Hu Yaohui: An Analysis of the Event-Based View of History in Foreign Marxist Theory
Marx stated in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: "At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution." In reality, however, the timing of social transformation is not perfectly synchronized with the contradiction between the development of productive forces and relations of production. This lack of synchronicity between the superstructure and the economic base leads to a misalignment between the occurrence of social contradictions and social revolution. Consequently, how to understand transformation within history becomes a key issue in understanding Marx's historical materialism.
Revolution is a sudden event, entirely distinct from the preceding society, which creates a rupture in history. People typically divide history into "pre-revolutionary" and "post-revolutionary" periods after a revolution occurs to demonstrate the historical discontinuity it has caused. Therefore, reflections on historical transformation actually raise the question of how to handle the relationship between accidental ruptures and continuity in history. Regarding this issue, a segment of scholars in the history of foreign Marxist thought has prioritized historical discontinuity over continuity. They emphasize human agency, value historical contingency, oppose historical teleology and evolutionism, and attempt to use a "brand new" dialectic to seek a perfected historical materialism. What this article intends to trace is the genealogy of the event-based view of history within foreign Marxist theory.
I. Benjamin and "Now-Time"
To explore the event-based view of history in foreign Marxist theory, one must return to the source of the problem: Hegel. For Hegel, history is the unfolding of the Absolute Spirit; the actions of every individual in world history are seen as various moments [1] through which Reason realizes its actuality. Thus, world history presents itself as a teleological process of alienation, the overcoming of alienation, and the attainment of the highest unity. Hegel’s conceptual dialectic has remained latent within the theoretical logic of many foreign Marxist theorists. This often prevents people from correctly grasping the radical nature of Marx’s historical materialism, leading them instead to understand history through a logic of presupposed totality (which Jean-Paul Sartre called "totalization"). Yet we know that Marx's historical materialism seeks not only to grasp the laws of historical development in thought but, more importantly, to change the world in actual history. When Marx cried out in the Communist Manifesto for the proletarians of all countries to unite, he was calling on the proletariat to break historical continuity and create a history of their own.
The success of the October Revolution proved the bankruptcy of the linear evolutionary view of history. From a purely theoretical standpoint, Eduard Bernstein’s criticism of Lenin seemed meaningful: the Russian bourgeoisie was still in its infancy, the relations of production had not yet fettered the productive forces, and many remnants of feudal relations of production persisted; thus, the timing for revolution appeared not to have arrived. However, Lenin's revolutionary practice powerfully refuted this criticism of "premature" revolution, proving that historical development is not entirely linearly progressive but contains the possibility of ruptures. Precisely because of this, the revolution could achieve victory in Russia, the "weakest link" [2] of the capitalist world.
Developments in reality drive theoretical reflection. It was the occasion of the October Revolution that prompted foreign Marxist thinkers to begin contemplating historical development from the perspective of discontinuity. Walter Benjamin was the first scholar among foreign Marxists to reflect on historical discontinuity. In 1939, as fascist atrocities grew increasingly rampant and the expected revolution remained distant, Benjamin, sensing he could not escape his fate, wrote his final work, Theses on the Philosophy of History. Michael Löwy called this document "one of the most radical, pioneering, and developmental pieces of revolutionary thought since the Theses on Feuerbach." The radicalism of the Theses on the Philosophy of History lies in its initial proposal of a rupture between revolutionary time and everyday time. In Benjamin's view, history does not necessarily develop toward an ideal direction; it is by no means teleological or evolutionist. Vulgar materialism (Benjamin's primary targets of criticism being the Second International and the Social Democratic Party of Germany) assumed that social revolution would naturally occur with the development of productive forces. To Benjamin, such a view was tantamount to handing weapons to the enemy. He asked: "How can the product of labor benefit the worker if it is not at his disposal?"
Benjamin proposed that the materialist conception of history should be grounded in a "constructive principle." "History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now (Jetztzeit)." This "now-time" replaces empty, continuous time; the past, present, and future are condensed within the construction of the "now."
First, history is discontinuous. In the consciousness of progressive historical time, revolution is an anticipated future event, but it is also infinitely postponed. Benjamin emphasized that a revolution of the oppressed can occur at any moment of the current "now." A true historical materialist should not focus solely on the continuous totality of history but should look at every "now" that possesses the potential for transformation. He argued: "The awareness that they are about to make the continuum of history explode is characteristic of the revolutionary classes at the moment of their action."
