Historical Theory

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Up to now, the history of politics, like that of philosophy or of science, has been the history of only a few individuals: That which really constitutes the human race, the vast mass of families living for the most part on the fruits of their labour, has been forgotten, and even of those who follow public professions, and work not for themselves but for society, who are engaged in teaching, ruling, protecting or healing others, it is only the leaders who have held the eye of the historian”, he wrote.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. This means that all parts of society, for example, science, art, law, labor and the economy, the state and the family etc. When swift strides are taken from one form of social structure to another, the old days and ways stand out in startling contrast, and even conflict, with the new. T]here is only one other point lacking, which, however, Marx and I always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regard to which we are all equally guilty.The pioneer of Western historians, Hecaeteus, lived in the same commercial city of Miletus as the first philosophers and scientists and belonged to the same materialist trend of thought.

The underlying goal of the World Spirit and the outcome of its laborious development was the realisation of the idea of freedom. Such bold representatives of bourgeois thought as Machiavelli and Vico in Italy, Hobbes, Harrington, Locke and the classical economists in England, the Scottish school of Adam Ferguson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, D’Holbach and others in France helped accumulate the materials and clear the site for a more realistic picture of society and a more rigorous understanding of its modes and stages of development. At certain decisive moments in history, during periods of great conflict, the actions of 'great historical men' can align with the 'spirit of the age' to bring about a fundamental advance in freedom.All such interpretations contain infusions of the prejudice that some elite, the Best Race, the favoured nation, the ruling class alone make history. Plato in his Republic, L aws and other writings, and Aristotle in his Politics, collected specimens of different forms of state rule. The earliest men did not even distinguish themselves from the rest of nature or draw a sharp line of demarcation between themselves and other living creatures in their habitat. The French social thinkers and historians carried the materialist understanding of history and society as far as it could go in their day. The first attempts to survey the long march of human history, study its causes, and set forth its successive stages along scientific lines were made only about 2500 years ago.