段落摘要：〈辯證法〉恩格斯

In the meantime, along with and after the French philosophy of the 18th century, had arisen the new German philosophy, culminating in Hegel.

這時，和十八世紀的法國哲學一起並繼它之後，現代德國哲學產生了，而且在黑格爾身上達到了頂峰。

Its greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics as the highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought. The newer philosophy, on the other hand, although in it also dialectics had brilliant exponents (e.g. Descartes and Spinoza), had, especially through English influence, become more and more rigidly fixed in the so-called metaphysical mode of reasoning, by which also the French of the 18th century were almost wholly dominated, at all events in their special philosophical work. Outside philosophy in the restricted sense, the French nevertheless produced masterpieces of dialectic. We need only call to mind Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau, and Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inegalite parmi les hommes. We give here, in brief, the essential character of these two modes of thought.

它的最大的功績，就是恢復了辯證法這一最高的思維形式。古希臘的哲學家都是天生的自發的辯證論者，他們中最博學的人物亞里士多德就已經研究了辯證思維的最主要的形式。而近代哲學雖然也有辯證法的卓越代表（例如笛卡兒和斯賓諾莎），卻日益陷入（特別是由於英國的影響）所謂形而上學的思維方式；十八世紀的法國人也幾乎全都為這種思維方式所支配，至少在他們的專門哲學的著作中是如此。可是，在本來意義的哲學之外，他們也能夠寫出辯證法的傑作；我們只要提一下狄德羅的「拉摩的侄子」和盧梭的「論人間不平等的起源」就夠了。——在這裡，我們來簡略地談談這兩種思維方法的實質。

When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. We see, therefore, at first the picture as a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move, combine, and are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.

當我們深思熟慮地考察自然界、人類歷史或我們的精神活動的時候，首先呈現在我們眼前的是一幅由種種聯繫和相互作用無窮無盡地交織起來的畫面，其中沒有任何東西是不動的和不變的，而是一切都在運動、變化、產生和消失。所以我們首先看到的是總的畫面，其中各個細節還或多或少地隱在背景中，我們注意得更多的是運動、轉變和聯繫，而不是什麼在運動、轉變和聯繫。這個原始的、素樸的但實質上正確的世界觀是古希臘哲學的世界觀，而且是由赫拉克利特第一次明白地表述出來的：一切都存在，同時又不存在，因為一切都在流動，都在不斷地變化，不斷地產生和消失。

But this conception, correctly as it expresses the general character of the picture of appearances as a whole, does not suffice to explain the details of which this picture is made up, and so long as we do not understand these, we have not a clear idea of the whole picture. In order to understand these details, we must detach them from their natural, special causes, effects, etc. This is, primarily, the task of natural science and historical research: branches of science which the Greek of classical times, on very good grounds, relegated to a subordinate position, because they had first of all to collect materials for these sciences to work upon. A certain amount of natural and historical material must be collected before there can be any critical analysis, comparison, and arrangement in classes, orders, and species. The foundations of the exact natural sciences were, therefore, first worked out by the Greeks of the Alexandrian period, and later on, in the Middle Ages, by the Arabs. Real natural science dates from the second half of the 15th century, and thence onward it had advanced with constantly increasing rapidity. The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.

但是，這種觀點雖然正確地把握了現象總畫面的一般性質，卻不足以說明構成這幅總畫面的各個細節；而我們要是不知道這些細節，就看不清總的畫面。為了認識這些細節，我們不得不把它們從自然的或歷史的聯繫中抽出來，從它們的特性、它們的特殊的原因和結果等等方面來逐個地加以研究。這首先是自然科學和歷史研究的任務；而這些科學部門，由於十分明顯的原因，在古典時代的希臘人那裡只佔有從屬的地位，因為他們首先必須為這種研究蒐集材料。只有當自然和歷史的材料蒐集到一定程度以後，才能進行批判的分析和比較，並相應地進行綱、目和種的劃分。因此，精確的自然研究只是在亞歷山大里亞時期的希臘人那裡才開始，而後來在中世紀由阿拉伯人繼續發展下去；可是真正的自然科學只是從十五世紀後半期才開始，從這時起它就獲得了日益迅速的進展。把自然界分解為各個部分，把自然界的各種過程和事物分成一定的門類，對有機體的內部按其多種多樣的解剖形態進行研究，這是最近四百年來在認識自然界方面獲得巨大進展的基本條件。但是，這種做法也給我們留下了一種習慣：把自然界的事物和過程孤立起來，撇開廣泛的總的聯繫去進行考察，因此就不是把它們看做運動的東西，而是看做靜止的東西；不是看做本質上變化著的東西，而是看做永恆不變的東西；不是看做活的東西，而是看做死的東西。這種考察事物的方法被培根和洛克從自然科學中移到哲學中以後，就造成了最近幾個世紀所特有的局限性，即形而上學的思維方式。