Second, historical time is oriented toward the past rather than the future. This shifts our gaze away from the analysis of general trends and toward the specific events occurring within the "monadological" spatial structure composed of the present and the past. Benjamin believed: "To Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the now which he blasted out of the continuum of history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome incarnate." Marx also once said that the French Revolution performed on the stage of history in Roman costume. The time of the "now" is a retrospective repetition; failed revolutions of the past do not vanish into the dust but instead become the motive force for people to take revolutionary action today. Benjamin did not mean that history repeats itself continuously, but rather that we must reclaim the lost discourse of the oppressed in the sense of Nietzsche's view of history. This is inextricably linked to a genealogical historical consciousness. The "historicism" criticized by Benjamin lists various historical facts and forcibly imposes a predetermined causal thread upon them, which is clearly a Whig history written from the perspective of the victors. Benjamin's re-actualization of the past is precisely a "politics of time" that reveals the hidden "truth" in history. Benjamin and Marx agree on this point: if a true historical narrative exists, it can only unfold from the perspective of the proletariat. Thus, we find that historical truth is vividly demonstrated not only in Marx's Capital and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, but also in the specific revolutionary events discussed in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and The Civil War in France.
Finally, history is related to subjective action. In the famous "Thesis VIII," Benjamin says: "The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of exception' in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of exception." A "real state of exception" is an event. Unlike interpretations that emphasize objective historical structures, the event-based view of history emphasizes historical creation achieved through subjective agency. It is evident that Benjamin’s event-based view of history ultimately celebrates the revolutionary aspect of historical materialism—that human beings create history. Slavoj Žižek strongly agrees with Benjamin on this point. In Žižek's view, revolution is an entirely "creationist" act (i.e., Benjamin's historical materialism—author's note); "it erases the dominant text and creates a new text out of nothing." "Out of nothing" (ex nihilo) is the core concept of Žižek's philosophy of the event; he clearly regards Benjamin as a pioneer of event theory.
Benjamin's unique "dialectic at a standstill" [3] points toward the action of the subject in breaking false continuity. When thought stops because of a certain image, memory, or imagination, the subject begins to reflect on the constraints imposed on them by social ideology and aesthetic forms; these constraints are a kind of "aestheticization of politics." According to the concept of the "estrangement effect" (Verfremdungseffekt) proposed by Bertolt Brecht, the defamiliarization of everyday things brings the possibility of creating new meaning. Thus, in "now-time," dialectics is no longer a Hegelian synthesis but emphasizes the contingency and rupture inherent in the "state of exception." We could say that this mode of thinking, which stretches opposition and contrast to their limits, is a form of radical anti-Hegelianism.
Benjamin opposed viewing historical progress as continuous and linear, a perspective that restored the vitality inherent in the materialist conception of history. He focused on concrete historical events rather than applying the materialist conception of history as a set of dead laws, and he powerfully pointed out the limitations of the linear progressive view of history. This viewpoint is rich with revolutionary and emancipatory significance. Benjamin opened up two avenues for foreign Marxists to reflect on historical discontinuity. First, his historical materialism emphasized events within history, no longer presupposing a totalizing trend of history, thereby shifting the theoretical focus of Marx’s historical materialism to focus on monadological historical objects and explaining historical development and change through discontinuity. Second, if a "real state of exception" is a complete rupture from everyday events, it seems to become an absolute contingency itself. To overcome this contingency, Benjamin resorted to Jewish Messianism. He said: "For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter." This is the point where Benjamin's event-based view of history becomes incompatible with historical materialism. Therefore, we shall see that if history is viewed as event-based, then how to handle the relationship between contingency and necessity becomes a challenge that the event-based view of history must face.
II. Althusser's Logic of Conjuncture
People usually seek the connection between Louis Althusser and Benjamin in the realm of materialist aesthetics, but in fact, the two are even closer in their historical consciousness. Both Benjamin and Althusser rejected the Hegelian concept of history, opposed a homogenous view of time, and valued the structural analysis of "now-time." The difference is that Althusser focused more on the materialist conditions under which change or revolution can be produced. In the genealogy of foreign Marxist thought, he is classified as a structuralist Marxist, but looking at his theoretical development as a whole, such a definition is inappropriate. I would prefer to see him as a "conjuncturalist." Althusser continued Benjamin's historical reflections and placed historical contingency above necessity, a theme that persisted from his early For Marx and Reading Capital to his later "materialism of the encounter."
