FOOTNOTES:
[6] By democratic parties were then understood working-class political movements, such as Chartism, etc.
IV.[ToC]
THE MARXIAN SYSTEM.
I. The Materialist Conception of History.
As a guide to his studies from 1843-4 onwards, Marx used the conception of history, or method of investigation, which—in contradistinction to the idealist conception of history of Hegel—was named materialistic. As its nature is dialectic—as it seeks to conceive in thought the evolving antagonisms of the social process—it is, like Hegel's dialectic, a conception of history and a method of investigation at the same time. Nowhere did Marx work out his method of investigation in a special and comprehensive form; the elements of it are scattered throughout his writings, particularly in the Communist Manifesto and in the "Poverty of Philosophy," and serve the purpose of polemics or demonstration. Only in the preface to his book, "On the Critique of Political Economy" (1859) did he devote two pages to a sketch of his conception of history, but in phraseology which is not always clear, sequential, or free from objection. It was the intention of Marx to write a work on Logic, where he would certainly have formulated clearly his materialistic dialectic. As, however, his fundamental ideas on this subject are available, we are able to extract the essentials of his position.