HISTORICAL MATERIALISM: The Worldbuilding Tool You're Not Using
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- Опубликовано: 25 июл 2024
- I know, I know, socialism... But hear me out, you can build impressive fantasy politics by learning from... Karl Marx. Learn how to use historical materialism in your worldbuilding process, and check out its application in a world like Mistborn. This 5-step guide will help you create rich and immersive political fantasy worlds!
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My books: www.mariemullany.com/books
Chapters
0:00 A Weird Take
1:22 What is Historical Materialism?
6:16 History through the lens of Historical Materialism
10:36 Mistborn and Historical Materialism
16:43 Applying Historical Materialism
#justintimeworlds #mariemullany #worldbuilding #government #fantasy #fantasyworldbuilding #politicalfantasy
Did you count how many times I screwed up materialism and said realism? Also! For the month of July, my books are on sale and available for $1 each. www.amazon.com/dp/B099Q91TL1
Hakim, an iraqi marxist leninist youtuber made a response to hello future me regarding his video about "Why revolutions fail ?", His response regarding the lack of historical materialism and dialectical materialism that is included within the discussion of worldbuilding.
Oh! When I first saw your new upload I thought it said "historical Imperialism" have you done that yet?
@@looiyuanjieyuanjie1451 That's interesting. I'll need to go look that up. I skipped HFM's revolution video for various reasons, so I'm not sure what he said, so maybe this is a good impetus to actually go back and watch that.
@@Marinanor I have not, but I'll add it to the list for the future.
@@JustInTimeWorlds Nice! Thanks!
I was seriously surprised when I found out somebody else considered using Historical Materialism for worldbuilding! Maybe some people will start applying it to real history as well 👀
Marx had some solid points. And some off base points too, but he's still worth studying, especially given the time he was writing in.
And some should stop doing it. Maybe we always have an inbalance
Great, there are more like me.
I myself use the Les Annales offspring of historic materialism.
In this a bit more eclectic school you Analyse a period in the following order
Economy is the base
Society reflects economic realities
Political Organisation develops to acomodate both
Culture reflects these three pillars of reality.
Les Annales also includes military Tec and tactics since they evolve from the precious pillars but can also affect them. See hoplitic revolution for an example.
All of this is of course not linear and
all factors can affect one another
Of course
there are dozens of us, dozens!
As a socialist fantasy writer I have used Historical Materialism, and Dialectics, as tools in my worldbuilding. It has helped me to create more depth in my world, and my readers notice this, and likes it. Mostly the struggles in my world is between feudal lords and their knights, against the peasants and burghers. Actual, real life, gritty feudalism in a fantasy world, rather than the "Disney Middle Ages", that often appears in many, often old, fantasy novels. It creates more cobflict and realism in the story and world to have the characters material goals clash in conflicts!
I also have a mighty Inperial Republic, like the US, but medieval, in my world. It has enslaved the minotaurs and is inspired by 19th century USA as well as the late Roman Republic and the medieval Byzantine Empire.
Now, this video blown up my head!🤯 I studied Marx at the university and seriously considered using Historical Materialism in worldbuilding, but I thought maybe I was going too far. Now I need to reconsider.
It honestly is fantastic for analyzing (and creating) conflict 😁 the dialects especially. Gives you a real feel for factional and class conflict
This is great! I'm so glad I discovered your channel before reading Mistborn, Game of Thrones and Dune. I feel that after watching all of your content I will understand better those books.
I hope I didn’t spoil the books too much 🫣 But I am glad you enjoyed the video.
What do you think of the idea of having a Martha's Revolution then afterwards it immediately breaks up into different factions there was always the underlined tension there
Heh, revolutions always do that. It's because revolutions have to use a "broad church alliance" in order to win. And after they've won, the reason for uniting falls away and the small problems that everyone overlooked previously become giant issues and the post revolution government falls apart (generally speaking). Even happened in Russia. After the revolution, there was civil war.
@@JustInTimeWorlds Soviet history during the early 20s up to ww2 is crazy. So much backstabbing and conflicts between different factions within the Communist party! What do you think about Stalin's quote about building up? "We are fifty to a hundred years behind the advanced powers. We make good of this in ten years, or we will be destroyed." He said this in 31, and ten years later the Germans launched the biggest invasion ever in the history of mankind, into the Soviet Union. So in some sense, he was correct.
@@marcusappelberg369 That time period is enormously complex. Yes, Russia was (in a tech sense) far behind the industrialized nations, but I don't know if they would have been destroyed without Satlin's programs. Russia has never been easy to conquer. They are extremely adept at the strategy of trading land for time and they have a lot of land to trade, especially since their climate really screws with unprepared supply lines. On the other hand, Hitler made it to 20 kms outside of Moscow, so who knows?
It was indeed a crazy time haha.
Thanks for the compreensíve video. It was a delight
You’re very welcome and thanks for the engagement!
