Both outside and inside academia there is a general disregard for coherent social theories.

In the latter case, there is a preference to be spoon-fed disparate facts, dismissing any attempts to unify these facts as conspiracy theory. In the former case, the advent of post-modernism has produced a widespread scorn for grand totalizing narratives. And the totalizing narratives that are still acceptable tend to be idealist garbage, useful only for reinforcing the worldview of the status quo. It is my opinion that the only social theory or methodology that can be truly critical is historical materialism. All other theoretical approaches are, by themselves, either useless or reactionary. The theoretical tradition of Marxism, then, is what I will defend, broadly, as the only methodology that can properly explain history and society. Furthermore, if one does not adopt a grand totalizing theory one might as well not be a social theorist. Historical materialism (Marxism, dialectical materialism, the philosophy of praxis, social dialectics) is the only coherent critical theory. Those of us who are historical materialists are often surprised when we encounter the attitudes discussed above. Non-academic critics, for example, often express suspicion of our analysissometimes going so far as to label it double-talk as if we are vulgar Orwellian aparatchiks. And similar suspicion is evinced by the Western academic status quo, only we are derided for being behind the current intellectual fashions; we are curios, like a Norman Rockwell painting or an ugly-but-retro piece of furniture. We who remain historical materialists, Marxists, communists, etc., are forced to fight an uphill battle when it comes to the terrain of social theory. In many

cases we end up engaging with the red herring of the so-called failure of communism. In other cases we have to try and get beyond obscurantist language and jargon that alienates those outside of the academic world. And in still other cases we are homogenized as vulgar economic determinists who have not kept up with the contemporary currents of social theory.

We all have anecdotes in this regard. For example, I recently encountered another academic who told me that the Marxist tradition was useless for her critical race theory because, according to her, it was nothing more than a narrow economic focus on modes of production. A critical historical materialist, though, would agree that, in a tradition as varied and heterogenous as Marxism, there are indeed narrow and vulgar species of the theory. But criticizing this body of theory as a whole is laughably ignorant. In terms of the issue of race, the best anti-racist theorists (C.L.R. James, Angel Y. Davis, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, and the entire "3rd World" Marxist tradition ) have done a better job of critiquing and exposing white supremacy than any other theorist or body of theory. In fact, the often incoherent school of thought referred to as post-colonial theory (where the most fashionable anti-racist theorists gravitate these days) is often nothing more than pretentious footnotes to Fanon.It is not that all of these non-Marxist theories should be dismissed out of handindeed, there are aspects to some of these philosophies that can be quiet useful. The point, though, is that if one lacks an overall historical materialist framework, there can be no useful examination and critique of history and society. I - why historical materialism Unless one is a radical skeptic, it cannot be denied that there are social and historical facts. I am not suggesting that many so-called historical facts do not

fall victim to the interests of dominating powersindeed, the historical materialist accepts this axiom as well. What I am saying is that there are numerous and general social-historical facts that only a few crackpots would dispute.For instance, that capitalism first cohered in Western Europe is a fact, that there were people living in the Americas before the Europeans is a fact, that millions of slaves were taken from Africa is a fact. Or that, today, there are multinational corporations, America and its allies are fighting several wars, America is the hegemonic nationthese are all facts. Even the most reactionary school teacher will believe in these facts; she will just attribute to them a different meaning than would a progressive. For an historical materialist, the fact that different interpretations can be assigned to certain sets of facts is, as aforementioned, important. Unlike the post-modernist, whose only recourse is to claim that the assignation of different meanings to fragmentary events possesses no real truth value that all interpretations are merely power bids, one no more correct than anotherthe historical materialist claims that there are incorrect and correct interpretations. Moreover, historical materialism can explain why there are incorrect interpretations; the post-modern or post-structuralist tradition lacks this epistemic dimension. I will return to this point later, though. First of all I want to make some general comments regarding historical materialism. Starting with the crude reality that there are such things as historical facts ranging from the banal (ie. it is a fact that there are different religions) to the epoch-making (ie. in 1492 Columbus arrived in the Americas)a theorist possesses two options: one, to see every historical fact as ultimately disconnected or, two, to see historical facts as somehow related. The former approach is characteristic of social theories such as post-modernism, whereas the latter is held by the historical materialist.

