Rev Left Radio - Marxism 101: Intro to Historical Materialism (and the Necessity of Socialism)

Episode Date: April 6, 2025

In this lecture, Breht provides an accessible but rigorous introduction to the Marxist theory of history: historical materialism. Breht explains how historical materialism is dialectical materialism applied to the evolution of human societies over time, the role that the base-superstructure model has in understanding culture and ideology, the long march from hunter-gatherer communal societies to slave empires to feudal monarchies to capitalist republics and beyond - to socialist democracy and ultimately to the communist transcendence of class society altogether, marking humanities maturation beyond its predatory phase and into history proper. Throughout the lecture, Breht provides examples, explores nuances, and highlights the pitfalls of attempts to change the system without the theoretical and practical tools of Marxism.  This lecture is part of the Omaha-based political education program Socialist Night School Support 3 families in Gaza HERE ------------------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE Outro Beat Prod. by flip da hood

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. All right, on today's episode, I'm going to present to you a lecture I gave as part of our ongoing organizational and political education efforts here in Omaha and a program that we recently created called Omaha Nighter Socialist Night School based in Omaha, Nebraska. This is a six-week program that me and some local organizations, organizers have put together. And the intention is at first to bring in members of organizations and activist groups in the Omaha area, people that are already active, to go through a six-week fairly intensive political education course, theory, history, history, and praxis, trying to

uplift the basic social consciousness and class consciousness and theoretical consciousness of those already active and wanting to be more active in the community as organizers. And then the goal is we go through the six-week program and then we extend it to other audiences going forward. Maybe the next instantiation would go out to college students, right? We'd promote it on local campuses and then have college students join the six-week program and then eventually get to the just to the public, right, to the open community and lift people's basic political education, especially in this moment of crisis when people are looking for deeper understandings of what's going on, and many people are looking to get involved.

I think this is a crucial time to be doing something like this and organizing in our community. And obviously, we live in a deep red state. We're not in a major city, but we've always been putting in work here in Omaha, and we will continue to do so. And I'm very, very proud of what we've accomplished so far with the Socialist Night School. We're three weeks done. We have three more weeks to go. I taught the lectures for week two and three.

We have about two, two and a half hours every Tuesday for the members of this program to come to this church that we have, that we have some connections and they allow us to use one of their rooms. We have about 50 people altogether. More people actually applied for the night school, but the room only had a certain amount of caring capacity. And we're offering free child care and free food to everybody who attends for, you know, every single week you have. not only free child care, but amazing food. We have basically a chef who is a professional chef who is also on the left and is a good friend of our organizers, some of our main organizers, and agreed to cook. I'm not even exaggerating amazing meals for every single one of these weeks. Last week we had Palestinian food, so all the food, just a bunch of different kinds of Palestinian food. It was absolutely amazing.

Yesterday we had Asian food, like every week is like a different genre of food. I think we're doing comfort food coming up next, like Southern Comfort food in a following week. So this is homemade from scratch by a chef. And the food has just been amazing. So, yeah, it's been really cool to organize this, to get a bunch of people together, to raise the political and theoretical consciousness of those who want to make a change and are already active in our community. and to provide them with free child care and to provide them with not just free food, but genuinely amazing, high-quality, delicious food every week.

It's been a real honor to be a part of it. And my main contributions are giving two lectures out of six. The first one is an introduction to historical materialism. And the second one that I just did yesterday was a history of socialist revolutions. And in that lecture and session, and it's not just a lecture, right? It's a lecture with discussion breaks in between and then break out groups at the end with facilitators so people can go in smaller groups of five or seven people can go and discuss the content, work through questions, and each group has one of the organizers as a facilitator of that conversation. So you learn a bunch and then you go and you talk about it. And in the meantime, you're making these connections, right?

You're talking to fellow organizers and activists in the community. you're learning people's names they come from different organizations jewish voices for peace nebraskans for palest democratic socialist omaha tenants united and so you're bringing all these organizations and members of these organizations together in dialogue learning together eating together working together and uh it and it's a it's a really beautiful thing so i did yeah the lecture on historical materialism which i'm going to present to you today and i just did the one on um on socialist revolutions And in the one on socialist revolutions, which I'm not going to read today, maybe in the future, if people are interested in like this, I try to do a couple things. It's kind of hard to cover the entire history of socialist revolutions in our lecture. But I really focused on making connections between colonialism, imperialism, socialism, and capitalism, right? Like, these are not separate things. I presented colonialism as, like, you know, primitive accumulation, the bloody birthing ground of capitalism. I presented imperialism. And, as the monopoly stage of capitalism, at this stage in which capitalism develops,

and imperialism is a mechanism by which it grows, expands, and maintains itself around the world. And then I presented fascism as capitalism's ultimate defense mechanism. When it is in crisis from structural instability or in crisis from bottom-up organized revolutionary working class movements, capitalism turns to fascism. And then, after laying that groundwork, I went into some case studies, the Paris Commune, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Chinese Revolution. I extracted universalizable lessons from each of those revolutions and collated them together and say, like, these are the lessons that we can learn going forward. Then I did a brief survey of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist revolutions and movements around the world, Algeria, Cuba, South Africa, Ghana, et cetera, and ended it with a history of socialism and communism in the United States.

