The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the

production of the means to support human life and next to production, the exchange

of things produced is the basis of all social structure. That in every society

that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and

society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it

is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the

final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought.

Not in men's brains, not in men's better insight into eternal truth or

justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be

sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.

The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and

unjust, that reason has become unreason and right wrong, is only proof that in

the modes of production and exchange, changes have silently taken place, with

which the social order adapted to earlier economic conditions is no longer

in keeping. From this, it also follows that the means of getting rid of the

incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present in a more or

less developed condition within the changed modes of production themselves.

These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles,

but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of

production. Frederick Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.

Hello everybody, welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host Anne

Comrade Bredo-She, and today we have a super special collaborative episode

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