The reason that we historical materialists, we Marxists, believe that a plethora of socio-historical facts can be given a meaning is because the opposite approach is ludicrous. A medical scientist, for example, should not look at the varied symptoms of a patient suffering from an illness and then decide that no medical explanation can possibly be given. No, she tries to find an underlying cause for these symptoms. Returning to the terrain of history and society, we can find politically uncontested examples that demonstrate that history is more than a random eruption of disconnected events. If someone had not discovered the principle of flight with a crude flying apparatus, the modern jet-fighter could not have been invented. It is entirely absurd to imagine a jet-fighter plane being created in, say, the eighteenth century. Moreover, moving to a political example, one cannot imagine the worldwide African slave trade if Europeans had not been to the continent of Africa in the first place (and recognition of this connection leads a good historical materialist to ask, just what were they doing there in the first place?). I recognize, of course, that this approach to history possesses the danger of determinismas crude versions of historical materialism have evinced. To use the mundane example above, a good historical materialist would never say that the discovery of the principle of flight automatically determines the invention of the jet-fighter. Rather, we would only say that the invention of the jet-fighter is impossible without other previous inventions. Or, more accurately, that certain discoveries may produce necessities but that these necessities are not necessarily realized. The point is to look at where we are now and understand the historical development of how we got here, not to claim that history itself is a supernatural force that possesses laws as eternal as Platos forms. This is why Marx, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis

Bonaparte, insists that, although our past gives meaning to our current world, history itself is a human product. Once it is accepted that socio-historical facts are, indeed, not disconnected fragments, another problem arises. One can either give an idealist or materialist description of these facts. That is, returning to the example of the medical scientist, an idealist practitioner of medicine could decide that her patients symptoms are not due to a deficiency in the body but could claim, rather, that the patient is sick for supernatural reasons, ie. the devil caused the illness. Such an interpretation is idealist because it makes recourse to an idea beyond the physical world. Idealism, though, is not always so obvious. All it means is that a certain, ahistorical ideaor set of ideasis pre-supposed in order to make sense of material facts, rather than vice versa. In the introduction of the Grundrisse Marx gives a good example of such idealism when he explains that, under capitalism, the individual appears detached from the natural bonds etc. which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a definite and limited human conglomeratethis eighteenth-century individual appears as an ideal, whose existence they project into the past. Not as a historic result but as historys point of departure. (Marx, Grundrisse, p. 83) The idea of an isolated individual human, then, is presupposed as the building block of society. The truth, though, is that this idea was conceived by humans living under capitalism where the notion of competing and isolated individuals is the fundamental ethos. We historical materialists believe that the socio-historical context generates ideologies that can serve as explanatory justifications for the status quo. The task of the historical materialist is to see the fundamental and material basis (the base, to use one of Marxs popular metaphors) behind a myriad of ideas

and philosophies (or superstructure). This is not to say that certain ideas cannot influence the material realitythe base and superstructure exist in a dialectical relationshipwe merely believe that certain ideologies are connected to specific socio-historical moments. One cannot logically assert that the protestant work ethic, for example, emerged before capitalism (although an idealist like Max Weber certainly tried) anymore than one can claim that the wallpaper of a house could be slapped unto thin air and the foundations and framing built around it. Furthermore, the starting point for historical materialism is that humans make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. (Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p.15) Humans make history and, at the same time, are made by the history and the societies made by previous generations of humans. (This is meant in a material sense: that what we call history is human history that is the product of human subjects interacting, producing, and creating. Humans make history is not meant to imply that history isnt real but something madeup by a bunch of humans.) And, like any human creation, one can look back on previous and contemporary creations in order to understand the meaning of this creationin this case, history and society. Without a coherent, explanatory, and non-idealist methodology, one cannot adequately make sense of the world. Lazy, contradictory, impressionistic, and mundane explanations are the only alternative. I am not saying here that certain historical materialist analyses are exempt from making mistakes. There have, indeed, been many bad Marxist explanations of the world. The difference, though, is that these explanations are the result of the writer's, not the methodologys, deficiencies. If Marx, for example, was better educated on the historical situation of India, he would not have made certain