To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. His communication is "'yea, yea; nay, nay'; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." For him, a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis, one to the other.

在形而上學者看來，事物及其在思想上的反映，即概念，是孤立的、應當逐個地和分別地加以考察的、固定的、僵硬的、一成不變的研究對象。他們在絕對不相容的對立中思維；他們的說法是：「是就是，不是就不是；除此以外，都是鬼話」。在他們看來，一個事物要麼存在，要麼就不存在；同樣，一個事物不能同時是自己又是別的東西。正和負是絕對互相排斥的；原因和結果也同樣是處於固定的相互對立中。

At first sight, this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound commonsense. Only sound commonsense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the woods for the trees.

初看起來，這種思維方式對我們來說似乎是不言而喻的，因為它是合乎所謂常識的。然而，常識在它自己的日常活動範圍內雖然是極可尊敬的伴侶，但它一跨入廣闊的研究領域，就會有最驚人的遭遇。形而上學的思維方式，雖然在相當廣泛的、各依對象的性質而大小不同的領域中是正當的，甚至必要的，可是它每一次都遲早要達到一個界限，一超過這個界限，它就要變成片面的、狹隘的、抽象的，並且陷入不可解決的矛盾，因為它看到一個一個的事物，忘了它們互相間的聯繫；看到它們的存在，忘了它們的產生和消失；看到它們的靜止，忘了它們的運動；因為它只見樹木，不見森林。

For everyday purposes, we know and can say, e.g., whether an animal is alive or not. But, upon closer inquiry, we find that this is, in many cases, a very complex question, as the jurists know very well. They have cudgelled their brains in vain to discover a rational limit beyond which the killing of the child in its mother's womb is murder. It is just as impossible to determine absolutely the moment of death, for physiology proves that death is not an instantaneous, momentary phenomenon, but a very protracted process.

例如，在日常生活中，我們知道，並且可以肯定地說某種動物存在還是不存在；但是在進行較精確的研究時，我們就發現這有時是極其複雜的事情。這一點法學家們知道得很清楚，他們絞盡腦汁去發現一條判定在子宮內殺死胎兒是否算是謀殺的合理界限，結果總是徒勞。同樣，要確定死的時刻也是不可能的，因為生理學證明，死並不是突然的、一瞬間的現象，而是一個很長的過程。

In like manner, every organized being is every moment the same and not the same; every moment, it assimilates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of other matter; every moment, some cells of its body die and others build themselves anew; in a longer or shorter time, the matter of its body is completely renewed, and is replaced by other molecules of matter, so that every organized being is always itself, and yet something other than itself.

同樣，任何一個有機體，在每一瞬間都是它本身，又不是它本身；在每一瞬間，它同化著自外界供給的物質，並排泄出另一種物質；在每一瞬間，它的機體中都有細胞在死亡，也有新的細胞在形成；經過或長或短的一段時間，這個機體的物質便完全更新了，由其他物質的原子代替了，所以，每個有機體永遠是它本身，同時又是別的東西。

Further, we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis, positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed, and that despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.

