p From ancient times men have sought for answers to the questions: are social systems a matter of accident or are they the result of some invisible yet powerful causes? Is it possible to change these systems, to achieve well-being and freedom for all and not only for the minority? If so, how? And who will lead humanity to the achievement of these much-desired aims? And finally, which way is humanity going—towards a golden age of progress or towards stagnation and decline?

p Thinkers of all times and all nations have tried to answer these questions. But for many centuries their theories and conceptions were invariably overthrown not only by the criticism of other scholars, but also by the criticism of time, by the whole development of history. In the field of social studies the path to knowledge has proved particularly long and arduous.

p The point is thai the life of society is a great deal more complex than the development of nature. Within the limits of our direct observation the phenomena of nature recur comparatively uniformly, regularly, and this makes it easier to understand their essence. But to trace a similar regularity, a similar recurrence in the life of society is far more difficult. This naturally makes it harder to understand and hinders us in detecting any definite law in its development. There is another distinction of no less importance. In nature, we have to deal with the operation of impersonal, elemental forces. In the history of society, we are dealing with the actions of people, who are endowed with consciousness and will-power and are always pursuing some kind of aim. At first glance it would appear that in this field the main task is to elucidate the motives that make people act, to find out what aims a certain person has set himself, and this will tell us why he acted in one way and not another. This kind of psychological explanation of the life of society, which was predominant in pre-Marxist sociology and prevails to this day in bourgeois theories of society, is superficial and insufficient.

p Of course, everyone is guided in his actions by certain motives and pursues certain aims. But first, the question arises why a particular man should have those particular motives and aims, and not 117 others. And secondly, even a superficial acquaintance with history shows that the aims and interests of different people, and, consequently, their actions, have always come into conflict, and that the ultimate result of this conflict—a historical event—is often very different from what any of its individual participants intended.

p Thus, many of those who took part in the French Revolution of 1789-94 thought that they were establishing the reign of reason and eternal justice, creating a society based on natural equality and the inalienable rights of man. Very soon, however, it transpired that they were in practice merely clearing the way for the class domination of the bourgeoisie. In place of the old inequality—between feudais and serfs—there came a new inequality—between the bourgeoisie and the workers.

p This contradiction between the conscious activity of each separate individual, on the one hand, and the spontaneity of social development as a whole, on the other, was detected long before Marx. But the philosophers were unable to give a correct explanation of it. In their examination of the actual course of history they got no further than conjectures about the aims and motives of certain historical figures and thus turned the historical process into a mass of chance occurrences. Those of them who attempted to regard history as a process governed by necessity very soon lapsed into fatalism and began to regard it as a result of the action of some external force (God, the "absolute idea”, "the universal mind”, and so forth) that was supposed to determine men’s actions.

p The idealist view of history fostered by the very complexity of social development has been vigorously encouraged by the exploiting classes, who have an interest in concealing the true causes of economic and social inequality, the causes responsible for the wealth and power of some and the poverty and lack of rights of others. Thanks to the efforts of these classes, idealist views of society influence people to this day and are widespread in the capitalist countries.

p A fundamental revolutionary upheaval in the very approach to the study of social problems was needed in order to explain what it is that conditions people’s ideas, opinions and conscious actions. This upheaval became possible only after the establishment of capitalism had laid bare the material economic roots of the class struggle, after the working class had stepped into the historical arena us the first class in history which, as will be shown later, not only does not fear a consistently scientific explanation of society, but has a direct interest in such an explanation.

p Only in these historical circumstances did the way lie open for the scientific achievement of Marx and Engels, who extended dialectical materialism to the study of society and its history and evolved a scientific theory of the general laws of social development. This theory is historical materialism, the materialist conception of history.

p The revolution wrought by Marx and Engels in social science lies primarily in the fact that they proved that there are no mysterious supernatural forces at work in society, and showed that men are themselves the makers of their history. This struck a crushing blow at all mystical views of society and paved the way for understanding history as a natural process not requiring any interference from without.

p On the other hand, Marxism proved that people make their history not arbitrarily but on the basis of the objective material conditions they have inherited from past generations. This struck a mortal blow at voluntarism and subjectivism and paved the way for understanding history as a process governed by natural laws. In appraising the significance of the Marxist theory for the science of society, Lenin wrote that this materialist theory "for the first time made a scientific sociology possible ... that only the reduction of social relations to production relations and of the latter to the level of the productive forces, provided a firm basis for the conception that the development of formations of society is a process of natural history".^^62^^

p Marx formulated the initial proposition of historical materialism as follows: "It is not men’s consciousness that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” In other words, in society, as in nature, being, material life, is primary, is the determining factor in relation to spiritual life, to consciousness.

p According to Marxism, social consciousness is the sum total of the political and legal theories, the religious, philosophical and moral views of a given society; in addition, social consciousness includes the social sciences, art and social psychology (social feelings, moods, customs, and so on). Social being, on the other hand, is the material life of society in all its complexity and with all its contradictions.

What exactly is meant by the material life of society, which, as historical materialism has established, determines the whole face of society, its structure, its views and its institutions?