From the Socialist Party with Eugene Debs to the Communist Party USA in the 30s and 40s, you know, up third. through the Black Panther Party, Revolutionary Communist Party, et cetera, in the 60s, 70s and beyond. So I was really happy with that lecture. It's really difficult to try to find not only what to cover and what to leave out, but also like, you know, understanding that this is an introduction. Like, you cannot take for granted that even though these people are active in organizing that they have any of this history, any of this knowledge, right? There's different levels of understanding that people come in with. So the point of that lecture and this one I'm about to present to you is to make this stuff as accessible as possible without sacrificing the

intellectual rigor of the thing we're discussing, right? Like, it's going to be simultaneously accessible and challenging to people who, to know very little. But to be fair, the first session was a, was laying out the Marxist critique of political economy of capitalism. And each lesson builds on each other. So, you know, we had that first lesson with other teachers taught the critique of political economy, and then I'm kind of building on that. So now that you understand the Marxist critique of capitalism, right, the same people come back next week. Now we're going to move into the Marxist theory of history and understand how did capitalism emerge. You know, it is ephemeral, right? If it's just like every other mode of production before it, it's arisen due to certain historical conditions and contradictions from a previous system.

and it too is an ephemeral passing stage in human history, which is the big secret that defenders of capitalism do not want people to think in terms of that capitalism is not here to stay. It is like every other mode of production before it, a temporary mode of production. And there's also something very interesting as an aside before I jump into this of the time spans for each mode of production. You know, if we go back to primitive communism, we're talking 200,000 years. This is the vast majority of human history is hunter-gatherer nomadic, you know, tribes that humans lived in for, yeah, 200,000 plus years of our evolutionary history as modern humans. And then we move into the slave mode of production. You know, you can think of the empires, like the Roman Empire and its slave economy and its slave of mode of production. And that lasted several thousand years, right?

The Roman Empire itself lasted, I believe, 2,000 years, more or less. and so you have several thousand years of the slave mode of production and then you shift into feudalism and that lasts for about a thousand or so years right maybe a little bit more on the edges and then you move into capitalism and that that's been around for about 250 or so years and so you can see how every mode of production gets shorter exponentially shorter and capitalism after only 250 years already hitting its limitations right already prime to be replaced by Socialism, already having its contradictions rack the system. And so it's almost like as we, in Marxist terms, approach the end of class society, the historical process speeds up.

And I think that's a fascinating thing that I was thinking about as I was doing this lecture, preparing for this lecture, thinking about historical materialism, et cetera. So just food for thought on that front. But what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to read the lecture that I performed for Socialist Night School. It is in depth. It is a little long, but I hope people still find it useful. I think even if you're a long-time Marxist, hearing this presentation will still be beneficial, we'll still prime the pump of your Marxist analytic thinking and the way that you're engaging with history and understanding these systems, right, kind of have a refresher. And if you're newer to Marxism or historical materialism isn't something you've doven into quite yet, or you know a little bit about it, you basically get the thrust of it, but you want more detail, this will be perfect. And particularly if you're brand new to Marxism and you're really trying to develop your understanding of Marxism broadly and specifically, you know, what would be referred to as the science of Marxism, which is its historical analysis, then I think this would be excellent for you. And the other, the last comment I want to make up front is we have to

understand there's dialectical materialism. That is the, that is the framework by which Marxists apprehend reality. The phenomena of reality is the broad way of thinking and analyzing that we bring to life. Historical materialism is dialectical materialism applied to human history and society. Right? So you're taking this broad framework, this way of thinking, dialectical materialism, and now you're applying that framework to human history and its evolution over time. And what we get when we do that is historical materialism.

So, and it works both ways, right? Like, I always say the evolution via natural selection is dialectical materialism in work, but Darwin didn't come to biology thinking in dialectical materialist terms. He inverted the process. He studied biology and came to dialectical materialist conclusions, even though he could have been totally unaware of what dialectical materialism was and almost certainly was unaware of what dialectical materialism was. But the reason that Marx and Engels got so excited when Darwin's theory emerged is because

they knew immediately that this is exactly what they would expect reality to look like from a dialectical materialist lens. And if you're interested in that fuller argument about how evolution via natural selection is an example of dialectical materialism, you can check out the speech I gave at ASU a couple years ago. I put it on the public podcast feed. and that episode is dialectics and liberation insights from Marxism and Buddhism. And in that episode, I go into some detail about how biological evolution via natural selection

is a quintessential example of dialectical materialism applied to the realm of biology and the evolution of life. So applying dialectical materialism to human history and the evolution of societies, we get historical materialism. And that's what I'll be talking about today. last thing sorry if you're organizing and you know you want to hand people a quick and easy educational tool obviously i put this together for that exact purpose in an organizing context so if you are in an organizing context and you just want to share this podcast like hey you want to learn about historical materialism here's a perfect accessible introduction to the marxist theory of history and historical materialism that we can give our members as they come in point them in that direction

totally free on all podcast apps, and they can immediately engage with this material. So it's not only being used in our local organizing context, but hopefully organizers around the country and perhaps the world could implement it into their political education programs. So that's what I'm offering. That's the spirit in which I'm offering this. So let's get into it. What is Marxism? We have all heard the word throughout our lives. We've probably heard politicians and pundits tell us how dangerous and scary it is, how it's antithetical to freedom and the American way of life, that it is synonymous with tyranny and oppression, that it conflicts with human nature, or that it is a utopian dream, and as such, it simply isn't practical. The reason our leaders seem so hell-bent on convincing us that this is a dangerous and terrible idea. idea should become clear throughout this lecture. But regardless of what your preconceived

notions about Marxism may be, I only ask that you set them aside for tonight and keep an open mind. At the end of this, you may or may not agree with its core claims and logic, but you'll walk away with a deeper understanding of it, and that's a significant benefit in his own right. I offer you this introduction to Marxism, not as a doctrine, a dogma, or a set of specific beliefs that some guy named Karl Marx came up with on a whim, but as a living, breathing, open-ended tool that we as working people can use to better understand our world in the here and now, and maybe, just maybe, change it for the better. Marxism is more than just a theory. It is a tool for understanding the world and a guide

for transforming it. At its core, Marxism provides a scientific analysis of history, economics, and society, revealing how material conditions shape human consciousness and how class struggle drives historical change. Unlike mainstream ideologies that treat capitalism as a natural or eternal system, Marxism shows that capitalism, like feudalism and slavery before it, is a passing stage in human development. By studying historical materialism, the Marxist theory of histories of how societies evolve over time, we gain not only an understanding of why the world is the way it is, but also a framework for imagining and building something better. As Karl Marx himself famously declared, quote, the philosophers have hitherto merely interpreted

