Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx | Page 6

might seem to be a revival,
but it is not. In fact their subject is a very different one. These recent
productions do not aim at supplying a new philosophy of history, they
simply offer some philosophising about history. The distinction
deserves to be explained.
The possibility of a philosophy of history presupposes the possibility of
reducing the sequence of history to general concepts. Now, whilst it is
possible to reduce to general concepts the particular factors of reality
which appear in history and hence to construct a philosophy of morality
or of law, of science or of art, and a general philosophy, it is not
possible to work up into general concepts the single complex whole
formed by these factors, i.e. the concrete fact, in which the historical
sequence consists. To divide it into its factors is to destroy it, to
annihilate it. In its complex totality, historical change is incapable of
reduction except to one concept, that of development: a concept empty
of everything that forms the peculiar content of history. The old
philosophy of history regarded a conceptual working out of history as
possible; either because by introducing the idea of God or of
Providence, it read into the facts the aims of a divine intelligence; or
because it treated the formal concept of development as including
within itself, logically, the contingent determinations. The case of
positivism is strange in that, being neither so boldly imaginative as to

yield to the conceptions of teleology and rational philosophy, nor so
strictly realistic and intellectually disciplined as to attack the error at its
roots, it has halted half way, i.e. at the actual concept of development
and of evolution, and has announced the philosophy of evolution as the
true philosophy of history: development itself -- as the law which
explains development! Were this tautology only in question little harm
would result; but the misfortune is that, by a too easy confusion, the
concept of evolution often emerges, in the hands of the positivists, from
the formal emptiness which belongs to it in truth, and acquires a
meaning or rather a pretended meaning, very like the meanings of
teleology and metaphysics. The almost religious unction and reverence
with which one hears the sacred mystery of evolution spoken of gives
sufficient proof of this.
From such realistic standpoints, now as always, any and every
philosophy of history has been criticised. But the very reservations and
criticisms of the old mistaken constructions demand a discussion of
concepts, that is a process of philosophising: although it may be a
philosophising which leads properly to the denial of a philosophy of
history. Disputes about method, arising out of the needs of the historian,
are added. The works published in recent years embody different
investigations of this kind, and in a plainly realistic sense, under the
title of philosophy of history. Amongst these I will mention as an
example a German pamphlet by Simmel, and, amongst ourselves a
compendious introduction by Labriola himself. There are, undoubtedly,
still philosophies of history which continue to be produced in the old
way: voices clamantium in deserto, to whom may be granted the
consolation of believing themselves the only apostles of an
unrecognised truth.
Now the materialistic theory of history, in the form in which Labriola
states it, involves an entire abandonment of all attempt to establish a
law of history, to discover a general concept under which all the
complex facts of history can be included.
I say 'in the form in which he states it,' because Labriola is aware that
several sections of the materialistic school of history tend to

approximate to these obsolete ideas.
One of these sections, which might be called that of the monists, or
abstract materialists, is characterised by the introduction of
metaphysical materialism into the conception of history.
As the reader knows, Marx, when discussing the relation between his
opinions and Hegelianism employed a pointed phrase which has been
taken too often beside the point. He said that with Hegel history was
standing on its head and that it must be turned right side up again in
order to replace it on its feet. For Hegel the idea is the real world,
whereas for him (Marx) 'the ideal is nothing else than the material
world' reflected and translated by the human mind. Hence the statement
so often repeated, that the materialistic view of history is the negation
or antithesis of the idealistic view. It would perhaps be convenient to
study once again, accurately and critically, these asserted relations
between scientific socialism and Hegelianism. To state the opinion
which I have formed on the matter; the link between the two views
seems to me to be, in the main, simply psychological. Hegelianism was
the early inspiration of the youthful Marx, and it is natural that