Marxist or historical materialist historiography is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography are the centrality of social class and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes. Historical materialism (or what Marx himself called the materialist conception of history - materialistische Geschichtsauffassung) is a social theory and an approach to the study of history and sociology, normally considered the intellectual basis of Marxism. ... Historiography is the study of the way history is and has been written. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. ... Economics (deriving from the Greek words οίκω [okos], house, and νέμω [nemo], rules hence household management) is the social science that studies the allocation of scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants. ...

Marxist historiography has made contributions to the history of the working class, oppressed nationalities, and the methodology of history from below. The chief problematic aspect of Marxist historiography has been an argument on the nature of history as determined or dialectical; this can also be stated as the relative importance of subjective and objective factors in creating outcomes. The term working class is used to denote a social class. ... Methodology of epistemology. ... History from below is a form of historical narrative which was developed as a result of the Annales School and popularised in the 1960s. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Template:Wiktionarypar objective Objective may be: Objective lens, an optical element in a camera or microscope. ...

Marxist history is generally teleological, in that it posits a direction of history, towards an end state of history as classless human society. Marxist historiography, that is, the writing of Marxist history in line with the given historiographical principles, is generally seen as a tool. Its aim is to bring those oppressed by history to self-consciousness, and to arm them with tactics and strategies from history: it is both a historical and a liberatory project. Teleology is the philosophical study of purpose (from the Greek teleos, perfect, complete, which in turn comes from telos, end, result). ... Classless is a term used by political idealists to refer to an imagined future egalitarian society in which social and economic class no longer exists. ... Self-consciousness is the knowledge of ones own presence. ...

Historians who use Marxist methodology, but disagree with the mainstream of Marxism, often describe themselves as marxist historians (with a lowercase M). Methods from Marxist historiography, such as class analysis, can be divorced from the liberatory intent of Marxist historiography; such practitioners often refer to their work as marxian or Marxian. Minuscule, or lower case, is the smaller form (case) of letters (in the Roman alphabet: a, b, c, ...). Originally alphabets were written entirely in majuscule (capital) letters which were spaced between well-defined upper and lower bounds. ...

Marx and Engels

Frederick Engels's most important historical contribution was the German Peasants War, which analysed social warfare in early protestant Germany in terms of emerging capitalist classes. The German Peasants War is overdetermined and lacks a rigorous engagement with archival sources. It does however indicate the Marxist interest in history from below and class analysis, and it attempts a dialectical analysis. Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels (November 28, 1820 - August 5, 1895) was a German Socialist philosopher and the co-founder of modern Communist theory with Karl Marx. ... expanding insurgences The Peasants War (in German, der Deutsche Bauernkrieg) was a popular revolt in Europe, specifically in the Holy Roman Empire between 1524-1526 and consisted, like the preceding Bundschuh movement and the Hussite Wars, of a mass of economic as well as religious revolts by peasants, townsfolk and...

Marx's most important works on social and political history include The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, The Communist Manifesto, and The German Ideology. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is Karl Marxs analysis of Napoleon Bonaparte IIIs coup detat of December 1851, in which he elucidates the social forces and mechanisms at work during the political crisis. ... The Communist Manifesto (Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) was first published on February 21, 1848, and is one of the worlds most historically influential political tracts. ... The German Ideology was a book written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels around April or early May 1845. ...

Marxist historiography in the Soviet Union

Marxist historiography suffered in the Soviet Union, as the government requested overdetermined historical writing. Marxist historians tended to avoid contemporary history (history after 1905) where possible and effort was predominantly directed at premodern history. As history was considered to be a politicised academic discipline, historians limited their creative output to avoid prosecution.

Notable histories include the Short Course History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), published in the 1930s, which was written in order to justify the nature of Bolshevik party life under Joseph Stalin. Leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International, a painting by Malcolm McAllister on the Pathfinder Mural in New York City and on the cover of the book Lenin’s Final Fight published by Pathfinder. ... (help· info) (Russian, in full: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин (Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin), born Джугашвили (Dzhugashvili), Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი (Ioseb Jughashvili); (December 18 [O.S. December 6] 1878 – March 5, 1953) was the leader of the Soviet Union from mid-1920s to his death in 1953 and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of...

The Great Britain's Communist Party Historians Group

A circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) formed in the 1950s. They shared a common interest in 'history from below' and class structure in early capitalist society. While some members of the group left the CPGB after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the common points of British Marxist historiography continued in their works. They placed a great emphasis on the subjective determination of history. E. P. Thompson famously engaged Althusser in The Poverty of Theory, arguing that Althusser's theory overdetermined history, and left no space for historical revolt by the oppressed. A subdivision of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), from 1946-1956 the Communist Party Historians Group formed a highly influential cluster of British Marxist historians, who pioneered history from below. ... The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was a political party in the United Kingdom, which existed from 1920 to 1991. ... Hungarians investigate a disabled Soviet tank in Budapest The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, also known as the Hungarian Uprising or simply the Hungarian Revolt, was an anti-Soviet revolt in Hungary lasting from 23 October to 4 November 1956. ... Edward Palmer Thompson (February 3, 1924 - August 28, 1993), was a British historian, socialist and peace campaigner. ... Louis Althusser (October 19, 1918 _ October 23, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. ...

Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class is one of the works commonly associated with this group. Eric Hobsbawm's Bandits is another example of this group's work. The Making of the English Working Class is an influential work of English social history, written by E. P. Thompson a notable a New Left historian; it was published in 1963 (revised 1968) by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and later republished at Pelican, becoming an early Open University Set Book. ... Eric John Blair Hobsbawm (born June 9, 1917) is a British Marxist historian and author, once the leading theorist of the now defunct Communist Party of Great Britain. ...

C.L.R. James was also a great pioneer of the 'history from below' approach. While he was in Britain when he wrote his classic work 'The Black Jacobins' (1938), he was an anti-Stalinist Marxist and so outside of the CPGB. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was a journalist, and a prominent socialist theorist and writer. ...

The effect of Marxist historiography

Marxist historiography has had an enormous influence on historiography, and compares with empiricist historiography as one of the basic and foundational historiographic methodologies. Most non-Marxist historians make use of tools developed within Marxist historiography, like dialectical analysis of social formations, class analysis, or the project of broadening the scope of history into social history. Marxist historiography provided the first sustained efforts at social history, and is still highly influential within this area. Social history is an area of historical study considered by some to be a social science that attempts to view historical evidence from the point of view of developing social trends. ...

Marxism was one of the key influences on the Annales tradition of French historiography. The Annales School is a school of historical writing named after the French scholarly journal Annales dhistoire économique et sociale (later called , then renamed in 1994 as ) where it was first expounded. ...