The reduction of history to "narratives" and the claim that the struggle between these "narratives" are merely conflicts over the distribution of power evades the decisive issue of objective truth. 1/
https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1476951560248823814
The materialist conception of history, developed by Marx and Engels in the 1840s, uncovered the objectively existing driving forces of world history in the economic structure of society and the class struggles to which it gave rise. 2/
It made possible the application of scientific method to the study of history as well as contemporary events. The categories that it utilizes in the study of society - i.e., class, productive forces, social relations, capitalism, feudalism, slavery - exist objectively. 3/
The category of "race" is not scientifically grounded and provides no objective basis for understanding the origins, development and existing structure of society. The derivative concept of "racism" has, likewise, extremely limited value in understanding history. 4/
To make racism the driving force of history means making socio-economic conditions the product of consciousness, rather than deriving the forms of consciousness (including racism) from existing, objectively real, material conditions. 5/
The #1619Project places race at the center of its explanation of American history. It disconnects the great bourgeois democratic revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries from the global context of the development of capitalism. This is the source of its many factual errors. 6/
The advocates of the #1619Project claim that the study of race and racial conflict has been suppressed by American historians. This is a factually untenable claim, as any examination of American historiography, particularly during the last half century, clearly establishes. 7/
It is not race and racial conflict that has been left out of the study of American history. What has really been suppressed is the study of class conflict. The relentless anti-communist propaganda and denunciations of Marxism are a critical element of this suppression. 8/
The very notion of class conflict is rejected as "anti-American." The use of the term "working class" is almost entirely avoided by the politicians of both capitalist parties. They prefer the term "middle class." Society is described in terms of "income groups," not classes. 9/
Throughout American history, the ruling class has promoted racial and ethnic divisions to divide the working class. The current obsessive focus on racial conflict, which is presented as insurmountable and even genetically rooted, emerges at a time of staggering inequality. 10/
Of course, fights over history reflect social conflicts. But the progressive forces in such conflicts strive to uncover objective truth. The fight waged against racism in all its insidious forms has been a struggle against the historical lies that uphold inequality. 11/
This is why the World Socialist Web Site opposes the 1619 Project, which advances a false conception of history, discredits the revolutions of the past, blocks an understanding of the dynamics of capitalist exploitation, and undermines the unity of the global working class. 12/12
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