在進行較精確的考察時，我們也發現，某種對立的兩極，例如正和負，是彼此不可分離的，正如它們是彼此對立的一樣，而且不管它們如何對立，它們總是互相滲透的；同樣，原因和結果這兩個觀念，只有在應用於個別場合時才有其本來的意義；可是只要我們把這種個別場合放在它和世界整體的總聯繫中來考察，這兩個觀念就匯合在一起，融化在普遍相互作用的觀念中，在這種相互作用中，原因和結果經常交換位置；在此時或此地是結果的，在彼時或彼地就成了原因，反之亦然。

None of these processes and modes of thought enters into the framework of metaphysical reasoning. Dialectics, on the other hand, comprehends things and their representations, ideas, in their essential connection, concatenation, motion, origin and ending. Such processes as those mentioned above are, therefore, so many corroborations of its own method of procedure.

所有這些過程和思維方法都是形而上學思維的框子所容納不下的。相反地，對辯證法來說，上述過程正好證明了它自己的方法是正確的，因為辯證法在考察事物及其在頭腦中的反映時，本質上是從它們的聯繫、它們的連結、它們的運動、它們的產生和消失方面去考察。

Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus has shown that, in the last resort, Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically; that she does not move in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes through a real historical evolution. In this connection, Darwin must be named before all others. He dealt the metaphysical conception of Nature the heaviest blow by his proof that all organic beings, plants, animals, and man himself, are the products of a process of evolution going on through millions of years. But, the naturalists, who have learned to think dialectically, are few and far between, and this conflict of the results of discovery with preconceived modes of thinking, explains the endless confusion now reigning in theoretical natural science, the despair of teachers as well as learners, of authors and readers alike.

自然界是檢驗辯證法的試金石，而且我們必須說，現代自然科學為這種檢驗提供了極其豐富的、與日俱增的材料，並從而證明了，自然界的一切歸根到底是辯證地而不是形而上學地發生；自然界不是循著一個永遠一樣的不斷重複的圓圈運動，而是經歷著實在的歷史。這裡首先就應當指出達爾文，他極其有力地打擊了形而上學的自然觀，因為他證明了今天的整個有機界，植物和動物，因而也包括人類在內，都是延續了幾百萬年的發展過程的產物。可是，因為學會辯證地思維的自然科學家到現在還屈指可數，所以，現在統治於理論自然科學中並使教師和學生、作者和讀者都同樣感到絕望的那種無限混亂的狀態，完全可以從已經達到的成果和傳統的形而上學思維方式之間的這個衝突中得到說明。

An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectics with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes. And in this spirit, the new German philosophy has worked. Kant began his career by resolving the stable Solar system of Newton and its eternal duration, after the famous initial impulse had once been given, into the result of a historical process, the formation of the Sun and all the planets out of a rotating, nebulous mass. From this, he at the same time drew the conclusion that, given this origin of the Solar system, its future death followed of necessity. His theory, half a century later, was established mathematically by Laplace, and half a century after that, the spectroscope proved the existence in space of such incandescent masses of gas in various stages of condensation.

因此，要精確地描繪宇宙、宇宙的發展和人類的發展，以及這種發展在人們頭腦中的反映，就只有用辯證的方法，只有經常注意產生和消失之間，前進的變化和後退的變化之間的普遍相互作用才能做到。現代德國哲學一開始就是以這種精神進行活動的。康德一開始他的科學生涯，就把牛頓的穩定的和自從有名的第一次推動作出以後就永遠如此的太陽系變成了歷史的過程，即太陽和一切行星由旋轉的星雲團產生的過程。同時，他已經作出了這樣的結論：太陽系的產生也預示著它將來的不可避免的滅亡。過了半個世紀，他的觀點由拉普拉斯從數學上作出了證明；又過了半個世紀，分光鏡證明了，在宇宙的空間存在著凝聚程度不同的熾熱的氣團。

Picture of HegelThis new German philosophy culminated in the Hegelian system. In this system — and herein is its great merit — for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process — i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development. From this point of view, the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence, all equally condemnable at the judgment seat of mature philosophic reason and which are best forgotten as quickly as possible, but as the process of evolution of man himself. It was now the task of the intellect to follow the gradual march of this process through all its devious ways, and to trace out the inner law running through all its apparently accidental phenomena.

