p The Manifesto of the Communist Party appeared in 1848, marking a fundamental turning point in the history of social thought. Of all the theorists involved in the liberation movement in that period, Marx and Engels alone gained a scientific view of the imperative of the time. They obtained the most profound comprehension and critically reformulated the achievements of the most advanced social thought, and also studied in practice and summed up the experience of the working-class struggle in Germany, France and Britain, the leading capitalist countries of the period. Lenin stressed that “the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind".  [92•1  Marx and Engels were giants of revolutionary thought and revolutionary action, gaining a deep insight into the past, analysing the present and forecasting the future of human society.

p All earlier development of social thought related to the period of the downfall of feudalism, the serf system, and the emergence of capitalism. The most acute social conflicts of the epoch, stormy revolutions and uprisings stimulated the development of social thought, impelling prominent men to consider the destiny of society, the ways of its development, and its future, which, they believed, would help to heal the deep wounds inflicted on mankind by the ordeal of history. Men had long since given deep thought to the question of social justice. Indeed, man’s exploitation of man had been condemned in moral terms when capitalism was still in its cradle. The outcry became even louder when capitalism developed and its horrible sores were revealed. Social thinkers raised many questions but no scientific answers were to hand. A genuine scientific theory of social development was still to be formulated.

p Meanwhile, in the late 18th century it was held that the epoch of the domination of science was at hand. Indeed, science had been scoring one great victory after another. Natural sciences and technology had advanced to a point where the earlier period appeared to be a mere prehistory. It was becoming clear that the age of steam, which had transformed the world, was about to end, giving way to the age of electricity, an even more revolutionary force. What was the importance of these new developments for mankind’s future? In 1850, the model of an electric engine was on display in Regent Street in London, and Marx was one of those who came to have a look. There was every sign of a further rapid growth of technology and success in various spheres of 93 knowledge. Darwin’s The Origin of Species appeared in the book shops nine years later. The idea of development was making headway in every branch of science. It had revolutionised chemistry. The scientific atmosphere was somewhat reminiscent of the period in which Copernicus and Galileo had made their great discoveries. In that period, social thought was embryonic. But if a scientific world view was to originate and successfully develop there was need for a revolution in social thought, based not only on the achievements of the natural sciences but also on the comprehension of their importance for the destiny of society. The lag in social thought exerted a drag on philosophy and the whole of human ideology. The first requirement was to release ideology from the distorting influence of the bourgeoisie’s class interest, which prevented a deeper and farther penetration of reality and made it impossible to effect a correct theoretical generalisation of the advances in natural science. Nor was it possible to generalise the knowledge gained in the individual social disciplines like history, economic science, etc. All the leading minds were aware of the need for a synthesis of the sciences. They realised that new and vast potentialities had been opened up on social development. What did these amount to?

p Progressive thinkers were becoming increasingly aware that it was no longer enough to discourse on spiritual progress, the growth of science and the ultimate triumph of education as the substance of the historical process. The mind was being beset by new phenomena, and periodicals and other publications used new terms like “the social question" and “the labour question”. What was the importance of these problems for a theory of social development? The proletariat gave notice of its emergence in the historical arena by fighting great class battles, staging strikes and erecting barricades. It was no longer possible to confine oneself to theories of political progress heralding the replacement of the feudal political order by new institutions establishing the power of the bourgeoisie and to theories of mankind’s intellectual development. Progress of mankind’s social organisation itself was a question now on the order of the day. Was it true that the Utopias suggesting the elimination of exploitation and the establishment of social property were no more than a vain dream? Was it true that the social structure of bourgeois society was in accord with the “dictates of reason and human nature”, so that it marked the limits of social development? These questions became the most important ones in ideology.

p Bourgeois theorists declared that science had nothing to do with the elimination of man’s exploitation of man. Science dealt with matters like the rotation of the Earth round the Sun, something that no one any longer denied. Meanwhile, the question of whether mankind was advancing towards communism had become one of the key ideological problems and also a most important one for social science to tackle.

The most important ideological conclusions drawn by philosophers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were of much importance for the correct answer to this fundamental question.