FROM THE INSTITUTE OF MARXISM-LENINISM
The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Critique. Against
Bruno Bauer and Co. is the first joint work of Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels. At the end of August 1844 Marx and
Engels met in Paris and their meeting was the beginning
of their joint creative work in all fields of theoretical and
practical revolutionary activity. By this time Marx and Engels
had completed the transition from idealism to materialism
and from revolutionary democratism to communism.
The polemic The Holy Family was written in Paris in
autumn 1844. It reflects the progress in the formation of
Marx and Engels's revolutionary materialistic world outlook.
In The Holy Family Marx and Engels give a devastating
criticism of the subjectivist views of the Young Hegelians
from the position of militant materialists. They also criticize
Hegel's own idealistic philosophy: giving credit for
the rational element in his dialectics, they criticize the mystic
side of it.
The Holy Family formulates a number of fundamental
theses of dialectical and historical materialism. In it Marx
already approaches the basic idea of historical materialism/
—the decisive role of the mode of production in the devel-'|
opment of society. Refuting the idealistic views of history/
which had dominated up to that time, Marx and Engels
FROM THE INSTITUTE OF MARXISM-LENINISM
prove that of themselves progressive ideas can lead society
only beyond the ideas of the old system and that "in order
to carry out ideas men are needed who dispose of a certain
practical force." (See p. 160 of the present edition.) The
proposition put forward in the book that the mass, the people,
is the real maker of the history of mankind is of paramount
importance. Marx and Engels show that the wider
•^ and the more profound a change taking place in society~is ,
the more numerous the mass effecting that changewill be.
Lenin especially stressed the importance of this thought
and described it as one of the most profound and most im-
'^portant theses of historical materialism.
The Holy Family contains the almost mature view of the
historic role of the proletariat as the class which, by virtue
of its position in capitalism, "can and must free itself" and
at the same time abolish all the inhuman conditions of life
of bourgeois society, for "not in vain does" the proletariat
"go through the stern but steeling school of labour. The
question is not what this or that proletarian, or even the
whole of the proletariat at the moment considers as its aim.
The question is what the proletariat is, and what, consequent
on that being, it will be compelled to do." (Pp. 52-53.)
A section of great importance is "Critical Battle against
French Materialism" in which Marx, briefly outlining the
development of materialism in West-European philosophy,
shows that communism is the logical conclusion of materialistic
philosophy.
The Holy Family was written largely under the influence
of the materialistic views of Ludwig Feuerbach, who was
responsible to a great extent for Marx's and Engels's transition
from idealism to materialism; the work also contains
elements of the criticism of Feuerbach's metaphysical and
contemplative materialism given by Marx in spring 1845
in his Theses on Feuerbach. Engels later defined the place
of The Holif Family in the historv of Marxism when he
FROM THE INSTITUTE OF MARXISM-LENINISM 11
wrote: "The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel
of Feuerbach's new religion, had to be replaced by the science
of real men and of their historical development. This
further development of Feuerbach's standpoint beyond
Feuerbach was inaugurated by Marx in 1845 in The Holy
Family^ (F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of
Classical German Philosophy.)
The Holy Family formulates some of the basic principles
of Marxist political economy. In contrast to the Utopian
Socialists Marx bases the objective inevitability of the victory
of communism on the fact that private property in its
economic motion drives itself towards its downfall.
The Holy Family dates from a period when the process
of the formation of Marxism was not yet completed. This
is reflected in the terminology used by Marx and Engels.
Marxist scientific terminolog}' was gradually elaborated and
defined by Marx and Engels as the formation and development
of their teaching progressed.