The Historical Theoreticians

Abstract

Marx’s break with the intellectual past was fundamental. Although quite obviously a moralist he consistently decries moral analyses and injunctions as less than useless; he erects no moral philosophy of his own. Quite to the contrary he rejects the whole of previous philosophy as simply attempts at metaphysical synthesis of the world whereas the real aim in the world is to change it.¹ Moralities can never do this since they are essentially moral ratifications of the existing material-economic facts; it follows that the only useful philosophy is one based on those facts, empirically understood, scientifically observed and criticized, rejecting moral criteria as ancillary.² The physical, material world is the basis of Marx’s thought; he analyzes history in terms of production and the entire economic cycle coupled to the social institutions of human relations. Engels says:

According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the last resort, the production and reproduction of immediate life. But this itself is of a twofold character. On the one hand, the production of the means of subsistence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools requisite therefore; on the other, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species.³

Whatever Marx and Engels discussed in relation to the future society was in terms of this same view.