the world. The point is to change it. This lecture will explore the fundamental principles of Marxism, beginning with historical materialism and the base superstructure model before tracing the development of different modes of production throughout history. We will examine how capitalism functions, its inner contradictions, and why it cannot last forever. Importantly, we will also discuss the necessity of socialism, not as an abstract ideal, but as a material necessity arising from the very crises of capitalism itself. By understanding the forces that shape our society, we can break free from ideological illusions and recognize that the world we live in is not inevitable. It was created by human hands

and can be transformed by human struggle. Marxism is not about passive reflection. It is about action. If capitalism is a historically specific system rather than a permanent fact of life, then the question before us is not whether it will end, but what will replace it when it inevitably does? Will the world descend into deeper inequality, ecological devastation, and authoritarian control? Or will we organize to bring about a more just, democratic, and sustainable future?

The answer depends on whether we, as conscious and engaged individuals and communities, are willing to rise to the challenge. this lecture is not merely an intellectual exercise it is an invitation to think critically to challenge the status quo and ultimately to act i also want to note up front that i will not be covering the marxist critique of capitalist economics as that was done last week by our other lecturers my lecture today is focused on capitalism as a mode of production a stage in human social development the global crises it produces and the subsequent necessity of socialism. While I may touch on some basic economic points in passing,

I will not focus on them. These lectures are meant to build upon one another week by week, and as such, I'll assume you bring some knowledge from the last week to this discussion. As an aside, we have an episode called the Fundamentals of Marxism, intro to political economy that people could use if they want to get that basic idea themselves. You won't be able to hear the lecture we use.

in the socialist night school setting but that episode that we did on me and alison did on the fundamentals of marxism intro to political economy will suffice quite well for for filling out that background knowledge if you're interested all right back to the lecture but it's important to remember that marxism does represent the deepest and most scientifically rigorous understanding and critique of capitalist political economy ever developed and every single critic of capitalism even those who dismiss Marxism rely on Marx's analysis of capitalism as their starting point.

With all of that out of the way, let's jump into it, starting with the beating heart of Marxist analysis, historical materialism. Historical materialism is the cornerstone of Marxist thought. It asserts that the development of human societies is driven by changes in their economic structures rather than by ideas,

culture, individual people, or political institutions alone. Marx explains this when he says, quote, it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. This means that material conditions, how people produce, distribute, and consume goods and resources shape their beliefs, ideologies, and social relationships.

For example, today we might hear someone argue against social welfare programs by saying, you need to pull yourself up by your own bootstraves. Because capitalism is anti-community, anti-cooperation, hyper-individualist, and pro-competition, unlike most other forms of social organization throughout history, people begin to think in these terms. I don't know anyone anything. Everyone fails or succeeds on their own merit. Instead of asking for handouts, you need to work hard and prove your worth. Even people who could benefit from social programs like you know,

universal health care, or affordable housing, will often think in these terms. And that's just one example of how the material system we live under, capitalism, seeps into the consciousness of people living under that system and produces ways of thinking that cohere with instead of challenge that system. This is often done subconsciously and passively through education, popular culture, political punditry, mainstream media, etc. And it's not like people are sitting in a room conspiring on how to brainwash us, rather it is the natural outgrowth of the system we all live under. To better understand how this process works, how our economic and material conditions impact the way we think and behave, let's turn to the base superstructure model, which is a core component of historical materialism.

One of the core principles of historical materialism is the distinction between the economic base, and the cultural superstructure of a society. The base consists of the forces of production, technology, tools, and labor, and the relations of production, the wage labor system, private property, the ownership of resources. So, for example, if you work at, say, Starbucks, the forces of production there would be the coffee machines, the espresso machines, the various syrups, cleaning equipment, and the people who work there. The relations of production would be the relationship between the boss and the worker, or the worker and the customer. A shred of the purely human relationship between these people

remain, but the overarching way they relate to one another is through the roles they play. The worker treats the boss differently than a coworker or a customer, and the boss treats the worker differently than they do the customer or their own boss. So the tools in labor, plus the way people relate to one another through the hierarchies of the workplace, together create the base of Starbucks. This basic understanding can then be expanded

to the whole society. The base of society being the capitalist mode of production, the forces of production throughout the entire economy, and the relationships humans have with one another based on their position within the capitalist socioeconomic hierarchy. Now that we understand the base, let's turn to the superstructure. The superstructure includes culture, law, politics, media, and the dominant ideas in society, all of which arise from and are shaped by the base.

Marx argued that the economic base determines the superstructure, meaning the dominant ideas, institutions, and beliefs of any given society reflect the interests of the ruling class and the system as a whole. At the same time, though, the superstructure stabilizes, reinforces, and maintains the base. So they are in a dialectical relationship to one another. The base producing the superstructure and the superstructure turning around and maintaining the base. So, for example, our popular, culture in America often celebrates wealth and status and luxurious consumption.

Turn on the television and you are bombarded with advertisements trying to convince you how your life would be better if you bought their product. You turn on music or follow celebrity culture and you'll see the glorification of money and wealth and egoism. In politics, we are constantly being told that capitalism is synonymous with freedom and democracy and are promised that if we just keep working harder and, you know, we're harder and harder maybe one day we can become rich too and enjoy the sort of lives that we see on our Instagram reels and music videos. We are constantly told that programs like universal health care

would infringe on our freedom and lead us down the dangerous road to socialist tyranny. Even in law, that one area where we are all supposed to be equal, it's clear that the more money you have, the better lawyers you can hire and the better chances you have of getting off the hook. Moreover, look at what and how certain crimes are punished. If you are poor and in a marginalized community and get caught selling drugs or stealing to get by, the book is thrown at you. If you are the CEO of a health care insurance company that makes money by denying people's claims, resulting in the death and misery of countless people, well, that's not even considered a crime. If you break a window at a protest, the media will say the protest turned violent. if you are the president and you order a drone strike on a wedding or a hospital well that's totally within your legal right

