Edward Thompson's Historical Materialism

By analyzing the three main aspects of Edward Thompson's socialist humanitarianism,the British working class formation theory and the British civilian culture,this thesis makes a holistic grasp of Thompson's historical materialism.Whether in Thompson's work or in his arguments with other scholars,Thompson has always adhered to the practical principles of historical materialism,flexibly applied the basic principles of Marxism,and regarded historical materialism as a scientific method rather than sticking to the dogma.Different from the traditional Marxist scholars' research,Thompson is based on the historical materialism of Marx and Engels in his research,and also absorbs and draws on Lukács' s idea of proletarian consciousness and Gramsci's cultural leadership.Thompson pays more attention to the study of superstructure,in order to resist Stalinist economic determinism;he preferes to explore the revolutionary rebellious spirit of the British working class from a cultural perspective in light of the history of the lower classes of the British.In this way,we will affirm the historical status of the people and inspire the revolutionary spirit of contemporary British workers.He also tried to make up for the "imperfect" part of Marxism by creating some unique terms that are different from other scholars,such as class experience and moral economics.These studies and attempts by Thompson are his efforts to awaken the awakening of the contemporary British working class.Although Thompson's socialist humanitarian path envisioned was not realized in Britain,he did this by criticizing Stalinist mistakes,defending the initiative of the British people,and insisting on combining foreign theories with the actual development of the British mainland.The results are still worthy of our respect and learning.The first chapter of this thesis is the introduction.From the basis of the topic selection and the research significance,this paper expounds the reason and significance of choosing Thompson's historical materialism as the research of this thesis.At the same time,in this chapter,the author also makes a simple combing of the research on Thompson's related thoughts by scholars at home and abroad,and combines the two main research methods of literature reading and comparative analysis to study Thompson's historical materialism.The second chapter mainly introduces the source of Thompson's historical materialism.The practical source of Thompson's historical materialism is mainly from the British New Left Movement he participated in and the experience of the British Communist Party Historian Group.The theoretical source of Thompson's historical materialism is Marxist historical materialism.Lukács' s idea of proletarian consciousness and Gramsci's thought of cultural hegemony laid the foundation for the formation of Thompson's historical materialism.The third chapter is the core content of Thompson's historical materialism in this article.In the first section of this chapter,I mainly write Thompson's historical materialism from the following three aspects:First,Thompson pays more attention to the superstructure in social and economic life by criticizing the dogmatism and economic determinism existing in Stalinism.The second is Thompson's critique of Stalinist anti-intellectualism,which reshapes the people's dominant position in social history.Third,Thompson interpreted a relationship with Stalinist non-moralism.The Soviet Union's socialist road is different,and it is also a socialist humanitarian road that is not compatible with Western capitalist roads.The second section of this chapter examines the key factors of Thompson's class formation,class consciousness,and class in the formation of the British working class,constructs the process of Thompson's working class formation,and forms the theory of Thompson's working class.The theoretical contribution has been explained.The third section of this chapter mainly emphasizes Thompson's research on culture,especially on civilian culture,and affirms Thompson's use of historical materialism to study the results of British working-class culture.The fourth chapter firstly makes a brief evaluation of Thompson and his historical materialism from the relevant Thompson scholars' discussion of Thompson.Their discussion of Thompson and its related ideas can build a more comprehensive from another aspect.The image of Thompson;secondly,a brief comparison between Thompson's historical materialism and the theoretical source of his historical materialism,pointing out Thompson's historical materialism to Marx and Engels,Lukács' proletarian consciousness Thoughts and the advantages and disadvantages of Gramsci's cultural leadership thought inheritance and innovation process.Finally,a brief summary of Thompson's historical materialism gave us a realistic revelation.