One of the most amusing features of modern Marx-criticism is the grave discussion by the critics, of the question whether or not Marx was a philosopher and whether or not Marxism is a philosophy. Most divergent and contradictory opinions are current among the many eminent and learned critics. And not only this but the most contradictory accounts are given by them as to what Marx himself thought on the subject. The confusion is so great that there seems to be no way out of it,—unless one turns to Marx himself, or to Engels. . . . This, by the way, is always the best way out when one finds himself in one of the mazes of contradictory accounts of Marxism which so abound in anti-Marxian literature.
A careful study of the writings of Marx and Engels discloses the fact that in their opinion what used to be known before their day as "philosophy" reached its culminating point and came to a close with Hegel; that henceforth the place of philosophy is taken by science. Already Ludwig Feuerbach said:—"My philosophy is—no philosophy," and Marx and Engels carried this statement into effect by replacing abstract philosophy by concrete science. Engels therefore says:[1] "This conception (the materialistic conception of history) puts an end to philosophy on the historical field, just as the dialectic conception of nature makes all natural philosophy unnatural and impossible." Marxism is no abstract philosophy. It is just the
- ↑ Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der Klassischen deutschen Philosophie. Stuttgart, 1895.