if you get caught stealing supplies from work you can be fired and charged with a crime but if you are a corporation who pollutes an entire river or drinking source resulting in the deaths of innocent people downstream then you try to cover up your crimes and are caught anyway you at worst just have to pay a fine a small fraction of your overall revenue and are often allowed to keep doing business. Exxon can spill millions of tons of oil into the ocean. Boeing's recklessness can cause planes to literally fall out of the sky. And Monsanto, now known as Bayer for PR reasons, can knowingly poison our environment, all of this done for personal profit, yet no CEO ever goes to prison. And as an aside here, one more example comes to mind because I'm recording this episode a day after

the Trump administration's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, came out and said, or the lead of the Justice Department, whatever, came out and said that they are seeking the death penalty in their prosecution against Luigi Mangione for his alleged murder of the health care CEO. So this administration, as it's mass murdering people in Palestine and Yemen, as it's disappearing legal residents in the United States into ice vans and putting them into detention centers, and concentration camps as they are ripping people off the street who have every right to be here and sending them to El Salvadorian prison torture camps. All of that completely fine. But they are seeking the death penalty because Luigi Mangione allegedly killed a health care CEO. And that just shows you in America how we're not legal under the law. if Luigi Mangione instead walked into a kindergarten classroom

and mowed down 20 children as we've seen time and time again in this rotten fucking society he wouldn't get the death penalty Dylan Roof walked in to a black church gunning down countless people because of the color of their skin he got fed Burger King on the way to his prison cell to make sure he wasn't hungry he didn't get the death penalty but you so much has touched the hair on the head of a millionaire CEO in this country and the state will try to murder you for it and we could talk about the legal system

and the inequalities there all day and the way private property is protected over personal lives that the legal system itself values private property over the lives of human beings which is again why a protest turns violent when a window is broken but as we're speaking right now

Trump is dropping bombs on apartment buildings in Yemen and helping Netanyahu do a fascist genocide in Palestine. None of that is illegal in the U.S. No cop is going to show up at the door of the Oval Office and escort Trump and his administration out, put him in a courtroom, or send them to jail. So that's a little digression, but I just wanted to make that point. The law is not a neutral terrain. It is one heavily shaped by the class dynamics of the underlying economic system and it reproduces its logic. It values private property over human well-being.

It values geopolitical and economic hegemony over human life. The point here is that everywhere we turn in society, we are bombarded with the ideology of capitalism. Even religion is turned into a commodified spectacle with megachurches led by pastors and $1,000 suits wearing Rolexes telling us that God rewards the worthy with riches and wealth as they turn their religion into a business for profit. All of this reinforces at the level of individual psychology, the naturalness and justification of this system, which in turn helps to protect and maintain the base from widespread opposition. Sure, a few of us wake up and see through the fog of ideology, but as long as most people, most

of the time, can be ideologically corralled into accepting the basic premises of this system, if the lower classes can be convinced they have a shot to be rich one day, and if the masses can be convinced that the alternative to capitalism necessarily means tyranny and subjugation, it can continue on. As for those of us who see through the bullshit, we are relegated for now to the fringe of political life. We're committed to changing that. And then at this point in the lecture, I do, and this might be helpful for organizers, I do before we move on, right, a group discussion. Talk with the folks at your table and try to come up with one example per table of how our cultural superstructure

here in the U.S. reinforces the capitalist base of society. Think about sports, movies, music, things that are often taken as common sense, art, morality, the media, or anything else in our culture that promotes ways of thinking that are compatible with capitalism.

Then we will go around and hear from each table's example. So we spent 10 minutes or so doing that, and it was really productive with regards to discussion. All right, back to the, and it helps people understand the concept and come up with their own examples. Back to the lecture.

Now we should have an understanding of what the base and superstructure are, how they relate to, shape, and maintain one another, and how this whole process serves to perpetuate the economic system as a whole. Next, we are going to learn about modes of production and their evolution over time. Okay, so we understand the base and superstructure theory in capitalist terms, but capitalism is just one of many modes of production, which change over time. Capitalism wasn't just created in the minds of political theorists. It evolved out of feudalism, which came before it.

You see, through the lens of historical materialism, history is understood as a series of transformations from one mode of production to another, driven by contradictions and class struggles within each economic system. Marx identifies several major historical stages of economic development, all of which correspond to specific modes of production. Primitive Communism Early human societies were organized around communal ownership, with little-to-no class division. Production was based on shared labor and subsistence living. We can think of early nomadic tribal societies that lived communally and hunted in garrison,

gathered for sustenance. They often had to move around to follow the migrations of animals they hunted or find new areas where they could forage for various forms of food like berries, nuts, or edible roots, and even sometimes engaged in early agricultural development. It was a classless, stateless mode of production in which resources were shared collectively and the concept of private property did not yet exist. Early human communities organized labor cooperatively, and goods were distributed based on need rather than profit. There were no social classes, no state apparatus, and no exploitation of one group by another. While the productive forces were rudimentary, stone tools, fire, very early forms of farming,

the high level of equality and mutual dependence ensured a communal form of life that prioritized survival and cohesion over hierarchy and accumulation. his colleague and comrade Frederick Engels, in his famous book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, emphasized that this early period of human history was not only free from class antagonisms, but also often featured more egalitarian gender relations than what followed. Patriarchy, the social domination of women by men, he argued convincingly, only arose alongside the emergence of class society. In any case, human being spent over 100,000 years in this state of primitive communism, maybe even twice as long. But the core

problem faced by our early ancestors was scarcity and living totally subordinated to the whims of predators and nature. Humans long march towards civilization was and is an attempt to eliminate scarcity, protect ourselves from predation, and gain mastery over nature. And we have the unique intelligence to do so, to extract ourselves from the animalistic state of nature and remake the world in our image. Understanding primitive communism is essential because it shows that exploitative, class-based societies are not eternal or natural, but arose historically and can be transcended. It represents a pre-class society that humanity may return to at a higher level of development