problematic claims in his India Diaries. But his own methodology can explain why he was not given the right data; he was only able to read ideological works on India and was not living there himself. II - knowledge and power as contested I want to return to the point I made earlier about historical materialism as being able to explain why both incorrect and correct interpretations can be made of socio-historical facts. In a very general sense, bad theory leads to bad explanationsas with my rhetorical example of the medical doctor, or in my real example from the Visual Studies Reader. In a more specific sense, though, incorrect explanations are caused by ideology. In The German Ideology Marx and Engels define ideology as: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force in society is at the same time its ruling intellecutal force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relations, the dominant material relations grasped as ideas; hence of the relations which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 67) Thus, many incorrect explanations are the result of facts being arranged to reflect the ideology of the ruling classes. In terms of the recent wars in Iraq, for example, the ruling class ideologues drew a semi-coherent picture of a bloodthirsty dictator who needed to be stopped. Facts that revealed their hypocricy in this matter or their economic motivations, though available in

numerous historical and journalistic documents including their own, were conveniently excluded from the public face of their war. The knowledge industry, according to Marxism, possesses a class dimension. Knowledge can be mobilized in the interest of the ruling class or its antithesis. Unlike a pure Foucauldian explanation where there is nothing more than competing constructions of power/knowledge, none with any more value than another, historical materialism holds that there are class motivations behind the mobilization of knowledge and, also, that there are correct and incorrect positions as much as there are revolutionary and counter-revolutionary positions. There is no expression of knowledge that does not express a social position and/or interest. Knowledge comes from human consciousness and our consciousness is formed by our interaction with the social. We are social animals, not isolated individuals, and we occupy certain social positions and possess certain social interests. Thus all knowledge exists in the service of the ruling or subordinate classes, consciously or unconsciously. There are conscious ideologues and unconscious advocates of the status quo and its opposite. The historical materialist believes that expressions of knowledge that question the dominant ideology are the most critical because they are not constructed merely to ape business-as-usual. Moreover, historical materialism is concerned with a robust criticism of dominant ideologya criticism that is true because it seeks to uncover the material and social forces, and the interests of the ruling classes, that enshrine the prevalent dogmas. Here, once again, is where we historical materialists differ from the postmodern theorists who also claim to question the status quo. As

aforementioned, there is no real coherent attempt in such theories to uncover the basis of domination and ideology. In Foucaults theory, for example, power is seen as entirely nebulous, creating human subjects but not originating from these subjects. Thus the question whos power and for whom? cannot be asked. Foucaults notion of biopower possesses no origin and seems to exist beyond history and the social. Everything in the Foucauldian worldview is a result of poweris constructed and composed by powerbut, since the human subject herself is judged as nothing more than a power construction, in the end this power comes from nowhere. His ahistorical theory is akin to a bad student essay that starts with the uncritical claim since the dawn of time power has existed or throughout history power has always existed. And this is why post-modern theories are idealist. Once the flowery jargon and seemingly critical platitudes are understood, power is revealed as something that determines but is not determined by history and society. Such a notion of power is like a Platonic form: rather than being an historical contingency, human history is its contingency. We historical materialists believe that power is not nebulous but social economic and political. As Engels once wrote regarding the social theory of one Eugene Duhring, who also believed that power [or force] regimented all things social: But let us look a little more closely at this omnipotent force *or power+ Crusoe enslaved Friday sword in hand *Engels is quoting from Duhrings own example of Robinson Crusoes+ Where did he get the sword? Even on the imaginary islands of the Robinson Crusoe epic, swords have not, up to now, been known to grow on trees If Crusoe could procure a sword for himself, we are equally entitled to assume that one fine morning Friday

might appear with a loaded revolver in his hand, and then the whole force relationship is inverted So, then, the revolver triumphs over the sword; and this will probably make even the most childish axiomatician comprehend that force requires the existence of very real preliminary conditions before it can come into operation, namely, nistruments, the more perfect of which gets the better of the less perfect; moreover, that these instruments have to be produced, which implies that the producer of more perfect instrumsnts of force gets the better of the producer of the less perfect instruments of force therefore, *force/power is+ based on economic power, on the economic situation, on the material means which force has at its disposal. (Engels, Anti-Duhring, pp. 153-154) Thus it is utterly irrational to talk about power as if it is not produced by something material. Domination and resistance are produced by human beings throughout history rather than vice versa. Indeed, this power can in turn possess a productive potential; it can organize and affect human subjects and their history. In the end, though, it is nothing more than a human creation. As previously discussed: we create history and, in turn, the history collectively created by humans before us helps determine our consciousness. Our knowledge and understanding of the world is a result of our interaction with this world and the others who inhabit it, and a history that weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And power/knowlege positions are accepted or rejected because of our class consciousnesswhat place in society we see ourselves occupying and/or supporting. Outside of this material basis, the Foucauldian notion of power is meaningless. III - science

