I do apologise, this thread had slipped my mind. Structuralism has nothing to do with Socialism or Marxism, structuralism was defined, and would become, an academic medium entirely independent of Socialist scholarship. Structuralism seeks to investigate a field by arguing that it is a structure comprised of many components. In historical research, for example, historians employing a structuralist thesis will argue that a development in this historical record can be explained through numerous smaller phenomenon that played a role in causing ‘x’ to occur. For example in the study of the holocaust the historian advocating structuralism will explore the many elements within the ideology of the Third reich, the actions of individuals within the Nazi Party, the effect of nazi foreign policy in radicalising policy towards Jews, etc. This in conflict with more traditional scholarship that saught to place the cause of the holocaust firmly on Hitler’s shoulders and his shoulders alone, and date the germination of Hitler’s desire to physically exterminate Europe’s Jewish community to the earliest days of his political career.
While certainly elements of structuralism are appealing to Socialists and Marxists (for example it contradicts scholarship that fetishises the role of the individual), but they didn’t come up with it they and they don’t have a monopoly on it.
That’s quite a funny example that you are using there, oh Lord. But I think you did make the point concerning structuralism.
Historicial Materialism means that the course of history is determined by social and material relations. This the Marxist deduct from their dogma that (materials/social)existence determines consciousness and not the other way around. It is basically the stance that materialism determines the course (stages) of history.
Here is an explanation about it from a Marxist Source:
And here is something on the issue from an Anti-Communist source:
The whole process of human history is the workings of dialectical matter through biological evolution, economics, and the social order. The struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat on the economic-social level is basically the same struggle involved in the atom and in the evolutionary process of living matter. Historical materialism is dialectical materialism wrought in history. It is historical determinism with a vengeance. While Marxists seek to make man significant in some ways, impersonal, dialectical matter is the only critical aspect of the equation. Life, man, mind, love, ideas, and consciousness are all secondary to the great forces determining nature and history.
It was an example I thought people would be most familiar with in conjuction with historical discussion, the debate is commonly taught in high school class rooms as well a university seminars.
In elements. However the communist manifesto establishes the central thesis of historical materialism when it states that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.” In other words things happened in the past because elements of society are in constant competition.
‘Structuralist ideas are rooted in Marxist analysis and focus on how the dominant economic structures of society affect (i.e., exploit) class interests and relations.’
Two points, firstly that is only part of the entry and unless we can see the rest of the entry it is somewhat worthless because it lacks context. After all immidiately after that line it states “Each of these perspectives is…”
Secondly in the academic version of Britannica, the version which scholarly institutions purchase, none of the articles on ‘structuralism’ mention the word ‘Marxist’.