Really good video as always. It helped trigger some thoughts
Thank you for the video! I thought this was a very useful analysis and look to see how I can use it in my own writing !
You’re very welcome ☺️ Happy writing!
Excellent video, really enjoying your thoughts and presentation. Keep them coming!
Thanks :)
Thanks for another great video! It's given me much to think about. Alos, love your kitties
Thanks for posting this video- super informative!
Love your content, you are very professional and informative
Thank you for the kind words :)
never liked a video faster ahaha, sleeping kitty was the cherry on top
Actually, I am using historical materialism in writing my novel!
Awesome 👏 (RUclips clicks determines titles 🫣 I’m a slave to the algorithm)
In my world, firearms like those of the 1880s-1920s exist (no fully automatic weapons exist) in the wealthier and more advanced polities. However, due to the complexity and expense of building them and governments keeping them away from commoners and lower soldiers to avoid proliferation and losing track of weapons that could easily empower rogue groups, most people do not have access to firearms. As a result, most people use modernised bows and crossbows, with the latter having variants fitted with autoloading mechanisms, scopes and flashlights. They are high value targets for raiding parties and tribes that try to acquire them by robbing trains and other tribes. As a result, both tend to be armed for protection.
Automobiles and other complex machinery are also rare in the region to even nonexistent in many polities partially due to hoarding by rivals, but more because they are too complicated and expensive to build locally for many polities and too expensive to purchase from others. Even if they manage to steal a truck, landship, airship or plane, the maintainence, storage, fueling, infrastructure, skills and other logistics required for their upkeep and reverse engineering could be too complicated and expensive for less capable factions to maintain for long. Thus is unless you're in one of those trubes that managed to design and build their own versions with local considerations.
Even among more advanced factions, the accessibility of certain resources has led to some variants of weapons and vehicles being preferred and prominent over other variants of similar things. For example, the lack of petroleum in some areas due to distance, geography and politics has led to the greater adoption over steam or electric vehicles over gas versions. This means you could see more modern steam cars in an area because gas fell out of favor decades prior. Battery technology has also advanced faster than in our world as if electric cars remained popular and improved faster in place of gas cars through the 1940s and 50s instead of being pushed aside after the 20s and 30s. This has lead to experiments and developments of cars and fighter planes that look like they were built in the 1940s but powered with electric batteries. This is helped by metals being slightly more prominent in my planet (larger and denser) compared to Earth. There aren't as many large manufacturers and vehicles aren't normally shipped across the region to dealerships like on Earth, so vehicles tend to be more commonly built by local metallurgy/smithing guilds and then later dedicated auto and machineey guilds with the help of carpenters (many panels are wood), glass makers (windows and lights), tanners(leather is often used for decoration or leather seats) and other useful professionals. Vehicles stay in their local subregions and neighbouring polities. Seeing a car on the road could imply trade relations with certain polities. Otherwise, they need to be manually ordered and imported via train, airship or convoys which carry the vehicles across the valley for well off customers or governments. These could be stolen by raiders and pirate coming from the ground or the air (rarely by boat because the region is landlocked with a politically blocked coast). These transport options tend to be armed and ready to fight back with weapons and guards of their own. The expense and even sometimes the prestige of automobiles means they can be used as high value payment for loyal knights that proved their worth in battle.
As a dirty commie I must say, pretty good video. It’s good to see that others also use this method of analyzing history and society for realistic yet interesting World building. Keep up the great work
30 seconds in: Sanderson and Marx are both name dropped.
I'm gonna like this one. :)
"Civilization stumbles from crisis to crisis like a drunk looking for a safe bar."
Best line I've heard in these trying times.
as far as i know the "socialism is not the final state of civilization" at 1:51 is a pretty mainstream position in marxism. Even if you take into account how different branches of marxism define socialism and/or communism my takeaway has been that there's a general agreement that there'll be something new after socialism and/or communism and they can only guess what it would be like and at what timescales.
For pursuing "reading Marx and taking the good parts" i'd recommend marxist feminist scholars like Silvia Federici and maybe a bit of post-marxism. Although both marxist feminism and post-marxism have been around for long enough that they've been woven into mainstream modern marxist points as opposed to the overly deterministic orthodox marxism of the late 19th century. Due to this unspoken shift looking up "marxism" in general might have the search engine get you articles aimed at one or the other.
in my writings i have already been using historical materialism for worldbuilding but not intentionally at first. 😅
Watching base/superstructure dynamics shift over the course of an anthology really hits the spot for me(first its control over space resources, then delicate biofactories, and so on). Especially if different astronomical regions are developing in their own directions under unique tensions.
Love the cats by the way!
1:52 "I think civilization stumbles from crisis to crisis like a drunk looking for a safe bar and it changes to survive, swaying back and forth between Marxist contradictions like it was following a cop's finger in a drunk test. 🍻"
That is the most hilarious description of civilization I've heard yet. 😂
"I will escape to the ONE place not corrupted by capitalism, *SPAAACE*! 👹"
Narrator: little did Lapis know, capitalism was hitching a ride on the rocket. It clung to the back engine with its teeth.
