Book Review: Making Our Own History: A User’s Guide to Marx’s Historical Materialism by Jonathan White

Over the course of the last decades, history has largely been driven out of the teaching of economics. It has, in fact, become a mostly ahistorical science. It is this culture of omission White criticizes when he writes that ‘[f]or much mainstream economic thought, [...] history is either of little interest or is simply another realm where the utility maximizing individuals from their models are set in motion’ (p. 116). Making Our Own History seeks to correct that in a powerful way by offering an introduction into a concept that has often been misinterpreted and largely omitted by orthodox economics: historical and dialectical materialism.

According to dialectical materialism, the societal development ought not be explained through the struggle and subsequent synthesis of contradicting ideas (dialectical idealism), but rather through contradictions in the material world (pp. 8–12, 51–55). Historical materialism applies this analytical framework to uncover the laws of motion of history (p. 12). Following Marx and Engels, the course of history is not shaped by great leaders and their ideas; it is rather determined by the ongoing contradictions between technological forces and property relations (i.e. class structure of society) of production (pp. 27–35,55). Whereas the forces of production are dynamic, the relations of production are static (p. 28). Men and women are subjugated to these forces and relations of production (p. 52) and ‘[b]ecause people are born into class societies, they inherit ideas that reflect their class position’ (p. 52). Therefore, ‘[h]umans make their own history, but not just as they please’ (p. 19), as White repeatedly notes throughout his work. When the static relations of production become shackles to the further development of the forces of production, revolutionary pressures are nigh (p. 37). Revolution changes the relations of production (i.e. a new ruling class and/or changes in the class structures) to align better with the more advanced forces of production (pp. 27-35); therefore, ‘[i]t is when classes move that history moves’ (p. 38). Instead of taking social relations as given and static, historical materialism thereby offers a theory to explain historical development based on the development of economic forces.

Following this introduction into the philosophical foundations of historical materialism, White treats the practical application of historical materialism in our thinking of society, history and politics (pp. 69–134). To this end, he examines Marx’s historical-materialist interpretation of the 1851 French coup d’état in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in depth (pp. 69–80), providing an overview of the reception of historical materialism by concentrating on the Soviet Union and Great Britain in the 20th century (pp. 81-114). Building on this, White derives the political implications of a historical-materialist approach regarding the form of appearance and crises of contemporary capitalism (pp. 115-134) (e. g. ‘the fettering role of monopolistic tech giants (in the further development of the forces of production)’ (p. 30)).

Making Our Own History explicitly assumes neither prior familiarity with historical materialism, nor any knowledge of its epistemological foundations (p. viii). White delivers an excellent introduction to this central concept of Marxist thought by not only explaining philosophical basics, but also by illustratively applying the historical-materialist approach to real-world examples. He extensively refers to the writings of Marx and Engels, thereby making his work a valuable resource for students and scholars alike – especially for all who wish for secondary literature before turning to primary texts themselves.

And yet it would be mistaken only to offer praise for Making Our Own History. While the book provides a seminal introduction into the Marxist view of historical materialism, it refrains from dealing with its critics, most notably Karl Popper (1966 [1945], 2002 [1957]). While one need not agree with Popper, the omission of his criticism leaves readers wishing for an introduction to historical materialism, without an understanding of its opponents’ basic assessment. However, White makes it clear that Marx and Engels never intended historical materialism to be an exclusively positivist theory since they fully acknowledged the normative bias surrounding all social theories in class societies (pp. 4, 17). This makes Making Our Own History – A User’s Guide to Marx’s Historical Materialism a must-read for every student of economics, but also for the interested public. As the German philosopher Schnädelbach (2015 [1992] 345, own translation ¹ ) noted, ‘[w] need Marx neither as an authority nor as a monument, but as a steady ferment of our thought’.