A Critical Examination of the Anthropological Foundations of the Theory of Historical Materialism

The modern age is known as the age of the emergence and prominence of human being, in the modern sense, in the realm of knowledge. The human knowledge and thought determines the epistemic makeup of this era, and all the categories of modern science somehow pivot on human. Besides ontological foundations, Marx's theory of historical materialism has a strong anthropological foundation, and is based on a particular conception of mankind. Marx regards a form of man’s social existence, i.e. "work", as the basis of his dialectical analysis, which is both material and social-historical. According to Marx, the human world, that is, all symbols and manifestations, forms of consciousness and historical- social institutions, in all their various forms and shapes, are merely a product and a function of human’s action and work; they are manifested at any stage of history in a way and have shaped the coordinates of each historical and social period. While presenting a brief review of Marx's theory of historical materialism, this paper tries to study analytically and critically the most important anthropological assumptions