p To ascertain the essence of this revolution means to establish what new features Marx and Engels introduced into philosophy and to perceive the new qualitative distinctions setting Marxist philosophy apart from the preceding philosophical systems.

p What are the basic novel aspects of Marxist philosophy?

p In the first place it differs from the past philosophical s^ ,tems by its class nature and the role it plays in social life.

p With very few exceptions pre-Marxist philosophers were in the service of the exploiters and consequently did not set themselves the goal of remaking the world to suit the interests of the working people.

p Marxist philosophy is another thing. It does not serve a handful of exploiters, but expresses the interests of the proletariat, the most advanced class, the interests of multi-million masses which are the real makers of history. Marx and Engels not only founded the new philosophy but were also the leaders of the developing movement of the proletariat. 30 It was they who showed that the only road to the liberation of the working people lay through socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. They wholly dedicated their brilliant minds, enormous creative energies and outstanding talent for organisation to the lofty cause of emancipating the working people from exploitation, to the cause of socialism.

p Having aligned themselves with the oppressed class, the proletariat, Marx and Engels created a philosophy which became its spiritual weapon in the struggle against capitalism and a powerful means of remaking life. This basically altered and tremendously increased the role of philosophy in social development. It gripped the minds of the masses and turned into a great material force. Describing this crucial feature of dialectical and historical materialism Marx wrote: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”  [30•*  Marxist philosophy owes its strength to its organic bonds with life, to the fact that it serves the struggle waged by the working class against capitalism, for socialism and communism.

p The most important manifestation of the revolution which Marxism brought in philosophy is the attainment of organic unity of materialism and dialectics.

p We have learned from the history of philosophy that dialectics and materialism originated long before Marxism. But the fault of the old philosophy was that materialism and dialectics in it were often separated from each other. Hegel was a dialectician, but not a materialist, while Feuerbach was a materialist, but not a dialectician. Only Marx and Engels bridged the gap between materialism and dialectics and united them into an integral dialectical-materialist world outlook. This is one of the most important aspects of Marxist philosophy making it qualitatively different from the preceding philosophies.

p The rise of Marxism also signified a revolution in the views on society.

Pre-Marxist philosophers idealistically interpreted social development, in the belief that it was motivated only by the 31 ideas of people, by their consciousness. Marx and Engels contrasted this idealistic view with a materialistic interpretation of history. They were the first to raise and correctly solve the fundamental question of philosophy, the relation of consciousness to being as applied to society. They incontrovertibly proved that it was not the social consciousness of the people that determined their being, but, on the contrary, the social being and, above all, the production of material values, that determined social consciousness and that social development depended on material causes and not on people’s ideas, wishes or intentions. As a result, the history of society came to be understood as a law-governed, natural process of the replacement of the lower modes of production by higher ones, and not as a chaotic conglomeration of phenomena. It was proved that this replacement was not spontaneous but followed objective laws which are independent of man’s will and consciousness.