Conception of History

Also known as “conception of the history of society”. People’s common view and fundamental views of the history of society, an important component part of world outlook. The basic question of the conception of history is the question concerning the relation of social being and social consciousness. According to the different answers given to this question, conceptions of history can be divided into materialist conception of history and idealist conception of history, i.e., historical materialism and historical idealism.

Any conception of history that holds that social consciousness is primary, and that social being is secondary, and that social consciousness determines social being belongs to the idealist conception of history. In its totality, the conception of history prior to Marxism belongs to the category of idealism. The idealist conception of history regards ideological motives, the will of heroes and towering figures, or a supra-natural mystical intellectual force as the determining factor in historical development, denies the determining part played by material production in the development of society, denies the objective laws of the development of society, and denies the position of the masses as the subject of history. Lenin pointed out the two chief shortcomings in earlier historical theories: “In the first place, the latter at best examined only the ideological motives in the historical activities of human beings, without investigating the origins of those motives, or ascertaining the objective laws governing the development of the system of social relations, or seeing the roots of these relations in the degree of development reached by material production; in the second place, the earlier theories did not embrace the activities of the masses of the population, whereas historical materialism made it possible for the first time to study with scientific accuracy the social conditions of the life of the masses, and the changes in those conditions.”

The materialist conception of history was founded by Marx and Engels in the 1840s. It put “an end to the view of society being a mechanical aggregation of individuals which allows of all sorts of modification at the will of the authorities (or, if you like, at the will of society and the government) and which emerges and changes casually”, highlighting a fundamental revolution in the conception of the history of society.

The materialist conception of history upholds the basic view that social being determines social consciousness, that the production of material means is the basis of social existence and development, that the productive forces are the ultimately determining force of social development, that social development has its objective laws, that the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production and between the economic foundation and the superstructure pushes forward the development of society from the lower to the higher, that the class struggle is the ultimate driving force of the development of class society, and that the masses are the creators of history.

The founding of the materialist conception of history and the discovery of the theory of surplus-value have together transformed socialism from utopia into science, thus socialism has gained a scientific form. It is a powerful ideological weapon and theoretical tool for the proletariat and the masses to know and change society.