Conjuncture (conjoncture [4]) refers to the primordial form in which an event is produced. It is characterized by contingency, yet it determines the future of the event. A conjuncture cannot be theorized; it is a convergence of concrete historical content, "constituted by various opposing and mixed forces." The "force" (shi [5]) of the conjuncture reflects trends within history, but these trends do not possess necessity; rather, they contain a "void." "It only has meaning if it arranges or contains a position, a void: only what is empty can be filled, only what is empty can provide a place for individuals or collectives, allowing them to occupy it in order to recombine and form various forces to accomplish the political tasks designated by history—the empty is for the future." The void is contingency; its meaning is undetermined (Benjamin's "monad" is similar in this sense), and the answer can only be provided by historical action. Starting from the 1970s, Althusser returned to the thought of Machiavelli to find the beginnings of historical materialism. He saw Machiavelli as a representative of the logic of conjuncture, believing his analysis "submits strictly to the problems raised and imposed by the concrete circumstances of the conjuncture... it is not raised by a simple intellectual comparison, but by the confrontation of existing class forces and the relationship of their uneven development—in fact, by their accidental future."
Regarding the understanding of historical contingency, it would be unfair to regard Althusser as a total accidentalist, yet we can indeed sense a tension inherent in the temporal consciousness of the event-oriented view of history within his discourse. In his early essay "Contradiction and Overdetermination," Althusser noted: "The general contradiction is sufficient to define the situation when revolution is 'on the agenda'; but it cannot by itself directly create a 'revolutionary situation,' let alone the situation for the outbreak of the revolution and the victory of the revolution." For Althusser, the contradiction between the contingency of the event and historical laws manifests as the tension between the historical structure (mode of production) and the elements of the conjuncture [6]. As we know, Althusser intended to resolve this issue through a brand-new dialectic: overdetermination.
Overdetermination holds that the structure of an event is fundamentally lopsided, an imbalance determined by the immanence of the social formation. Within a contradictory whole, there always exists a dominant structure containing a primary contradiction and several secondary contradictions; under certain conditions, these transform into one another, propelling the continued development of history. Only by analyzing the existing contradictory relations of the "complex-already-given" (déjà donné) totality can one judge whether history is moving toward "historical stagnation," the "braking of contradictions," or the "outbreak of revolution." Although Althusser admitted that the conjuncture of a given moment is ultimately determined [7] by the dominant structure of the productive forces and relations of production, he placed greater emphasis on the specificity of every moment. He argued that we are "always within the specific," and that the "analysis of labor and capital... is always specifically defined by the concrete historical situation and historical environment in which the contradictions operate."
Althusser’s overdetermination is far from "deterministic"; on the contrary, it consistently preserves the tension of the event-oriented view of history. "The determination by the economy in the last instance is realized in real history precisely through the alternating primary roles played by the economy, politics, theory, etc." In fact, Althusser never truly resolved the problem of historical necessity—the "determination by the economy in the last instance"—which led him, in the final years of his life, to move completely toward the materialism of the encounter [8].
Thus, the chain of historical causality was replaced by Althusser's structural causality. The former is the Hegelian dialectic, where every link in the whole "is nothing but the actual existence of the Concept within itself at a certain historical link"; the latter is the Spinozist dialectic, where "the existence of the entire structure lies in its effects," and the logic of an event’s occurrence is entirely the product of the internal struggles and conflicts of the structure. By abolishing the distinction between the superstructure and the economic base, Althusser's event-oriented view of history also abolished any possible preordained conclusions. He wrote: "The ontology of actual existence opposes... all knowledge of the future." Facing such history, Althusser termed it the "necessity of contingency." In this way, history, as an open process, is filled with conflicting trends, where only relatively and temporarily stable reference points become accidental yet concrete events.
Let us now re-examine Althusser’s famous assertion: "History is a process without a subject." This does not mean Althusser denied the human role in creating history; he merely rejected the practice of viewing empirical individuals or abstract Man as the subject of history. In his view, "who the subject is" is a question to be answered by the historical conjuncture. If we conceptually replace "subject" with "agent" within society, we might reduce the misunderstandings of Althusser. What Althusser’s theory of conjuncture seeks to narrate is the dialectical movement between agents and their constituent cultural, social, and economic environments within specific historical situations.