@@JustInTimeWorlds 😂 🤑 🚀
Lovely. Along these lines, I think the best companion to Marx for this kind of worldbuilding is Carroll Quigley's Weapons Systems and Political Stability. Marx's ideas on the declining rate of profit in Capital vol III show up in many stories involving a declining power reaching for reinvigoration.
Stayed for the content, thumbed up for kitty ^_^
She says purrrr (for the engagement 😁)
When I get to be interesting if after the Communist Revolution what is Russia broke up it doesn't have to actually be rushed I could just be inspired by Russia you start off as a 19-year man in that world will the country reunite will it stay broken lots of ways it can go
The communist revolution was a crazy time and one could certainly draw a lot of plot potential from that.
1. I would doubt that agriculture started sedentary. Fields lose fertility under primitive conditions. Slash and burn is the obvious reaction with regular migrations. The poor are those who cannot move. The really source of wealth is control of the rivers due to transport and fertile lands.
2. The main threat would be security. You need to store the seed grain.That is a lot under primitive conditions. That means that a farmer is a juicy target. You need to organize in such a way that you keep the fruits of your fields. That is you need villages and a militia. It seems to me like the primary conflict of early agriculture is between those who remain nomads and turn bandit and the farmers.
💜🐈💜
A few comments as someone studying Marx & others in university:
1: Your explanation of the base-superstructure metaphor is a bit awkward. While Marx did use the word 'economic' in his description, he first defined it:
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The *totality* of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness." -Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
I bring this up because, if Marx's materialism is to be used as a tool of worldbuilding, it is important to understand that economic is not intended to be so simple as the flow of money, or even goods between two entities. It is in the _social_ production of their existence, i.e., people together working towards survival of themselves and their offspring, in which we find the relations of production (as you aptly described.)
For those seeking to read more on concepts of Marx which could be used in worldbuilding, I'd look to the concept of primitive accumulation (look up "John Bellamy Foster: Marx & the Indigenous). Also look into David Harvey's concept of "time-space compression," that is, the compression of the social concepts of space and time, which is founded in Marx's works. These are both important tools for worldbuilding.
2: Your application of historical materialism to so-called hunter-gatherers is also missing nuance. "Agriculture" did not automatically come with struggles over ownership. For more reading on an example of this, look as Marx did to the Haudenosaunee , who had communal use of the land. I say 'use' because it is not so clear that we can apply our abstract concept of ownership to their conception of the land, nor the reality of it, which is exactly what is in question. This importance of this distinction is immediate, as your description of "class division" regarding who owned the land and who worked it following the rise of agriculture falls short of being able to explain forms of society which developed differently than in Europe.
Additionally, it would be insufficient to simply say "In Europe" ahead of this explanation. As a tool of worldbuilding which we (hopefully) want to avoid applying in a Eurocentric manner, it is important to describe an application of it from first a neutral standpoint, being specific to no society, then moving to case studies which are explicitly labelled as such.
3. As for your description of Mistborn, some more important nuances need be made.
-The metal atium is not a, nor the, means of production. The mines to acquire atium, the farms to create food, and the tools for both therein, are the means of production. Atium is also tricky and is more of a commodity, being that it is not a necessary resource for the social reproduction of man. It is, in other words, a tool of class domination.
-The Skaa are not proletariat, they are slaves and peasants. Proletariat does not simply mean "lowest class," proletarians are wage-workers, and if my brief research is to be believed, most Skaa were not paid.
-You have misappropriated Marx's contradictions. "The nobility is weakening and the peasantry is strengthening" is not in and of itself a contradiction in the materialist sense: what is contradictory is how the Skaa produced everything but only the nobility wanted for nothing, and the exploitative economic relationship therein. This relationship created the conditions for revolution, which is what you have actually described.
4. Your application of historical materialism for the creation of a new world is also misguided. Part of describing the historical genesis of our modern capitalist world is understanding the history: Without understanding the history, you can effectively pop anything into existence, even with historical materialism, effectively rendering it naught but a "realistic" set of steps with nothing unique to it. To make it unique, one should either create a society and track it back through history (changing it as you go so that it makes more sense), or create a society and project it through history to your worlds most recent context.
Finally, I would say that (as much as we may all be sick of it), George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is also a great case study in historical materialism. But for those interested in Marxism, whether as a tool of worldbuilding or something else, keep in mind this quote: "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."
Me hearing the word Marxism: "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
Her having self-awareness and making a good point: "No no, let her cook..."
I chortled 🤭
Shes not marxist!
No :) But that doesn't stop me reading Marx and taking the good parts out of it.
I'm not because I'm not a communist
Materialism is the breeding ground for classism