Abstract

This is a new translation of one of Plekhanov's major works on historical materialism. It is based on the Russian edition of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, edited by V. A. Fomina. The appendix contains two valuable additional essays by Plekhanov: The Materialist Conception of History and The Role of the Individual in History, both of which are reprints with some minor revisions of translations of 1940. Plekhanov's footnotes are given on the page and explanatory notes by the editor have been added in the back of the book. Plekhanov is generally credited with having been the first to apply the term "dialectical materialism" to the philosophical materialism of Marx and Engels. In the opinion of many non-Marxist and some Marxist scholars, this was the crucial initial step in the elaboration of a deviationist doctrine which not only departed from Marx's and Engels' original thought, but which eventually overshadowed it. Plekhanov, in this view, served as the link between Engels and Lenin in which a tendency in Engels toward a mechanistic materialism, manifested in his Anti-Dühring and The Dialectics of Nature, was developed into a dominant theme. Dialectical materialism became the term applicable to the science of the laws of motion of man, society, and nature--of all reality. Historical materialism, or, as Marx and Engels called it, the materialist conception of history, became but a subordinate branch of dialectical materialism, dealing specifically with the laws of motion of man and society. It became a philosophy of history derived from a broader philosophy of nature, or of the cosmos. Reality became an autonomous existent--independent of the human species. And epistemology became a copy theory of man's never-ending and never-achieved struggle to know and reflect that which pre-exists outside of him. Regrettably, the introduction by the editor ignores these evaluations and interpretations and sticks to the more traditional Marxist areas of discussing Plekhanov's masterful refutation of economic determinism, his exaggeration of the importance of geographic conditions, and Lenin's criticisms of his theoretical weaknesses. Plekhanov's treatment of the materialist conception of history still stands as one of the most brilliant and coherent presentations of this seminal doctrine. It is a pity and a historical deprivation that he became so preoccupied with the polemics of the day as to never sit down to write a systematic exposition of Marxism.--H. B.