What kind of history, then, does Althusser’s event-oriented view actually portray? It should be said that his intention was to grasp the problem of the revolutionary situation—what might be called "Lenin's problem." Althusser constantly cited the analyses and decisions Lenin made when facing the Russian revolutionary situation because, in his view, only a revolutionary can fully understand that the Marxist dialectic includes, in its positive understanding of existing things, a simultaneous negative understanding. For Althusser, revolution is always conducted in concrete history. Overdetermination does not attempt to describe the structural whole but rather the structural shifts of contradictions, wherein the economic base, ideological apparatuses, climatic and geographical factors, cultural practices, and subjects are simultaneously gathered in the force field of the conjuncture to compete. Revolution does not occur within certainty but rather realizes historical necessity through "individual 'contingency'... according to this necessity, the future must naturally and automatically replace its 'present'."
Althusser wanted to emphasize that any revolution is a concrete practical activity within the present time; the contingency of the present conjuncture opens our space for action, and the only weapon we possess is the analytical method of overdetermined contradictions. Under contemporary capitalist conditions, proletarian resistance has become incomparably complex. Relying solely on the subject’s conviction in inevitable victory is insufficient to cope with the constantly shifting transformations of capitalism. We must find the limits of individual action within concrete conjunctures. The Messiah will not descend at any moment but remains latent only within the most concrete struggles. Therefore, when Althusser’s students criticized his structuralist tendencies for leading to his relative inactivity in 1968 [9], they precisely misunderstood the radical nature of Althusser’s theory. The temporality of overdetermined contradictions challenges all dogmatic historical materialism; it calls upon those who truly grasp the truth to act according to the occasion [10].
III. Badiou's Theory of the Event
In contemporary radical leftist thought, whether it be Benjamin or Althusser, both are repeatedly invoked in various guises. Slavoj Žižek’s call for divine violence, Giorgio Agamben’s exploration of the state of exception, and Alain Badiou’s inheritance of the "encounter" all belong to the theoretical creation of "returning to the source to innovate." This reflects a path in the theoretical logic of foreign Marxism shifting from necessity to contingency.
We have previously reshaped the "undercurrent" of this shift from the perspective of the event-oriented view of history; it was exactly the "state of exception" proposed by Benjamin and Althusser’s theory of conjuncture that laid the foundation for this logical transition toward historical contingency. However, whether it was Benjamin’s appeal to the Messiah or Althusser’s "determination in the last instance by the economy," both attempted to preserve historical necessity. In today’s radical leftist thought, historical truth has become a nominalist concept in the Platonic sense. Thus, the problem of historical contingency is not an epistemological question of priority but has become an ontology of history. That is to say, what is needed now is not the construction of epistemological principles for contingency, but the construction of a historical dialectic with contingency as its principle. One could say that the "event" has transformed from a view of history into an "evental materialism."
Badiou uses mathematical ontology to explain the ontological status of the event. In his view, the event is a "non-being" multiple that is incompatible with the current state of being, a "nothingness" in the current situation. Therefore, we have no means to express this event that does not belong to the current situation. Badiou borrows Jacques Lacan’s dictum that "the Real absolutely cannot be symbolized" to highlight the rupture and unpredictability of the event. The event Badiou speaks of is absolute contingency; it breaks away from all ontological philosophy. The event is not a forgotten "Being," but a void that can only be described after it has occurred. In this sense, Badiou indeed possesses what Žižek critiques as a "miracle complex." Žižek remarked that Badiou might be the "last great writer in the French Catholic tradition since Pascal and Malebranche."
This being the case, how is an event a "truth-event"? How can an event as "non-being" embody historical truth? Badiou’s answer is that truth is not epistemological but a practical ethical truth. Only when a specific subject—namely, the interventionist action of the proletariat—touches upon the fundamental social contradiction of class struggle does it become a truthful event. The event itself contains the "prejudiced" perspective of the subject; in this, we see Benjamin's "tradition of the oppressed" resurrected half a century later. From this, it is clear that subject, event, and truth mutually constitute one another. An agent intervenes in a situation at a certain moment based on conviction; after an event occurs, the agent completes their own subjectivization by naming the event, thereby establishing it. The reason this event is truth is determined by the nature of the subject intervening in the event.
