Theoretical Marxist approaches in palaeodemography aspects of three Greek regions

Abstract

The question of the nature of human activity, its specific formulation and function in social production and reproduction is a fundamental one for any theory of social formation, existence and evolution. There are various forces to accounts for which do not remain static as they are categories of human needs and consciousness and they are transformed as society changes. Nonetheless theoretical pre-suppositions in general have rested on the validity of rigid argumentations embedded in a tradition of conservative ideology, with their central feature the a priori reduction of population dynamics and social values to eternal natural laws. In this "Hobbesian society" concepts, categories and methods are the products of the very phenomena they are designed to describe; the effect is empirical closure, artificial separation of the object from its history, and the application in any field of the "true or false” hypotheses, which once categorized remain ever so. However, an understanding of the reality depends on the question we ask. Rather than seeking comparabilities in statistical terms and countings according to some unstated value scheme considered as proven, the Marxist commitment is to detailed study of societies, with written or non-written history, based on the dialectical-historical analysis of relationships and contradictions that must be elaborated, refined and tested both through theory and praxis; and this is the concern of the following thesis.