On Historical Materialism

"The bourgeois world today regards historical materialism as it did Darwinism a lifetime ago, and socialism half a lifetime ago. It reviles it without understanding it. Eventually, and with great difficulty, the bourgeoisie began to grasp that Darwinism was really something other than an “ape theory”, and that socialism was not a matter of “having a share-out” or “laying a thieving hand on all the fruits of a thousand years of culture”. But historical materialism still remains something upon which they pour phrases that are as foolish as they are cheap, describing it, for example, as the “fantasy” of a few “talented demagogues”. In fact the materialist study of history is of course subject to the very laws of historical motion that it itself lays down. It is the product of historical development; it could not have been imagined in any earlier period by even the most brilliant mind. The secret of the history, of mankind could only be unveiled when a certain historical level had been reached."