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