An Introduction to the Entirety of Historical Materialism (New University Curriculum)

Introduction to Historical Materialism (Chủ nghĩa duy vật lịch sử)
📌 Chapter 3 introduces Historical Materialism, which is identified as the first major contribution of Marxism in philosophy.
📜 The full name is Dialectical Materialism on History and Society or simply Dialectical Materialism on Society.
💡 The core achievement of Marx and Engels was discovering the most fundamental and universal laws governing the movement and development of human society.

Core Concepts of Historical Materialism
📌 The fundamental law discovered is the law of the correspondence of the relations of production to the level of development of the productive forces.
🏗️ This includes the prerequisite that the superstructure must correspond to the economic base (infrastructure).
🔄 The internal dynamics of these factors (productive forces, relations of production, and superstructure) drive the succession of socio-economic formations (from primitive communism to slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and communism).

Structure and Focus of the Chapter
📌 The content of this chapter is very extensive, historically comprising 6 to 10 separate chapters.
📚 The current structure is organized into five main sections:
1. Theory of Socio-Economic Formations.
2. Class and Nation.
3. State and Social Revolution.
4. Social Consciousness.
5. Philosophy of Man (Human Being).
🎯 Section 1 (Socio-Economic Formations) is highlighted as the most extensive and potentially most difficult section, though Section 4 (Social Consciousness) also generates many exam questions.

Class and Nation Dynamics
🔎 The section on Class covers concepts, origins, and the role of class struggle as a key driver of social development, especially in pre-socialist societies.
🇻🇳 In the Vietnamese context, this involves understanding the current existence of various social classes (workers, farmers, intellectuals, entrepreneurs) and the leading role of the working class through the Communist Party.
🌍 The issue of Nation traces the evolution from tribes to modern nations, noting that while class struggle may be fading in some contexts, the issue of nationality remains politically prominent.

State, Revolution, and Social Consciousness
🏛️ The State section explores its historical origins (it is a historical category, not eternal), nature, functions, and forms, leading to the concept of the Socialist Rule of Law State (Nhà nước pháp quyền xã hội chủ nghĩa).
💥 A Social Revolution is necessary to transition to a new socio-economic formation, representing the culmination of class struggle and requiring ripe objective and subjective conditions.
🧠 Social Consciousness arises based on Social Existence (Tồn tại xã hội)—the material life conditions of society (natural conditions, population, and mode of production).

Philosophy of Man (Human Being)
🧍‍♂️ From the Marxist perspective, humans are a biological-social entity.
🔗 Marx’s key definition states that the essence of man, in his reality, is the totality of social relations, primarily economic (relations of production).
💔 A crucial concept is Alienation (Tha hóa), particularly worker alienation under capitalism, which underpins Marx's humanistic goal of liberating the working class.
👥 The Masses/People (Quần chúng nhân dân) are affirmed as the creators of history, contrasting with idealist views, emphasizing their central role in production, spiritual creation, and revolution.

Key Points & Insights
➡️ Historical Materialism is one of the three great contributions of Marxism to human thought and development.
➡️ When applying theory, Section 3's concepts are strictly limited to social and historical issues; do not stray into other philosophical domains.
➡️ To change social consciousness, one must change social existence (material conditions), while also acknowledging the relative independence of consciousness (it can sometimes lag behind or, in specific forms, precede material reality).
➡️ The concept of human essence being the totality of social relations underscores the importance of economic relations (relations of production) and interests (lợi ích) in understanding human behavior.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Dec 12, 2025, 07:24 UTC