Essays on the Materialistic Conception of HistoryLabriola, Antonio
Philosophy
Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History
Labriola, Antonio
History -- Philosophy; Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei; Materialism; Socialism
Why should the slave have had the ways of seeing and the passions and
the sentiments of the master whom he feared? How could the peasant
relieve himself of his invincible superstitions, to which he was
condemned by his immediate dependence upon nature and his mediate
dependence upon a social mechanism unknown to him, and by his blind
faith in the priest, who stands to him as a magician and sorcerer. In
what fashion could the modern proletarian of the great industrial
cities, exposed continuously to the alternatives of misery or
subjection, how could he realize that way of living, regulated and
monotonous, which was the one suited to the members of the trade guilds,
whose existence seemed imbedded in a providential plan? From what
intuitive elements of experience could the hog merchant of Chicago, who
furnishes Europe with so many products at a cheap rate, extract the
conditions of serenity and intellectual elevation which gave to the
Athenian the qualities of the noble and good man, and to the Roman
citizen, the dignity of heroism? What power of docile Christian
persuasion will extract from the souls of the modern proletarians their
natural reasons of hate against their determined or undetermined
oppressors? If they wish that justice be done, they must appeal to
violence; and before the love of one's neighbor as a universal law can
appear possible to them, they must imagine a life very different from
the present life, which makes a necessity of hatred. In this society of
differentiations, hatred, pride, hypocrisy, falsehood, baseness,
injustice and all the catechism of the cardinal vices and their
accessories make a sad appendage to the morality, equal for all, upon
which they constitute the satire.
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