after passing through the other necessary historical stages, developing our technological capacities, and solving the problem of scarcity. Slavery With the advent of the agricultural revolution, wherein human beings stopped hunting and gathering as their dominant form of securing sustenance and settled down into one area to cultivate crops instead, surpluses, or more food than is needed for immediate survival,

started being produced. This surplus production allowed for the emergence of class divisions. A ruling class of slave owners exploited enslaved laborers to amass wealth and power. The slave mode of production, seen in society like ancient Rome and Greece, was built on the direct exploitation of enslaved people who were legally considered property. The ruling class, the slave owners, controlled the means of production, land, tools, and resources, and relied heavily on the forced labor of slaves to generate wealth, giving rise to a privileged class of elites who could be freed from all forms of toil and allowed copious amounts of leisure time to pursue their own goals like jostling for political power, amassing even more wealth, and in some cases pursuing philosophical or artistic ambitions.

The key feature of this system is that enslaved people are the primary productive force. They are legally owned and forced to work without compensation, producing the surplus, that the ruling class appropriates. Unlike in primitive communism, where labor was cooperative and shared, the slave mode of production is based on direct coercion, institutionalized domination, and extreme inequality. The superstructure of this mode of production can be seen in the philosophy it produced. Ancient Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,

along with Roman philosophers like Marcus Aurelius and Cicero, brilliant thinkers, no doubt, never once questioned slavery. They explored metaphysics, ethics, mathematics, and even early attempts at science, yet all of them, without a single exception, took slavery for granted. We can also see this total acceptance of slavery and patriarchy in religious texts like the Old Testament. It baffles us today how such relatively advanced, reflective, and thoughtful human beings who seemingly questioned everything, or who believed in a totally just God could accept slavery as if it were just common sense. But once you understand the base superstructure model that their lives as philosophers and senators and emperors were totally dependent on slavery, it begins to make much more sense.

However, since enslaved people had no personal stake in their work and no means of improving their conditions, this system was prone to stagnation and crisis. As societies expanded, think about the Roman Empire, for example, maintaining a steady supply of slaves became difficult, and slave uprisings, like the famous rebellion led by Spartacus, exposed the contradictions of the system. Eventually, as economic, social, and military pressures mounted, as the highly centralized Roman Empire broke down, as slaves continued to rebel against their masters, slavery declined, and a new form of social organization, began to emerge. After the fall of the greatest empire based on the slave mode of production, namely the Roman Empire, the feudal mode of production slowly emerged organically and replaced slavery across the old world. In this mode, society is structured around land ownership and rigid social hierarchies,

with a dominant land-owning aristocracy, lords, and a subordinated class of peasants or serfs who worked the land. land. Instead of outright ownership of people, feudal lord's controlled land, and peasants or serfs were tied to it. In exchange for protection and the right to work small plots for their own subsistence, serfs had to provide labor, a share of their crops, and other services to the Lord. The relationship between Lord and Surf was deeply unequal, but it was mediated by custom, tradition, and religious authority, rather than by overt violence, typical of slavery. Unlike enslaved people, serfs were not considered property, but they were not fully free either.

They were bound to the land and could not easily leave or seek better conditions. Over time, as trades and towns grew, feudalism itself began to break down. Peasants resisted heavy burdens, and some fled to cities, while merchants, traders, artisans, and early capitalists started challenging feudal relations and restrictions. This growing conflict weakened the system over time, created new forms of thinking that challenged the base and superstructure of monarchical feudalism, like the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment, which gave rise to science and undermined the religious superstition that underpinned the superstructure of feudalism,

and eventually gave rise to capitalism, where wage labor replaced serfdom and private property, or owning capital and productive property instead of just the land, became the dominant economic force. This shift gave rise to the Industrial Revolution, which broke entirely with feudalism and ushered in capitalism around the globe. As an aside here in my subsequent lecture on socialist revolutions where I talk about colonialism, I bring this whole thing up again, this shift from feudalism to capitalism. And I make it very clear that the colonial processes, settler colonialism, European colonialism, was the primitive accumulation stage that developed the preconditions for the development of capitalism itself. So the shift out of feudalism and towards capitalism was done, you know, we call it at first mercantilism, right? Small elements of the emerging bourgeoisie become merchants and traders in big cities and towns.

and then colonialism as a historical process gets started as they reach out for new resources, new raw materials, new forms of cheap labor, and that process of colonialism, aka primitive accumulation, set the stage for the development of capitalism. So you can't understand that shift from feudalism to capitalism without understanding mercantilism to some degree, but most importantly, colonialism. There is no capitalism without colonialism, and that's worth stating here, even though in the socialist night school itself, I build on this lecture into the next one and make that incredibly clear and at length. So just a side note. Back to the lecture. Importantly, the transition from slavery to feudalism marked a shift from a system where laborers were owned outright to one where they had some autonomy but were still subordinated to a ruling class. This change did not happen overnight. it was driven by economic pressures,

class struggles, and the contradictions of the old system. Marxist historical materialism shows that no mode of production lasts forever. Each one contains internal contradictions that eventually lead to its transformation, and this is a great example of that playing out historically and ushering in the modern world. It's also worth noting that this shift from slavery to feudalism, both increased human freedom, while obscuring unfreedom by a degree of abstraction. serfs were more free than slaves but still did not have real freedom in a similar way wage workers are more free than serfs we even have formal legal freedoms like freedom of speech freedom of assembly and freedom to live where we want but we do not have full freedom do we don't have the freedom to not sell our labor to someone else we don't have the freedom to live our lives in the ways we want we don't have freedom from compulsion and coercion.

We are still forced to spend the majority of our waking lives working to make someone else rich while we often struggle just to get by. We are told we are free, but there are degrees of freedom, and in many ways we remain in chains,

even if those chains are more subtle or even invisible, even if those chains are structural instead of interpersonal. But before we move on to capitalism, Let me make some quick caveats and explore some nuances to this analysis. Number one, Marx and Engels' analysis here focuses on how these modes of production developed in Europe.

