Key Arguments

• He rejects the idea that phenomenological condemnation of 'reductive' causal thought can simply dismiss historical materialism, insisting that it, like psychoanalysis, can be restated in a non-causal language: 'The condemnation of “reductive” conceptions and causal thought in the name of a descriptive and phenomenological method can no more rid us of historical materialism than of psychoanalysis, for historical materialism is no more committed to the possible “causal” versions of it than is psychoanalysis, and like psychoanalysis it too can be stated in a different language.'
• He characterizes historical materialism as 'rendering economics historical' and 'rendering history economic', and defines its economics as a confrontation that becomes fully itself only when productive forces become self-conscious and articulate the future, a cultural phenomenon: 'Historical materialism consists just as much in rendering economics historical as it does in rendering history economic. The economics upon which it bases history is not, as in classical science, a closed cycle of objective phenomena, but rather a confrontation between productive forces and forms of production that only reach completion when the productive forces emerge from their anonymity, become self-conscious, and thereby become capable of articulating the future. Now, this coming to awareness is clearly a cultural phenomenon, and in this way all of the psychological motivations can be introduced into the fabric of history.'
• He clarifies that a 'materialist' account of events like the Revolution does not explain each action by prices but by class dynamics and shifting conscious relations: 'A “materialist” history of the Revolution does not consist in explaining each revolutionary thrust through the retail price index at the moment in question, but rather in placing each revolutionary thrust back into the class dynamic and conscious relations – fluctuating from February to October – between the new proletarian power and the old conservative power.'
• Thus 'Economics is reintegrated into history rather than history being reduced to economics.'
• He interprets much of 'historical materialism' in practice as 'nothing other than a concrete understanding of history that takes into account, beyond its manifest content (such as official relations between “citizens” in a democracy), its latent content, that is, the inter-human relations such as they are actually established in concrete life.'
• The 'real subject of history' that materialist history seeks beneath juridical abstractions like the 'citizen' is not merely 'the economic subject' but 'more generally the living subject' characterized by a broad range of activities and relations: 'the real subject of history, which it seeks to find beneath the juridical abstraction of the citizen, is not merely the economic subject or man as a factor of production, but more generally the living subject – man insofar as he is a certain productivity, insofar as he wants to give his life form, insofar as he loves, hates, and creates or does not create works of art, insofar as he has children or does not.'
• He explicitly denies that historical materialism is 'an exclusively economic causality' and suggests that it bases history not narrowly on production but 'more generally upon the manner of existing and coexisting, upon inter-human relations' and 'the history of social existence.'
• He notes a potential ambiguity—analogous to Freud’s 'inflation' of sexuality—that by broadening 'economics' to include psychological and moral motives, we risk emptying the term, raising the question: 'But does not the word “economics” thereby lose all identifiable sense?'
• He raises and reformulates the classical alternative: either coexistence has a purely economic signification or economics dissolves into a general existential drama reverting to spiritualism, and proposes that 'The notion of existence, if properly understood, allows us to leave precisely this alternative behind.'
• He later generalizes that 'every cultural phenomenon has (among others) an economic signification' and that 'no more than can history be reduced to economics, history in principle never transcends economics either,' placing economics as one order of signification within a co-implicated unity of social events.

Source Quotes

No one is fully saved, and no one is fully lost. [Note on the existential interpretation of dialectical materialism.]23 The condemnation of “reductive” conceptions and causal thought in the name of a descriptive and phenomenological method can no more rid us of historical materialism than of psychoanalysis, for historical materialism is no more committed to the possible “causal” versions of it than is psychoanalysis, and like psychoanalysis it too can be stated in a different language. Historical materialism consists just as much in rendering economics historical as it does in rendering history economic.

[Note on the existential interpretation of dialectical materialism.]23 The condemnation of “reductive” conceptions and causal thought in the name of a descriptive and phenomenological method can no more rid us of historical materialism than of psychoanalysis, for historical materialism is no more committed to the possible “causal” versions of it than is psychoanalysis, and like psychoanalysis it too can be stated in a different language. Historical materialism consists just as much in rendering economics historical as it does in rendering history economic. The economics upon which it bases history is not, as in classical science, a closed cycle of objective phenomena, but rather a confrontation between productive forces and forms of production that only reach completion when the productive forces emerge from their anonymity, become self-conscious, and thereby become capable of articulating the future.

Historical materialism consists just as much in rendering economics historical as it does in rendering history economic. The economics upon which it bases history is not, as in classical science, a closed cycle of objective phenomena, but rather a confrontation between productive forces and forms of production that only reach completion when the productive forces emerge from their anonymity, become self-conscious, and thereby become capable of articulating the future. Now, this coming to awareness is clearly a cultural phenomenon, and in this way all of the psychological motivations can be introduced into the fabric of history.

A “materialist” history of the Revolution does not consist in explaining each revolutionary thrust through the retail price index at the moment in question, but rather in placing each revolutionary thrust back into the class dynamic and conscious relations – fluctuating from February to October – between the new proletarian power and the old conservative power. Economics is reintegrated into history rather than history being reduced to economics. “Historical materialism,” in the works it inspired, is often nothing other than a concrete understanding of history that takes into account, beyond its manifest content (such as official relations between “citizens” in a democracy), its latent content, that is, the inter-human relations such as they are actually established in concrete life.

One would be tempted to say that it does not base history and ways of thinking upon production and the ways of working, but more generally upon the manner of existing and coexisting, upon inter-human relations. It does not reduce the history of ideas to economic history, but puts them back into the unique history that they both express, namely, the history of social existence. Solipsism as a philosophical doctrine is not an effect of private property; rather, the same existential commitment to isolation and mistrust is projected into the economic institution and into the conception of the world.

Key Concepts

• The condemnation of “reductive” conceptions and causal thought in the name of a descriptive and phenomenological method can no more rid us of historical materialism than of psychoanalysis
• Historical materialism consists just as much in rendering economics historical as it does in rendering history economic.
• The economics upon which it bases history is not, as in classical science, a closed cycle of objective phenomena, but rather a confrontation between productive forces and forms of production that only reach completion when the productive forces emerge from their anonymity, become self-conscious, and thereby become capable of articulating the future.
• Economics is reintegrated into history rather than history being reduced to economics.
• it does not reduce the history of ideas to economic history, but puts them back into the unique history that they both express, namely, the history of social existence.

Context

In the '[Note on the existential interpretation of dialectical materialism.]' within V - THE BODY AS A SEXED BEING, Merleau-Ponty applies his earlier existential analysis of 'expression' and 'signification' to historical materialism, arguing that a non-reductive, phenomenologically-compatible version of it treats economics as one dimension of lived social existence rather than as a closed causal system.