Introduction

Throughout the civilised world the teaching of Marx evokes the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois science (both official and liberal), which regards Marxism as something in the nature of a “pernicious sect”. No other attitude is to be expected, for there can be no “impartial” social science in a society based on class struggle. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage slavery, while Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery. To expect science to be impartial in a society of wage slavery is as silly and naive as to expect impartiality from factory owners on the question of whether workers’ wages ought to be raised by cutting the profits of capital.

But that is not all. The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling “sectarianism” in Marxism, in the sense of some closed, ossified doctrine that arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the whole genius of Marx lies precisely in his having given answers to questions that the advanced thought of mankind had already raised. His teaching arose as the direct and immediate continuation of the teaching of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.

The teaching of Marx is all-powerful because it is true. It is complete and harmonious, and gives people an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any superstition, any reaction, any defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor of the best that mankind created in the nineteenth century in the shape of German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism.

It is on these three sources, which are at the same time the three component parts of Marxism, that we shall briefly dwell.