materialism

In sociology and related disciplines, the word materialism has three quite distinct meanings which are, however, to some extent interconnected, and very commonly confused with each other. The first meaning is drawn from popular moral or political controversy, according to which materialism refers to a prevailing pattern of desire for mere sensory enjoyments, material possessions or physical comfort, at the expense of any higher moral or spiritual values or concerns. This usage is generally pejorative.

The second meaning is to designate a range of metaphysical positions (philosophical views about the fundamental nature of reality). Though recognizably materialist metaphysical positions were advocated as early as the fifth century BCE in Greece, promulgation of materialism as a modern world-view dates from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries CE in Europe. Whereas in classical times matter had been opposed to form, the dominant early modern contrast was between matter and spirit or mind. Descartes's metaphysics reduced all existence to two fundamental substances: matter, characterized by extension, the substance of bodily existence; and mind, not spatially located, and characterized by thought. The contemporary advances in the science of mechanics provided the basis for early modern philosophical accounts of matter, and also seemed to hold out the promise of ultimately accounting for all phenomena in mechanical terms. The early chapters of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan are a remarkable early example of such a materialist attempt (contraDescartes) to account for human mental operations such as perception, memory, volition, the emotions, foresight, reasoning, and so on, in terms of the concepts of mechanics.

In a period during which clerical authority and political power were closely intertwined, such doctrines were bound to be seen as radical and subversive in their implications. In the nineteenth century socialist and communist doctrines were associated with materialism, by advocates and opponents alike. However, with changes in science and especially with the development of the life-sciences, the content of materialist doctrines also shifted. Organic (as distinct from mechanical) metaphors became more prominent, and processes of development and historicity entered into philosophical representations of the material world. These features were particularly evident in the mid-nineteenth century materialist revolt against the German idealist tradition, led by Feuerbach, Marx , and Engels .

These thinkers rejected both idealism and the narrower reductive forms of materialism which had been based on mechanics, and which had been incapable of taking full account of sensuous existence, of the emergence of conscious and active human subjects. These phenomena were, however, to be understood not by any concession to idealism; but, rather, by taking advantage of the increasingly complex and sophisticated account of matter itself, as made available by ever-advancing scientific knowledge. Engels later came to systematize the principles of this philosophical approach under the title dialectical materialism .

The third meaning of materialism in familiar sociological usage is also associated with Marx and Engels. In this meaning, materialism asserts the primacy of need-meeting interaction with the natural environment both to the understanding of human social structures and patterns of conflict, and also to long-run sequences of historical change. Though there is an obvious affinity between this doctrine and metaphysical materialism, they are quite logically independent of one another. The later writings of Marx and Engels contain attempts to define and classify the basic variant forms of human society in terms of the social organization of the activities of material production, distribution and consumption. The modes of production thus distinguished were held to have their own distinctive patterns of social dominance, subordination, and conflict, as well as definite tendencies for historical change, and possible transition to new forms. Cultural forms, ways of thinking, and political institutions were held to be characteristic of each mode.

This approach to social explanation, so-called ‘historical materialism’, is often criticized for its over-emphasis on economic life at the expense of political or cultural processes. Arguably, however, both Marx and Engels distanced themselves from such economic determinist or reductionist interpretations of their work. Partly this is a matter of the non-correspondence between their concept of ‘mode of production’, on the one hand, and the set of activities conventionally labelled ‘economic’, on the other. Also, however, even in societies where there are institutional separations between economic and political, artistic, and other practices, historical materialism asserts that such non-economic activities have their own relative autonomy within a range of sustainable possibilities whose limits are set by the economic structure. One of the most challenging problems addressed by twentieth-century Marxists has been to provide more rigorous and empirically defensible accounts of these relationships. It is arguable that historical materialism, with its emphasis on need-meeting interactions with nature, is only beginning to reveal its full potential towards the close of the twentieth century, as social scientists increasingly turn their attention to environmental problems.