Historical Materialism:

The way that Marx traces the winding and long road of history is known as the materialist conception of history (historical materialism)

History was seen as a series of disconnected occurrences before the work of Marx
Marx and Friedrich Engels put forward the idea that history and therefore, human development depends on the development of productive forces throughout time
They established a scientific basis for history
They devised that humankind is constantly changing in nature due to the process of labour

“History does nothing, it ‘possesses no immense wealth’, it ‘wages no battles’. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; ‘history’ is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims.” (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Holy Family, Chapter VI)

Historical materialism describes the driving force behind social development is class struggle. Utilising the method of dialectical materialism of history, it is obvious that human history has specific laws and therefore, can be understood as a process.

The rise and fall of socio-economic formations can be explained scientifically through how societies can and cannot develop their means of production.

"The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.” (Friedrich Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific).

Marxist socialism explains the development of society in terms of progress of productive forces. Marx's ideas were influenced by the works of Friedrich Hegel:

Hegel set forth an understanding of historical progress
He claimed that history move forward in a series of logical events based upon the dialectic (this involves discourse between two or more people holding different viewpoints about certain subjects, they wish to establish the truth of the subject matter through reasoned argument)
Hegel believed that every idea or incident in society was undergoing an internal conflict
Every thesis contained an antithesis that resulted in social progress
With this thinking, Marx claimed that socialism would challenge capitalism and result in a new historical era

Hegel maintained that alienation was the product of our perception of the world being inconsistent with the realities of the world. Progress only comes about through the development of class consciousness.

Marx argued that the exploited proletariat would adopt a new class consciousness in their struggle against the bourgeoisie. Hegel believed the end of history resulted when the dialectic of society resulted in our consciousness becoming the collective consciousness. Marx saw this as the communist society.

Key Socialist Thinkers