Is Marxian historical materialism of any relevance for contemporary historical research? How many historians take it seriously?

This is a bit of a broad question as many different historians in many different fields will use a variety of different historiographic theories, some more so than others. Some historians don't use a lot of theory in their work while others are incredibly theory-heavy. In addition to that, Marxism and historical materialism as a theory itself has evolved and changed a lot over the past 50-60 years. I'll try and map some of those changes and show how aspects of historical materialism are still very much used in work published in my field, 20th-century Caribbean history, with an emphasis on Trinidad and Tobago. Other historians can answer how much Marxism is relevant in their own fields.

A common critique of historical materialism as a theory has been that it is too deterministic and does not give historical actors enough agency. In one of Karl Marx's most famous quotes in his 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, he states "Men make their own history but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past". Many Marxist historians have tried to introduce agency into their work, and show how the proletariat gains class consciousness. Arguably the most famous of these examples is E.P. Thompsons The making of the English working-class published in 1963. In it, Thompson argues that the working class was "present at its own making" that "class is a relationship" and that Thompson's overarching goal was to rescue the working class from the "enormous condescension of posterity" Many consider Thompson's work the first piece of "cultural marxism" that shows that the proletariat forms itself when it feels that its rights are being trampled on, and that the working class does not simply form when economic conditions are poor, but that instead, class is formed by relationships of men between each other. The book has received its due criticism over the course of the past 60 years. The book is gender in a very male-dominated way and Thompson is incredibly hostile to the methodist church of England. However, it is arguably one of the most important pieces of Marxist texts and started to open the door for a more wide-ranging kind of Marxist history.

The famous gender historian Joan Scott began to tackle the issues of gender in Marxism in her work Gender and the Politics of History published in 1988. In it, Scott argues that

"Identity becomes not a reflection of some essential reality but a matter of political allegiance. Feminist history approached this way changes Thompson’s story. It refuses its teleology and retells it as a story of the creation of political identity through representations of sexual difference. Class and gender become inextricably linked in this telling—as representation, as identity, as social and political practice."

Scott is challenging the typically male-gendered nature of class and asking for a more analytical approach to working-class politics, "one that recasts our knowledge about gender and class." I'm not a gender historian but I bring this example up, along with the Thompson example, to show that Marxist historical analyses begins to be mixed with other kinds of historiography and that studies of class become intersectional with studies of race, gender, and post-colonialism

To breach now more into my field to show how Marxism is still very relevant in contemporary work on the Caribbean, and specifically Trinidad and Tobago. I'll try to keep this somewhat brief to the best of my ability as this section will read more as just examples of how Marxism is still used. I understand you would probably like a more broad-reaching answer to your question, but I can show how in my field Marxism is still very frequently used.

In writing about the Black Power Revolution in 1970 in Trinidad and Tobago, historian Brinsley Samaroo in the book Black Power in the Caribbean, published in 2019, argues

“The view among those who challenged the existing system was that the black-led government of the People’s National Movement (PNM) had concentrated on capturing the administrative machinery of power but had left economic control in the hands of the colonial (European) and neocolonial (North American) capitalist classes and the local comprador bourgeoisie"

Here you can see Samaroo uses a mix of Marxist and Post-Colonial ideology to argue that the Eric Williams-led PNM government of Trinidad and Tobago had sold out to colonial capitalist interests that would end up leading to a revolution taking place that had mixes of anti-capitalist sentiment and Black Power ideology. However, it should be noted that NJAC, the group that would lead this revolution, very much felt that they were a vanguard party of a socialist revolution in the country.

Kate Quinn, in the same book, points out how one of the strongest forces of Black Power in the Caribbean as a whole and in Trinidad and Tobago specifically, was its economic critiques. Quinn argues “The Black Power critique of Caribbean economies centered on two fundamental issues: foreign ownership and control of major resources and the domination of the local economy by minority local elites, who were mostly lighter-skinned.” Once again, here we see a mix of Marxist class critique mixed with decolonial language.

James Millette in examing the Black Power Revolution of Trinidad and Tobago takes on a more purely historical materialist perspective. Millette argues that Williams had abandoned the working class of Trinidad and Tobago when he was elected Prime Minister and that “Williams had signified his willingness to put himself at the head of the national bourgeoisie”. Millette was a professor at the University of the West Indies at the time and was a leader of the NJAC group that would lead the revolution, so his perspective and bias should be called into question in his writing about the event decades later, but he very obviously believed that Black Power Revolution of 1970 was a socialist revolution that was going to overthrow Bourgouise capitalist interests in his nation.

These are just three small examples of how in my narrow field, Marxism and aspects of historical materialism are still very much in use. Pure Marxists and pure economic determinism has fallen out of favor, but in looking at elements of class formation, class relations, and aspects of revolutionary consciousness through a Marxist lens are still very much relevant, often with ties to post-colonialism.

Works Cited

Millette, James. "Towards the Black Power Revolty of 1970." In The Black Power Revolution of 1970: A Retrospective, by Selwyn D. Ryan and Taimoon Stewart, 59-97. St. Augustine: University of the West Indies, 1995.

Quinn, Kate. "Black Power in the Caribbean Context." In Black Power in the Caribbean, by Kate Quinn, 25-50. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2014.

Samaroo, Brinsley. "The February Revolution (1970) as a Catalyst for Change in Trinidad and Tobago." In Black Power in the Caribbean, by Kate Quinn, 97-116. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014

Scott, Joan. Gender and the Politics of History (Gender and Culture Series): 30th Anniversary Addition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

Thompson, E. P. The making of the English working class. New York: Vintage Books, 1963.