One of the logical criticisms leveled against historical materialism claims that, since historical materialism is itself a theory it falls victim to its own critique. In other words, the historical materialist asserts that ideas are produced/created by humans, but historical materialism is also an ideaa philosophycreated by humans. Thus historical materialism is logically contradictory. Such a critique, while seemingly attractive, is nothing more than sophistry. Being a methodology, historical materialism is akin to a science. I believe it is important to highlight this notion because there is tendency these days, even amongst Marxists, to ignore the fact that Marx and Engels frequently used this analogy. Since critics of Marxism have often drawn a faulty connection between what Marx and Engels meant by science (and economy, for that matter) and the vulgar Stalinist or Trotskyist mobilization of this notion, many Marxists as well have tried to distance themselves from this claim. There are important reasons, though, why Marx and Engels used this analogy and these reasons were not simply, as our critics suggest, because Marx and Engels were a product of nineteenth century thinking. I will discuss the importance of this analogyof seeing historical materialism as science below. If the criticism with which we started this section, that historical materialism is itself an idea created by humans, was leveled at the empirical method intrinsic to the sciences, it is doubtful that we would conclude that the scientific endeavours and what it has achieved were illogical and thus untrue. Moreover, the basic method of mathematics which leads to complex mathematical theories and logarithms is a methodology which is not the same as a nebulous human idea. This not to say that the

empirical method and arithmetic exist outside of space and timeonly a Platonist would assert such an idiocy. Rather, this is to say that such facts are historical discoveries that are immanent rather than transcendent of the natural world. They have been discovered through human practice. One could even go further and say that the empirical method itself is a practice; it is definitely not a nebulous idea. The analogy here is important because historical materialism is intrinsically connected to human practice. Marx and Engels methodology developed through their involvement in mass movements. The further development of Marxist theory and analysis, therefore, cannot be divorced from ones practical activity with the social community. Similarly, scientific theory is ones basic work in a laboratory or in the field. From this basic insight and comparison we can also understand how theory can be either good or bad, in a non-moral sense. Bad science results from either the lack of laboratory practice or bad laboratory practice. The history of science is rife with examples of sciences that were bad in this way (phrenology, for example). At the same time, though, the history of science is a history in development. Bad theories can possibly be overcome by further practice. Technological innovations lead to more precise laboratories, theory remains in flux, and further empirical work changes the terrain. And this is the point of historical materialism and why Marx and Engels likened it to science. I know I am simplifying, here, in reference to bad science. I am doing so, however, for the sake of analogy. The basic comments Ive made about the scientific method have been general in order to give an equally general description of the historical materialist method. There are, of course, other reasons why scientific theories are bad that are not simply because of the lack of proper lab data. Racial science, for example, was not simply the product of bad laboratory data but also the result of racists doing science. I

would suggest that these other reasons are also the result of bad practice. Bad practice because any uncritical ideology was the starting point and theory the result. As discussed earlier in this paper, an understanding of how ideology functions is one of the most important aspects of historical materialism. Furthermore, historical materialism was called science by Marx and Engels because they wanted to highlight the fact that their demand for revolution was not utopianwas not based on idealist conceptions of human nature or societybut a scientific necessity: [I]f the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place, a revolution which will put an end to all class distinctions. On this tangible, material fact, which is impressing itself in a more or less clear form, but with insuperable necessity, on the minds of the exploited proletarianson this fact, and not on the conceptions of justice and injustice held by any armchair philosopher, is modern socialisms confidence in victory founded. (Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 146) IV - praxis We can understand the quality of any given Marxist theory by its relation to human praxis. Marx and Engels' writings are no exception. Marxs occasionally bad work on India, so often criticized by post-structuralists, is the result of his disinvolvement with burgeoning anticolonial struggles in that country. If he had been working with these struggles, perhaps, Marx might have written a different analysis of India. Indian Marxists, after all, have developed their own historical materialist analyses. Knowledge, as aforementioned, cannot be divorced from ones social position.