To ensure the contingency of the event, Badiou specifically redefined the universality of truth. He argues that truth is "generic." Generic truth is not a being-as-being, but an operation relative to the elements within a situation, which prevents truth from falling into the trap of traditional transcendental metaphysics. Badiou’s so-called truth is a category adapted to the "irreducible multiple of being." Through a truth procedure, generic truth uses the timing of an event to create a "pure multiple" not previously displayed in a specific situation. Since inconsistency and void necessarily exist within any set, the subject's operation of making truth appear in the process of creating an event must be universal in this sense. However, the "multiple" suppressed by each situation varies; thus, every recurrence of truth is different. Therefore, Badiou’s truth can guarantee formal equivalence between events while leaving room for diversified resistance in different fields. History always repeats, but never identically.
After Badiou pushes the contingency of the event to its extreme, contingency severs all links with necessity. It is no longer the "necessity of contingency," but the "absoluteness of contingency." Consequently, we see that synthesis in the dialectic is no longer possible; to borrow Benjamin’s phrasing, history becomes a discrete, ruptured constellation. Badiou’s dialectic is a dialectic of split; there is no connection between the beginning and the end of an event. The form and content of things are completely separated (exemplified by Badiou linking the universality of truth with the exception of the event). Being no longer transforms into its opposite through the internal contradictions of its own development but is rigidly juxtaposed within ruptured events. Badiou also calls his historical dialectic an "anti-dialectical dialectic." Thus, we see his return to Kant: the split between the thing-in-itself and the world of phenomena. In insisting on rejecting the idealist elements of the Hegelian dialectic, Badiou throws the baby out with the bathwater.
Rather than examining Badiou’s event-oriented view of history within Heidegger’s philosophical thought on Ereignis (which would dissolve the radicalism of the event-oriented view into a fashionable postmodern philosophical critique and lacks a basic dialectical perspective), it is better to unfold these reflections within the practical questions of revolutionary events opened by the October Revolution. In the view of Badiou, Žižek, and others, the timing of revolution is not deduced from historical objectivity but is a decisive change brought about by the intervention of the subject. As the debate between Lenin and the Mensheviks in the latter half of 1917 showed, only Lenin saw that the timing for revolution had arrived—what was needed now was not waiting, but a "tiger's leap." Therefore, the event-oriented view of history is not merely a pure reflection of historical philosophy; it possesses a strong political connotation and has caused a revival of the idea of communism in contemporary leftist thought.
In Badiou’s view, the only state of exception in politics is communism; because it respects the equality of everyone, political action upheld by communist conviction is a generic procedure (procedure generique) for creating truth. He states: "Marx called the human being in the process of self-emancipation 'species-being' (Gattungswesen), and 'proletariat' is the name for those who can become species-beings." The scope of the proletariat is not fixed but is revealed in an ever-evolving truth procedure. Thus, the communist movement Badiou calls for has no fixed pattern. New forms of communism may emerge from all kinds of political movements. Žižek also calls for mobilizing the people to "generate their own reality" by striving for the "idea of communism." In the present moment, when Western leftist movements are at a loss, the theoretical aim of the event-oriented view of history is an active view of history as permanent revolution. Events are always unexpected; thus, the actions we take for our own emancipation are destined to be filled with hardship.
Thus far, the author has surveyed the conception of the event in the history of foreign Marxism, stretching from Benjamin to Althusser and on to Badiou. From a historical perspective, each iteration of an "event-oriented" view of history emerged during periods when the international communist movement faced setbacks. Theoretically speaking, these views share a common worldview: they hold that the world is essentially non-closed, and that any attempt to suture social contradictions is merely the "master signifier" of the victors. The event, precisely, is the act that operates upon the fundamental rupture. Consequently, their dialectics all reject the logic of identity and totality in the Hegelian sense; they no longer pursue the transformation of contradictions through the "negation of the negation" [11] but rather absolutize the antagonistic contradictions within society. By relying on the agency of the subject, they aim to achieve a ruptural transformation of the social structure.
