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On Historical Materialism
(Part I)
Franz Mehring
The bourgeois world today regards historical materialism as it did Darwinism a lifetime ago, and socialism half a lifetime ago. It reviles it without understanding it. Eventually, and with great difficulty, the bourgeoisie began to grasp that Darwinism was really something other than an “ape theory”, and that socialism was not a matter of “having a share-out” or “laying a thieving hand on all the fruits of a thousand years of culture”. But historical materialism still remains something upon which they pour phrases that are as foolish as they are cheap, describing it, for example, as the “fantasy” of a few “talented demagogues”.
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On Historical Materialism
(Part II)
Franz Mehring
Historical materialism is no closed system crowned by an ultimate truth; it is the scientific method for the investigation of processes of human development. It starts from the unchallengeable fact, that. human beings do not only live in nature but also in society. There have never been people in isolation; every man who accidentally loses contact with human society, quickly starves and dies. But historical materialism thus recognizes all ideal forces in the widest context.
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On Historical Materialism
(Part III)
Franz Mehring
Herr Barth is first of all very disturbed about the fact that Marx formulates the materialist conception of history in “an unfortunately very indeterminate way, patched together out of imagery, and only sometimes in his writings explaining and illustrating it with examples.” He recently aired his mental agonies on this account in an even more drastic form in a weekly magazine of the Bismarckian bourgeoisie, saying that the “so-called materialist theory of history was a half-truth, that Karl Marx had spoken in a moment of journalistic frivolity, and unfortunately tried to back it with supposed ‘proof’.”
Read MoreFranz Mehring
1846-1919
Biography:
Originally a liberal journalist, Mehring joined the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the early 1890s. He rapidly became acknowledged as an important theoretician. In the course of time he moved to the left and became associated with the current around Rosa Luxemburg. With the outbreak of World War I he was, despite his advanced years, a prominent member of the revolutionary opposition to the war along with Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Clara Zetkin. He was a founder member of the German Communist Party established on New Years Day 1919, but died later in the month shortly after the murder of his comrades Luxemburg and Liebknecht.
Short Description
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