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Marxist historiography focuses on social class and economics forces, and assumes an inexorable trend towards socialist revolution.

What kind of historiography shares the concern about class economics, but without the deterministic view of historical progress? History from below is still pretty Marxist and seems too micro in scope; Social history seems too diffuse. Perhaps I am looking for a particular kind of social history.

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    Maybe just plain simple Economic history? I've read some papers in this kind of historiography, and they generally don't propose the same deterministic views as Marxist historiography. Although maybe Economic history might be considered only a tool in larger kinds of historiography, and their historians don't seem to use the idea of class.
    – James Cook
    Nov 30, 2017 at 13:18
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    History from below these days is most often associated with Zinn. Having read him, I don't believe there was any hint whatsoever in his work of any kind of inexorable vector to events.
    – T.E.D. ♦
    Nov 30, 2017 at 15:19
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    Aside from economics, social and cultural historians tend to focus a lot on the experiences of different social classes. In general though, historians in recent decades have been paying much more attention to the class divide than was once the case.
    – Semaphore
    Dec 1, 2017 at 5:01
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    Theres a historical analysis in Gramscis prison diaries; he's actually very favourable to the USA despite his Marxist affiliation; the extract I'm thinking of is where he discusses the role of intellectuals or the intelligensia and then expands into a wider historiography.
    – Mozibur Ullah
    Dec 1, 2017 at 16:07

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You'd want Marxist historiography. There is no teleology to Marxist historiography, as in that within the discipline of history.

One of the issues with approaches to history which are historically materialist, ie which centre relations of production labour and social property, is that whether labourite anarchist or progressive the historiographies converge on Marxist historiography because the application of the theoretical tools to the documentary record of the past produces identical historiographies regardless of the authors opinion on 19th century beards.

You may be thinking of Soviet style diamat history, which is broadly discredited on the theoretical level due to teleos. Or perhaps structuralist attempts to account for the past, the main criticism being supplied by EP Thompsons debate on Althusser. Thompson being of course a Marxist historian.

Annales were also class conscious.

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    Sounds like I was wholly mistaken in the premise of the question. Thanks for setting me straight!
    – Aaron Brick
    Aug 12, 2018 at 15:09

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