Their event-oriented view of history highlights rational elements within historical materialism, such as the idea that "men make history" and that history does not develop linearly. Their construction of the basic principles of historical materialism is instructive, revealing a theoretical path within foreign Marxism distinct from cultural critique. However, these views invariably fall into the same trap. As we know, the transformation of quantitative change into qualitative change is a rational element in the dialectics of development; revolution, as a qualitative change, can be understood as an event entirely distinct from the current situation. The event-oriented view of history correctly identifies this factor in the occurrence of events but exaggerates this difference so thoroughly that it treats the event as pure contingency and rupture. Ultimately, this mystifies the event itself, leading it away from historical materialism. What we must do is strip the event of its metaphysical coloring and return to Marx’s own analysis of events. We must replace the human being within real environments and focus on how people make history within the basic social structures and the truth of historical totality, thereby dialectically grasping the tension between contingency and necessity, and between subject and structure, in history.
IV. The Event-Oriented View of History in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Marx wrote a famous sentence when discussing his conception of history: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." The tension expressed here between "men making history" and "making it under certain conditions" has been argued repeatedly. Yet people often overlook that this assertion arose from Marx’s concrete analysis of a specific historical event: the French coup d'état of 1851. Therefore, we must return to Marx’s analysis of concrete historical events to resolve this tension. Marx’s analysis in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte fundamentally follows a class perspective. He first views the event of the Brumaire coup as the result of the movement and development of class relations. In his description, the revolutionary character of the proletariat, the petty-bourgeois democrats, the bourgeois republicans, the Party of Order, and Bonaparte’s armed forces recedes in turns, while the conflicts between classes are ultimately constrained by the economic conditions in which each class finds itself.
However, Marx did not crudely graft a class perspective onto the explanation of the historical situation, as that would result in a simple linear narrative of history. He was not afraid to present the tragedies and comedies of history to the people as "living current events." He not only affirms the contingency within history but, from the perspective of historical materialism, demonstrates how to scientifically integrate the dialectical relationship between macro historical trends, concrete historical situations, and contingent historical events.
Marx begins with the historical situation (conjuncture). The historical situation shapes the possibility of an event’s appearance and creates the various subjects who act within it. Marx stated: "I, on the contrary, demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and conditions that allowed a mediocre and grotesque personage to play a hero's part." Looking at the historical situation in France, the eruption of two world-scale economic events intensified social discontent. The first was the potato blight and crop failures of 1845 and 1846; the second was the general commercial and industrial crisis in Britain. The British crisis closed factories in English industrial districts, forcing French factory owners and big merchants who had previously done business abroad back into the domestic market, leading to the bankruptcy of the Parisian petty bourgeoisie and triggering discontent. This was the historical situation of the February Revolution. But the situation does not entirely determine the direction of the event; it is precisely here that the event itself possesses an element of contingency.
The political demands of the petty bourgeoisie did not proceed according to the original script. The original demands of the February Revolution were for electoral reform by the petty bourgeoisie; the proletariat was not the primary factor in bringing about the event. However, "when the people had actually mounted the barricades, when the National Guard maintained a passive attitude," the development of this situation exceeded the original imagination. An action intended to "widen the circle of the politically privileged within the possessing class itself and to overthrow the exclusive domination of the finance aristocracy" was forced by the development of the revolution to proclaim itself a "Social Republic." This development clearly exceeded the stipulations of the prior situation, appearing as an unexpected reversal. "The February Revolution was a surprise attack, a taking of the old society unawares, and the people proclaimed this unexpected stroke a deed of world importance, ushering in a new era."
In such descriptions, Marx’s historical materialism reveals the dimension of contingency within an event-oriented view of history. The contingent consequences caused by individual actions often overflow a specific historical situation. Furthermore, Marx emphasized the necessity of the contingency dimension appearing within history. In a letter to Kugelmann, he pointed out: "World history would indeed be very easy to make, if the struggle were taken up only on condition of infallibly favorable chances. It would, on the other hand, be of a very mystical nature, if 'accidences' played no part. These accidences themselves fall naturally into the general course of development and are compensated for by other accidences. But acceleration and delay are very dependent upon such 'accidences,' which include the 'accidental' character of the people who first stand at the head of the movement." Here, even the contingency of an individual’s character is taken into account! This shows the breadth of social current events that Marx’s event-oriented view of history can grasp.
