Marx and the Movement of History

• Published in: The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia p. 17
• Main Author: Daniels, Robert
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Yale University Press 04.04.2007
• Subjects: Behavioral sciences; Bourgeois; Business; Business economics; Capitalism; class struggle; Commercial production; Communications; Communism; Continental philosophy; Dialectic; Discourse; Economic theory; Economics; historical materialism; Human societies; International Workingmen's Association; Karl Marx; Lower class; Marxian economics; Marxism; Metaphilosophy; Middle class; Modern History (1700 to 1945); Neo Marxism; Philosophy; Political change; Political History; Political ideologies; Political philosophy; Political processes; Political revolutions; Political science; Politics; Proletariat; revolutionary movement; Rhetoric; Russian and Eastern European History; Social classes; Social sciences; Social stratification; Social structures; Socialism; Sociology; The Poverty of Philosophy; Western philosophy
• ISBN: 9780300106497; 0300106491
• DOI: 10.12987/yale/9780300106497.003.0002

Marxism was one of the most remarkable systems of social thought to emerge in the nineteenth century, not least because it incorporated the most outstanding historical and philosophical premises of its day. It was an attempt to analyze and explain the whole of history—or the whole of Western history—scientifically. It incorporated the new economic and technological interests of the century, emphasizing the conditions of ordinary life. It was optimistically evolutionary, a cyclical variant of the faith in progress, complete with an eighteenth-century heaven-on-earth at the end of the line. Finally, it was an attempt to use the scientific