РАЗВИТИЕ МОНИСТИЧЕСКОГО ВЗГЛЯДА НА ИСТОРИЮ

"The Development of the Monist View of History"

The work written by Plekhanov who published it in 1895 under the pseudonym of N. Beltov. Lenin described it as "a book which has helped to rear a whole generation of Russian Marxists" (Lenin, Vol. 16, p. 269). It thoroughly analyses pre-Marxist philosophy and sociology, critically examines the views of the French 18th century materialists, French bourgeois historians of the Restoration period, utopian socialists, and idealist German philosophers. Plekhanov reveals the class limitations of these theories and demonstrates that it was Marx and Engels who created a scientific materialist philosophy, that only Marxism furnished a genuine science of society and discovered the material basis of social development. Besides an exposition of Marxist philosophy the book gives a profound critique of Narodism. This criticism was especially important in Russia at that time. Today, too, it is one of the best works for studying the philosophy of Marxism.