They were European and had the best and most detailed histories, as well as the best overall understanding of how this evolutionary process played out in Europe, hence the examples of Rome and Greece of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. But while many of these examples come from Europe, it's essential to note that they're not limited to it. These modes of production developed in the same broad way all around the world. And while the specifics of how they arose might differ, the broad trajectories are the same. Had Marx and Engels been writing in Asia or Africa, they would have pulled examples from those cultures or those histories using their languages.

As a caveat to that, of course, because of the processes of colonialism, capitalism, started in Europe. And so the analysis that was arising in the wake of the industrial revolution had to happen in Europe because that's where capitalism was at the forefront of development. So while it's true that Marx and Engels, had they lived somewhere else, would have given different specifics and examples of this process playing out. They had to be where they were historically at that time in history to be able to produce this understanding of capitalism because that's where capitalism was emerging due to historical process. that we've kind of touched on.

The main point is that this is a global process. Also note that the Roman Empire stretched from southern Europe, across North Africa, and deep into West Asia. This was the epicenter of human globalization, trade, and civilization at that time,

and it was not at all relegated just to Europe. Islam and Christianity, growing out of Judaism, are Abrahamic religions, meaning they share a common starting point, rooted in the Roman Empire and its collapse. Further east, you found the Mongol Empire and Chinese Empire like the Han, Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties. These societies had unique and culturally specific mixes of both slave and feudal modes of production,

often called tributary modes of production, wherein the state extracts surplus from peasants through taxation and tribute. The imperial state, not a proper feudal aristocracy, is the main apparatus of surplus extraction. Peasants typically retained possession of their land and just paid tribute to the state instead of living on and working their lord's land directly. So there are nuances here to be sure, but the same basic process plays out globally. That's what's important for this discussion. 2. When we talk of modes of production, we are talking about the dominant modes at any given time.

Moreover, previous modes of production can stretch even into the present. in both their base material and their cultural ideological forms. For example, chattel slavery in the U.S. South represented a slave mode of production being reintroduced at a time when humanity as a whole was transitioning out of feudalism and into capitalism. We call this, along with the broader processes of colonialism, the primitive accumulation stage of capitalism. In the UK today, Brits still celebrate the superstructure of the monarchy, with some limited but very real material implications, even though the dominant mode of production is obviously post-industrial capitalism.

We can explore these nuances later during group discussion if you want, so if you have a question about this important caveat, don't forget to bring it up later. And finally, three, modes of production bleed into one another, and the seeds of the next mode tend to be present in the existent mode, often in underdeveloped. up to form. For example, when humans were shifting from primitive communism to the slave mode of production, agriculture had already existed alongside hunting and gathering for generations. When the feudal mode of production was dominant, small artisans, traders, and merchants existed, and they would later become the bourgeoisie. Today, under capitalism, trade unions represent

workers coming together and operating democratically. Universal health care in Cuba and France, exist outside the profit motive. These can be seen as kernels of socialism existing in the dominant capitalist motive production and developing these even more is key to shifting out of capitalism and

towards socialism proper. The important thing is that there are nuances here that are worth remembering and that these things are long processes that evolve and develop over time. They are not on-off switches or jumps made overnight. They are also culturally specific, and each mode of production can be broken down and analyzed at deeper and deeper levels.

We can even see this today. Capitalism in China is structured very differently than capitalism in the U.S. Capitalism in South Korea is different from capitalism in Denmark, etc. Capitalism as a mode of production. The capitalist mode of production is the dominant economic system in the modern world, characterized by private ownership of the means of production, factories, land, machinery, technology, tools, etc. And the widespread use of wage labor.

Unlike in feudalism, where peasants were tied to the land and had to provide labor to their lords, capitalism is based on a labor market where workers, who do not own significant property, capital, or resources, must sell their ability to work in exchange for wages. Those of us not born into wealth or lucky enough to get it are left only with our labor to sell on the open market. We literally have to sell our bodies, our time, and our labor power to those with private property in order to survive. The capitalist class or bourgeoisie

profit from the state of affairs by paying workers less than the value of what they produce, keeping the surplus or profit for themselves. And this was explained in detail in our previous class. Again, you can check out our episode, The Fundamentals of Marxism, intro to political economy for more. This system is driven by the pursuit of profit and competition, both amongst workers in the labor market competing for jobs, and between capitalists in various industries competing for market share, which leads to constant technological development, market expansion, economic growth, as well as cycles of economic crisis. But while the world gets richer than ever before, the distribution of that wealth gets concentrated at the very top of society, leaving the majority of the world still mired in precarity and poverty. Mark's got at this paradox when he said, quote, there must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery.

And this is as true today as it was back then. America is richer than it's ever been, but it's also more depressed, more anxious, more precarious, and more immiscerated. Homeless people line the streets of every major city. Young people suffer through a mental health crisis because they see no future for themselves in this system. And the biosphere itself is pummeled and destroyed while a small handful of global elites own more wealth than the bottom half of humanity combined and the prospect of the world's first trillionaire looms. One of the key differences between capitalism and previous modes of production is that it appears to offer freedom. Workers are not legally bound to a master, as in slavery, nor are they tied to a specific piece of land, as in feudalism.

However, Marxists argue that this freedom is illusory, because workers must sell their labor to survive, leaving them dependent on capitalists who control jobs and wages and even whole political systems. Unlike feudal lords or slave owners, capitalists do not need to directly coerce labor. Instead, the economic structure forces workers into wage labor. Instead of locking us in chains or forcing us to work a specific piece of land, the coercion is structuralized, turned into an impersonal economic force. Instead of being afraid of the whip or the whims of a noble lord, we are afraid of becoming unemployed, losing our home, and tossed aside by society into the gutters by forces that seem beyond the control of any individual. Another crucial distinction is that capitalism, even more so than other systems, is inherently expansive. It seeks to grow constantly, extracting more resources and extending markets across the world.