We should note here, however, that there is a general tendency to read Marxs work on India and non-European regions/events through Edward Saids quotations and commentary in Orientalism, which seriously distorts Marxs original writing. Aijaz Ahmad, in his book In Theory, claims that *a+ striking feature of this portrayal of Marx as an Orientalist, based as it is on some journalistic observations about India, is that it never even refers to how those same observations may have been seen by Indias own anti-imperialist historians. (Ahmad, In Theory, p. 14) Ahmad demonstrates that, while there are good critiques to be made about Marxs work on India, Said has seriously distorted Marx. Baburam Bhattarai, a theorist of the Peoples Army in Nepal, has also found Marxs work on India useful in understanding Nepals underdevelopment in comparison to Indias postcolonial situation in his book The Nature of Underdevelopment and Regional Structure of Nepal. This is not to say that there are no problems in the work of Marx and Engels. We should note, however, that the criticisms leveled at these authors by postcolonialists possess a problematic dimension for three reasons: 1) they misread Marx or simply read him through Said; 2) while criticizing Marx for being eurocentric their own work is based on post-structuralist, European philosophy which, unlike Marxism, has usually been unpopular in the nonWestern world; and 3) many of these critics (Homi Bhabha, for example) are detached from the anti-imperialist struggles in the non-Western countries that are, indeed, making use of Marx. In any case, vulgar, orthodox, revisionist, and overly dogmatic versions of Marxism are mainly the result of bad praxis. (I say mainly because there are indeed people whos praxis is *or was+ good but who, at the same time, produce or accept a bad analysis out of intellectual laziness, or a quasireligious devotion to pre-given categories. Trotsky, I think, is a good example of this type of theorist.) The more Marxist theoreticians are alienated from

social struggles the more their theory suffers. Theodor Adorno is a good example of theoretical Marxisms disconnect from the praxis that makes it robust. By the time Adorno wrote Negative Dialectics he was completely removed from the important historical struggles of his time. This is not to say that there is nothing important to gain from Negative Dialectics. We should recognize, though, that since this work is divorced from praxis, and thus divorced from the history of revolutionary Marxism, it veers away from concrete historical materialism. Moreover, Adorno is the type of Marxist that, even before Negative Dialectics, was uninfluenced by the theoretical contributions of Lenin. His historical materialism, then, was pre-Leninist and thus ultimately antiquated and retrograde. Thinkers like Adorno are similar to scientists who pretend that Einstein did not exist and choose to work inside a purely Newtonian worldview. I am not suggesting that one cannot know anything about politics in general without involving themselves in some armed struggle. All I am claiming is that a prescience of contemporary political struggles, the history of struggle and theory emerging from struggle, and the critique of capitalism is, at the very least, an important starting point. I would also like to suggest that an historical materialist involved, both critically and actively, in a specific political struggle will have, in all probability, a more robust analysis of this specific struggle than an historical materialist on the other side of the world. (William Hintons analyses of the Chinese Revolution, for example, should be given more weight than Maurice Meisners.) Of course, someone outside of this struggle might, possibly, be able to offer an important critique. The point, however, is that if I am fundamentally ignorant of the history of, say, Nepal, and the practically lived life of the Nepalese peasants, how can I either comprehend or critique the Nepalese Maoist revolution in the most concrete manner? The best concrete critique/analysis will emerge from

someone involved in this struggle. More importantly, the best developments in historical materialist theory have come from those people engaged in revolutionary struggles (ie. Lenin, Mao, Fanon, Hisila Yami, etc.). Connecting oneself to political struggle in general, however, allows one to engage critically with similar struggles around the world. The above example of Adorno aptly demonstrates this point. As aforementioned, Adorno was not fully involved in political struggle. Neither could he comprehend the critical evolutions in historical materialist theory that were developed through struggle. In Adornos work there is no real comprehension or engagement with the theories of Lenin, Luxemburg, or Mao. In fact, he eventually relegates himself to neo-idealism, locking himself into a world of metaphysics.