, revealing the construction process and mechanism of bourgeois ideological hegemony in the field of popular culture; fourth, they discovered the political resistance function in subcultures such as youth culture, gender, and race, thus finding a possible way to break the hegemony of bourgeois culture.