How history is made

Far from being "mechanical," Karl Marx and Frederick Engels' view of society stresses how people make history, though not in conditions of their choosing.
Text

History is made by people, Marx and Engels argued, not for them. However, as Marx famously put it, people do not make history in conditions of their own choosing. They do so in conditions inherited from the past (also created by humans), and these conditions shape the possibilities and limitations of what humans are capable of achieving at any particular moment.

Human life, and therefore human history, begins with subsistence. As Marx and Engels wrote, "men must be in a position to live in order to be able to 'make history.' But life involves, before everything else, eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself."
Text