Although the development of events is full of contingency, Marx did not allow this logic to develop to the extreme as the aforementioned foreign Marxists did. Instead, he subjected contingent events to further "purification." Marx’s narrative involves subjects of "different characters" and their actions—Bonaparte, Cavaignac, Barrot, Fould, Changarnier, etc.—but they are all revealed within the structure of parties and classes, presented as spokespersons or mediators for their respective classes. From the February Revolution to the June Revolution, to the successive falls of the Republicans, the Democrats, and the Party of Order, and finally to Bonaparte's restoration, Marx uses parliamentary party struggles as the thread of his narrative. The contingency of events is presented through the facts of the gradual fragmentation and failure of the petty-bourgeois Democratic Party and the Party of Order. Here, Marx integrates various specific figures and events within a fixed period into a framework of class analysis, allowing us to more accurately grasp the meaning and trends of contingent events. Thus, we see the dialectical relationship between subjects on the historical stage—who may not possess conscious class consciousness—and the irresistible trends of history. These actors on the stage unconsciously represent the interests of their classes, yet their different characters and styles cause their underlying motives to manifest through a kaleidoscope of strange events. The most prominent example is the Democratic Party (the Mountain), which over-exaggerated its own power: "The democrat, because he represents the petty bourgeoisie... imagines himself elevated above class antagonism generally. The democrats concede that a privileged class confronts them, but they, along with all the rest of the nation, form the people." Consequently, when they fail, they can only attribute the cause to "some accidental mischance."
Behind class analysis lies the necessity of the development of contradictions. The development and failure of the February and June Revolutions were manifestations of the internal contradictions of the decisive class factor—economic conditions. The February Revolution was a premature revolution. "The workers believed they could emancipate themselves side by side with the bourgeoisie... [and] they thought they would be able to consummate a proletarian revolution within the national walls of France, side by side with the other bourgeois nations. But French relations of production are conditioned by the foreign trade of France, by her position on the world market and the laws thereof; how was France to break them without a European revolutionary war, which would strike back at the despot of the world market, England?" It is precisely in the contradictory movement between productive forces and relations of production that contingent events in history find a necessary explanation. It is also because he based himself on the materialist conception of history that Bonaparte’s coup was not interpreted merely as a maneuver of political trickery, but could be scientifically predicted. The Bonaparte dynasty represented the interests of the small-holding peasantry; as the small-holding property system increasingly disintegrated, the state edifice built upon it would also collapse. "If the Imperial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the bronze statue of Napoleon will crash from the top of the Vendôme Column." History proved this to be exactly the case.
The interconnection and mutual constraint between the three levels—the economic base (the long term), the class perspective (the historical situation), and the historical event (the short term)—constitute the foundation of Marx’s event-oriented view of history. Any one of these levels is constrained by the other two. Because of this, Marx’s view simultaneously explains the interleaving of historical contingency and necessity, and of the long term and the short term. It depicts the inversions, regressions, and contingencies occurring in the short term, but because these are subsumed under the synchronic structure of the class perspective, they remain tied to the perspective of the necessity of historical development—namely, the productive forces and relations of production. Or to put it another way, precisely because it accommodates contingent events in history, Marx’s historical materialism is not an all-encompassing ("Hegelian") view of history; it reminds us to fully recognize the open perspective contained within the materialist conception of history. And this openness necessitates an in-depth dive into concrete events.
Reflecting on the event-oriented views of the aforementioned foreign Marxists, we can offer two criticisms. First, their views only grasp the level of the "historical situation-historical event," failing to understand the contingency of events within a longer timeframe. Consequently, they confuse historical contingency with openness. For example, Badiou often emphasizes that the French May 1968 was an entirely independent event, but he fails to see that this event was merely a link in world history, occurring simultaneously with student protests worldwide, the global anti-Vietnam War movement, and the U.S. civil rights movement—all large-scale anti-capitalist movements. Only by possessing a world-historical vision can one grasp the historical necessity of revolutionary events within the basic contradictions of capitalist development. Second, revolutionary movements are not equivalent to the arbitrary actions of subjects; the proletariat remains the fundamental subject of revolution. The generalization of "class" inevitably leads to the neglect of the fundamental contradictions, economic conditions, political situations, and the resulting limits on action within a concrete historical conjuncture. If the subject lacks a potent party organization, its resistance can only be a "single-point explosion" rather than a true world revolution. This also leads to an understanding of the event that either falls into voluntaristic decisionism or into a Messianic, miraculous view of history.
(Affiliation: School of Marxism, Renmin University of China) Source: Marxism & Reality, Issue 1, 2025