§ I. Materialistic Monism

The first postulate of the materialistic conception of history is: There is no dualism of spirit and matter. This means that nothing exists beyond matter, that everything is either matter or some form of development caused by the motion of matter. Says Engels:² “The real unity of the world is its materiality.” “Every form of being is matter.” “Motion is the mode of being of matter.”³ “Beyond nature and man there exists nothing.”⁴ “Motion as well as matter can neither be created nor destroyed.”⁵ This implies the other assertion that there is no personal God, the Creator of the world,⁶ no Providence watching over the destinies of mankind, no spiritual, immortal soul, no retribution in a life to come, that man is but an animal further advanced in evolution. “Life is the mode of being of the albuminoids.”¹ Marx, as well as Engels, Bebel, Liebknecht, etc., never tires of repeating that man very gradually developed from the brute—in Marx’s opinion from the ape. It need not be mentioned that thereby Christianity, its doctrines of paradise, of original sin, of redemption by means of the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ, of heaven and hell, are thrown overboard. Socialist leaders are fully aware of these consequences and make them their own. No occasion is allowed to pass without giving free vent to their hatred of Christianity.

² E. Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, 2d ed., p. 28.

³ Ibid., p. 45; L. Feuerbach, 2d ed., p. 10.

⁴ Ibid., p. 11.

⁵ Ibid., p. 45.

⁶ According to Engels the relation of thought and being, of intellect and nature, constitutes the profoundest philosophical problem. ‘Those who maintained a spirit pre-existing nature and thus in the last instance some kind of creation—and with some philosophers, e.g., Hegel, creation is far more intricate and impossible than in the Christian system—those, I say, formed the camp of idealists. Those others who looked upon nature as the first being belonged to the various materialist schools.” (L. Feuerbach, p. 14.)

¹ Dührings Umwälzung, p. 68. It has been objected by certain socialist critics that historical materialism does not necessarily imply philosophical materialism, that a socialist may be an adherent of the materialistic conception of history without denying the dualism of spirit and matter. We reply that historical materialism is evidently to be taken in the sense in which its originators, Marx and Engels, understood it. They certainly looked upon historical materialism as intimately connected with and based upon philosophical materialism. Engels, e.g., narrating his “conversion” from Hegel’s idealism to Feuerbach’s materialism, tells us that now there was question of “harmonizing with and of building up upon this materialistic basis the science of society, i.e., the substance of the so-called historical and philosophical sciences.” (L. Feuerbach, 2d ed., p. 22.)

Also E. Dietzgen (Neue Zeit, 22d year, I. p. 238) confesses openly: “Because our materialism is based upon the unity of spirit and matter, it is quite correctly called dialectic materialism.”

It cannot be expected of us to refute here all the errors indicated above, together with countless others necessarily connected with them. This would require not merely a treatise on apologetics, but also an entire course of philosophy. Besides, socialists are too selfconfident to offer any proofs for their assertions; at most they are content with revamping the stale objections of Feuerbach, Strauss, Darwin, and others of that ilk. We address ourselves to readers who have still some regard for their dignity as human beings.