This leads to wars, endless conflict, imperialism, and the destruction of the ecosystem as capitalism spreads like a cancer across the world, never satisfied, never stopping. It must always grow in order to survive. In fact, when it stops growing, even for a few months, we call it a recession or a depression. And this increasingly becomes a problem in a finite world where infinite growth is just literally impossible. And this speaks to a crucial point. Just like past systems, capitalism contains contradictions, such as incredible economic inequality, overproduction crises, ecological collapse, and class conflict.

That, according to Marx, will eventually lead to its transformation into socialism. Just as slave societies and feudal societies before us eventually ran into their own limitations, weakened and destroyed by their own inner logics, so too must capitalism. In fact, we can see that happening all around us today. The system is becoming less and less reasonable, less and less sustainable, and is working for less and less people. Something new must emerge, and it must emerge out of the contradictions of capitalism and resolve the contradictions that cannot be resolved within capitalism itself.

For example, the new system must find a way to live in sustainable harmony with the environment, something capitalism literally cannot do. It must also find a way of spreading the wealth and resources of our planet to all people, something that violates capitalism's core logic of accumulation at the top. We sit at a crucial historic juncture, where we are witnessing the slow decay of a mode of production and yet still grasping as a species for what we are, might come next. But unlike those peasants living at the end of feudalism, who could never have foreseen modern industrial capitalism, Marxism gives us for the first time in human history an understanding of how these modes of production arise, develop, decay, and give birth to new modes. This allows us, unlike the slaves of Rome or the peasants of medieval Japan, the ability to understand what's happening, the analytical tools to grasp the contradictions driving this

change, and the vision for what must come next. Two crucial points before we move on. One, historical materialism, unlike liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, fascism, or any other ideology of capitalism, allows us to see capitalism as an ephemeral passing stage in human society and its evolution. It stands outside of capitalism and analyzes how it arose, what laws of motion dictate its unfolding, how it generates internal contradictions, all while understanding that it must pass, like every single mode of production before it.

Ideologies within capitalism cannot comprehend this. They see capitalism as the end-all, be-all of economic systems. Sure, the liberals might be-all. argue it needs some reforms and constraints. And sure, the conservatives might not like how it destroys their beloved traditions and globalizes everything, but fundamentally they are incapable of grasping capitalism as a passing stage in human history. And again, this is because these worldviews are superstructural byproducts of capitalism itself, meant to reinforce and maintain the capitalist base. Only in ideology like Marxism,

that can stand above this process and understand it, is capable of truly critiquing capitalism thoroughly and offering a vision forward and out of its decaying corpse. As capitalism itself degenerates, so too do its ideologies, becoming less and less bound to reality, becoming increasingly incoherent, and forced to rely more and more on brute force and violence to maintain the system that they simply cannot think outside the country.

confines of. And the second point. Because Marxism equips us to see this process, we can actively act as agents of history. We are no longer the passive playthings of historical forces that we cannot comprehend. We are active, informed participants in the making of history. As working people, it is us who are the only force that, when properly organized and educated, can confront capital And through class struggle, that engine of history, fight to usher in a more rational, more moral, more egalitarian, and more sustainable mode of production. We call this mode of production socialism. And the prospect of it strikes fear into the hearts of the owning class, because socialism

seeks to do away with them entirely and bring under collective, democratic control the means of production. Not for the generation of profit for a few, but rather for the goal of meeting the real needs of the many, of using the wealth and resources and techno-economic forces of humanity to create the highest quality of life for the most amount of people possible in a way that stays within the natural confines of the earth, that respects human and non-human forms of life, and that strives to elevate humanity beyond the brutalities and stupidities of class hierarchy. Socialism as a mode of production.

To put a fine point on this, unlike capitalism where competition and profit drive economic decisions, socialism is based on planned production to meet social needs. Workers no longer sell their labor to bosses for wages. Instead, they collectively own. and democratically control workplaces, ensuring that wealth is shared rather than concentrated. Unlike feudalism or slavery, where class relations were based on coercion and inherited privilege, socialism seeks to abolish class distinctions by ensuring that no small group controls society's

wealth and power. Instead of being ruled by an elite, political and economic decisions are made democratically in the interests of the people. While early socialism may still contain remnants of capitalism, such as markets or wage labor for a time, its goal is to transition toward communism, a classless, stateless society where production is fully cooperative, where all class distinctions have dissolved, and where all forms of structural exploitation are finally eliminated. This is a profound vision of what humanity can be, of what humanity can grow into being. This vision was most famously echoed in popular culture by Captain Picard and Star Trek. Picard, speaking to Lily Sloan, a 21st century woman who is skeptical and bewildered by the ideals

of the 24th century. She struggles to understand why people in Picard's time would choose to do difficult or dangerous work without monetary incentives. Captain Picard responds simply, The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity. This line encapsulates Star Trek's vision of a post-capitalist future where scarcity has been abolished, basic needs are met, and people are driven by self-improvement, exploration, and collective progress rather than personal profit. It's one of the clearest articulations of the franchise's optimistic, socialist-inspired philosophy, and represents a vision of communism, where the whole human species,

is finally liberated from toil, precarity, and class stratification, and can enter the mature phase of our evolutionary development. It's a beautiful vision of what could be, but never lose sight of how to get there. Each transition between various modes of production was marked by intense class struggle, where oppressed groups fought to change the existing order. There is no guarantee that history will passively deliver us to this future. It must be fought for. The owning class will not, and never has, handed over their power and privileges out of the goodness and generosity of their heart. They have never once been convinced by arguments or ideas. Every inch of progress that humanity has made had to be desperately fought over, and ruling classes did everything they could

