The Reflection on Historical Materialism: Does the Con- cept Have a Future?

The article examines academic and intellectual merits of the central part of Marxism – historical materialism. The authors argue that historical materialism has many valuable findings and conclusions and analyze some of them, showing that they together with its methodology can be helpful for a social scientist and for a historian theorizing and aspiring for broad analogues. New explanations for this phenomenon are given as the restrictions of the existing model of historical materialism are revealed. A peculiar attention is paid to Marx's conclusion that the changing developmental level of productive forces inevitably leads to changes in all other spheres of societal life; moreover, these changes do not happen automatically and immediately but through the resolution of structural and systemic crisis in a society. The article presents a survey on the history of the Western studies within historical materialism framework starting fr om the end of the 19th century at the general background of the ups and downs of the Western Marxism and its crisis after the collapse of socialism. The authors show the waves of the Western Marxists' attenuating and increasing interest in historical materialism. The latter to a certain extent should be considered as a program for scientific research which is far fr om its realization. The authors also make a conclusion that today one can hardly work within the framework of historical materialism conception since many of its postulates should be revised. It is very important that historical materialism can affect social science mainly in an indirect way through a creative acquiring and interpretation of its method, approaches, and partially of its categories and discourse and with integration of other concepts. Within social science some directions are discussed which can be combined with some ideas of historical materialism. On the other hand, today the fate of historical materialism and Marxism is defined by a certain paradox: its influence increases along with the merge with other theories. Therefore, they nevertheless continue to exist. Since it has become a part of the general intellectual legacy, one can figuratively speak about its genetic drift.