Marxist history
Though Marx had always been an influence on social history, it was not until after the Second World War that there emerged a group of avowedly Marxist historians in the form of the Communist Party Historians Group, whose members were largely responsible for founding Past and Present. Though the group withered away after 1956, Past and Present did not, and its ex-members continued to publish in the same vein. Marxist and Marxisant historical approaches became almost mainstream in the 1960s and 1970s, but the turn away from economic determinism and class-based analysis, coupled with the fall of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, has once again moved this form of historical analysis to the margins.
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- Historians:
- Hill, John Edward Christopher
Hilton, Rodney Howard
Hobsbawm, Eric J.
Thompson, Edward Palmer - Institutions:
- Communist Party Historians Group
Past and Present
- Themes:
- Economic history
History from below
Labour history
Revisionist history
Social history
Whig history
Related publications
- Harvey J. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians (Basingstoke, 1995)
David Renton, 'Studying their own nation without insularity? The British Marxist historians reconsidered', Science and Society, 69, 4 (2005), 559–79
Edwin A. Roberts, 'From the history of science to the science of history : scientists and historians in the shaping of British Marxist theory', Science and Society, 69, 4 (2005), 529–58.
