a) Socio-Economic Conditions

p The emergence of Marxist philosophy was a necessary outcome of the development of society and science. The philosophy of Marxism expresses EReinterests of the proletariat, and therefore ’arises at a stage in social development when the working people become an independent social lorce struggling to change the conditions of life.

p Initially, the proletariat’s class struggle was spontaneous, taking the form of isolated actions against individual capitalists. Later, however, it became more conscious and purposeful. As the struggle gained momentum, the proletariat began to organise and unite, to realise its general class interests, and to take action against the bourgeoisie as a class, against capitalism as a social system, rather than against individual members of the bourgeoisie. The 1830s and 1840s witnessed the first mass actions by the working class, such as the revolt of the Lyons weavers in France (1831), the revolutionary actions of the Parisian workers (1832), the uprising of Silesian weavers in Germany (1844), and the Chartist movement in England (1830-1840).

As the class struggle against the bourgeoisie intensified, the need arose to substantiate theoretically the necessity and possibility of overthrowing the existing social and political system and to develop a theory indicating the social relations and institutions to replace the existing ones. This historical need was behind the emergence of Marxist philosophy-a unique world outlook guiding the proletariat in its struggle for a new society and constituting for it a method for the revolutionary remaking of reality.

b) Natural-Scientific Conditions

p Although the proletariat’s need for dialectical and historical materialism was a prerequisite for its emergence, this alone could hardly provide a sufficiently sound foundation for developing the Marxist philosophy. The Utopian views advanced before Marxism and substantiating the necessity of passing to a new, ideal society had also been a response to the oppressed classes’ need for changing their conditions of life. Yet they did not help those classes to evolve a correct understanding of the surrounding world and to find the ways of transforming reality, but rather obstructed this. The emergence of dialectical and historical materialism required a certain level of scientific knowledge, insofar as its content was a generalisation of scientific advances.

p By the early 19th century, scientific knowledge had reached a level making it possible to substantiate the basic principles of dialectics theoretically 77 and to develop a scientific dialectico-materialist world view. By that time natural scientists began to study the inner processes of phenomena instead of merely describing and classifying them. They not only recorded the properties observed, but singled out the laws governing changes in these properties. New sciences developed, such as physiology studying processes in living organisms; embryology studying embryonic development; geology dealing with changes in the earth’s crust; and others. A number of outstanding discoveries were made, which showed that natural processes were dialectical in character. The most important were: the discovery of the cellular structure of organisms (1838-1839), the substantiation of the law of conservation and transformation of energy (1842-1847), and Darwin’s evolutionary theory of organisms (1859).

p The discovery of the cell as the basic structural unit of the organism pointed to the unity of the organic world and to the general laws of development inherent in it. The law of conservation and transformation of energy revealed the inter- connection and mutual transformation of the various forms of the motion of matter. Darwin’s evolutionary theory showed that the organic world constantly changes and develops and that existing species of animals and plants are the result of a long evolution.

The strides made by the natural sciences at the beginning and especially in the middle of the 19th century made it possible to formulate and substantiate the most important principles of dialectics 78 and to develop a consistent scientific world outlook, for the proletariat to use as a weapon for transforming existing reality.

c) Theoretical Conditions

p The emergence of the Marxist philosophy was conditioned not only by social factors and the development of natural sciences, but also by the entire history of philosophical thought. Marxism absorbed and developed the progressive ideas put forward by earlier philosophers. This means that, besides the social and natural-scientific conditions for the development of Marxism, there were also theoretical conditions. Primarily, these relate to 19th-century German philosophy, the philosophical views advanced by Hegel and Feuerbach.

p Hegel formulated the fundamental principles of dialectics and elaborated the dialectical method of cognition. Being an idealist, however, he visualised dialectics as the laws of the self-development of the pure idea existing outside and prior to the material world. As for the development of the material world-nature and society-it was for him “only a copy [Abklatsch] of the self-movement of the concept going on from eternity, no one knows where, but at all events independently of any thinking human brain. This ideological perversion had to be done away with.”  [78•1 

p While criticising Hegel, Feuerbach did not 79 notice the rational grain in Hegel’s philosophy-the dialectical method introduced and at the same time mystified by him. Feuerbach did not rectify Hegel’s mistakes, “he simply threw him aside as useless....”  [79•1 

What Feuerbach was unable to do was done by the founders of dialectical and historical materialism. Proceeding from the materialist principles reinstated by Feuerbach, Marx and Engels comprehensively criticised Hegelian idealist philosophy. In the process, they singled out the major contribution of German classical philosophy-dialectics, separated it from mysticism and numerous artificial schemes and constructions, and developed it on a scientific materialist basis into dialectical and historical materialism, which is a consistently scientific world outlook and a general method for cognising and transforming the surrounding world.