to stop that progress. People died. Blood was shed. Martyrs were made. We need to be clear-eyed about this fact, for if we do not rise to the challenge, if we sit back and wait for someone else to save us, capitalism could just as easily devolve into fascist dystopia. It could just as easily destroy the planet and undermine the basis for complex life. It could just as easily use the emerging technologies of the 21st century to entrench its power indefinitely through pure technological advantage and, violent oppression. If we want a better world, we are going to have to organize with one another and fight like hell for it. We owe it to ourselves, to our families, to our communities, to the future generations, and to humanity itself. The only question that remains is this. Will we

rise to the challenge or not? Okay. Before we wrap up, we must address one major issue. What are the pitfalls or errors of trying to confront reform or even transcend capitalism without the analytic tools and strategies of Marxism. There are many other left-wing ideas. There are liberal and progressive attempts at reform, and even revolutionary anti-capitalist movements that argue that they are superior to Marxism. Let's explore these and hopefully see why Marxism in particular is so useful. Limitations of non-Marxist methods and strategies. Attempting to transcend capitalism or reform it away, without a solid understanding of Marxism,

historical materialism, and class struggle leads to several pitfalls and errors that have historically weakened or co-opted movements for social change. Without a materialist analysis of capitalism's contradictions and a clear grasp of how class struggle drives historical transformation, well-intentioned efforts often end up reinforcing the system they seek to change rather than overcoming it. Number one, moralistic and idealist approaches to change. One major error is believing that capitalism can be overcome through individual choices, ethical consumption, or moral persuasion alone.

While personal ethics definitely matter, Marxism teaches that capitalism is a system structured around economic necessity, not just individual greed or corruption. Simply appealing to capitalists to be better people or expecting systemic change through lifestyle adjustments such as buying local or supporting co-ops fails to confront the structural forces that compel capitalists to exploit labor and prioritize profit. Without addressing the material basis of capitalism, private ownership of the means of production and class domination, these efforts remain symbolic at best. And as another aside really quick, in my subsequent lecture on socialist revolutions,

I talk about imperialism and the ways in which even if you're able to generate certain reforms, use the democratic mechanisms of a capitalist society to advance your socialist goals. Whenever you get too close to actually challenging the root, you know, power and privilege and wealth of the ruling class, the democratic facade falls. away and you're immediately attacked. Domestically, this takes the form of fascism, and internationally it takes the form of imperialism. And so, again, I make those arguments very, very clear in the subsequent lecture, but

doesn't have time to get into them here. Number two. Reformism and the illusion of a gentler capitalism. Without understanding historical materialism, many believe that capitalism can be reformed into a fairer system through policy changes alone, without disrupting class power. Social Democratic and progressive movements that focus solely on expanding welfare, regulating corporations, or advocating for stakeholder capitalism, often underestimate how capitalists use state power, economic crises, and political influence to roll back reforms whenever they threaten profitability. Capitalist states exist to protect private property and capital accumulation, meaning even progressive reforms, like labor protections or wealth redistribution, are temporary, and vulnerable without a revolutionary movement to transform class relations at the root. 3. Utopianism in the post-capitalist myth.

Some efforts to transcend capitalism without engaging in class struggle assume that new technology, cultural and vibe shifts, or decentralized movements will automatically erode capitalism. Ideas like post-capitalism through automation, blockchain economies, or decentralized networks, Overlooked that capitalism does not just rest on outdated industries. It constantly adapts and absorbs new technologies to maintain class dominance. Without class struggle and collective organization to seize control of production, new technologies often deepen exploitation rather than dissolve it. Similarly, vague calls for leaderless or purely horizontal movements

ignore the need for organization and strategy, leading to political incoherence and inevitable failure. 4. Failure to recognize counter-revolution and co-optation. Without understanding how ruling classes historically resist and sabotage revolutionary change, movements often underestimate the lengths to which capitalists will go to maintain power. Without a materialist analysis of state power, ideology, and repression, reformists and revolutionaries alike, risk being co-opted or simply crushed. Movements that reject organizations and class analysis often fall prey to corporate capture,

where radical rhetoric is absorbed into market-friendly solutions, for example, green capitalism or corporate diversity initiatives, that leave class structures intact. 5. Spontaneity without strategy. Another major pitfall is believing that capitalism will collapse on its own and that workers will spontaneously self-organize into a new society. without theory or leadership. While Marx recognized the importance of spontaneous uprisings, history shows that without revolutionary organization and a clear political strategy, uprisings are either crushed or absorbed back into capitalism.

The ruling class does not simply step aside when confronted with crisis. Instead, it deploys repression, co-optation, and violence to protect its power. Without Marxist analysis and revolutionary organization, spontaneous resistance often burns out or leads to unintended consequences, such as reactionary backlash or authoritarian alternatives. Conclusion. Without Marxism, historical materialism, and an understanding of class struggle, efforts to move beyond capitalism tend to either collapse, get absorbed,

or fail to address the root causes of exploitation and crisis. History shows that serious revolutionary movements must not only understand capitalism's contradictions, but also organized consciously to dismantle it. Otherwise, the ruling class will always find ways to maintain its power, even in the face of reforms or technological shifts. Only through socialism, grounded in materialist analysis, class struggle, and revolutionary organization can capitalism be truly overcome. In summary, Marx's historical materialism provides a framework for analyzing

history as a series of economic transformations driven by class struggle. By examining historical changes from slave societies to feudalism, capitalism, and the potential for socialism, historical materialism highlights the role of economic forces in shaping human societies. Through this perspective, Marx argues that capitalism, like previous systems, is not eternal, but a stage in an ongoing historical process toward a more equitable society. Marxism teaches that capitalism, like previous systems, contains contradictions that will eventually lead to its transformation. The rise of automation, increasing wealth inequality, and global financial crises indicate the instability of the system.

Understanding historical materialism provides insight into why these crises occur and how societies can move toward more equitable economic arrangements. The purpose of this lecture was not to dictate what you should believe, but to offer a new perspective. The real question now is this. What will you do with the knowledge? Thank you for listening. RevLeft Radio is 100% listener funded. If you like what we do here,

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