這種現代德國哲學在黑格爾的體系中達到了頂峰，在這個體系中，黑格爾第一次——這是他的巨大功績——把整個自然的、歷史的和精神的世界想像為一個過程，即想像它是處在不斷的運動、變化、改造和發展中，並企圖揭示這種運動和發展的內在聯繫。從這個觀點看來，人類的歷史已經不再是亂七八糟的一堆統統應當被這時已經成熟了的哲學理性的法庭所唾棄並儘快被人遺忘的毫無意義的暴力行為，而是人類本身的發展過程，而思維的任務現在就在於通過一切迂回曲折的道路去探索這一過程的依次發展的階段，並且透過一切表面的偶然性揭示這一過程的內在規律性。

That the Hegelian system did not solve the problem it propounded is here immaterial. Its epoch-making merit was that it propounded the problem. This problem is one that no single individual will ever be able to solve. Although Hegel was — with Saint-Simon — the most encyclopaedic mind of his time, yet he was limited, first, by the necessary limited extent of his own knowledge and, second, by the limited extent and depth of the knowledge and conceptions of his age. To these limits, a third must be added; Hegel was an idealist. To him, the thoughts within his brain were not the more or less abstract pictures of actual things and processes, but, conversely, things and their evolution were only the realized pictures of the "Idea", existing somewhere from eternity before the world was. This way of thinking turned everything upside down, and completely reversed the actual connection of things in the world. Correctly and ingeniously as many groups of facts were grasped by Hegel, yet, for the reasons just given, there is much that is botched, artificial, labored, in a word, wrong in point of detail. The Hegelian system, in itself, was a colossal miscarriage — but it was also the last of its kind.

至於黑格爾的體系沒有解決它給自己提出的這個任務，在這裡是無關緊要的；它的劃時代的功績是在於它提出了這個任務。這不是任何個別的人所能解決的任務。雖然黑格爾和聖西門一樣是當時最博學的人，但是他畢竟受到了限制，首先是他自己的必然有限的知識的限制，其次是他那個時代的在廣度和深度方面都同樣有限的知識和見解的限制。但是除此以外還有第三種限制。黑格爾是唯心主義者，就是說，在他看來，他頭腦中的思想不是現實的事物和過程的多少抽象的反映，相反地，在他看來，事物及其發展只是在世界出現以前已經以某種方式存在著的「觀念」的現實化的反映。這樣，一切都被弄得頭足倒置了，世界的現實聯繫完全被顛倒了。所以，不論黑格爾如何正確地和天才地把握了一些個別的聯繫，但由於上述原因，就是在細節上也有許多東西不能不是牽強的、造作的、虛構的，一句話，被歪曲的。黑格爾的體系作為體系來說，是一次巨大的流產，但也是這類流產中的最後一次。

It was suffering, in fact, from an internal and incurable contradiction. Upon the one hand, its essential proposition was the conception that human history is a process of evolution, which, by its very nature, cannot find its intellectual final term in the discovery of any so-called absolute truth. But, on the other hand, it laid claim to being the very essence of this absolute truth. A system of natural and historical knowledge, embracing everything, and final for all time, is a contradiction to the fundamental law of dialectic reasoning.

它還包含著不可救藥的內在矛盾：一方面，它以歷史的觀點作為基本前提，即把人類的歷史看做一個發展過程，這個過程按其本性來說是不能通過發現所謂絕對真理來達到其智慧的頂峰的；但是另一方面，它又硬說自己是這個絕對真理的全部內容。包羅萬象的、最終完成的關於自然和歷史的認識的體系是和辯證思維的基本規律相矛盾的。

This law, indeed, by no means excludes, but, on the contrary, includes the idea that the systematic knowledge of the external universe can make giant strides from age to age.

但是這規律決不排斥一種觀點，反而肯定，對於整個外部世界的有系統的認識是可以一代一代地得到巨大進展的。

The perception of the the fundamental contradiction in German idealism led necessarily back to materialism, but — nota bene — not to the simply metaphysical, exclusively mechanical materialism of the 18th century. Old materialism looked upon all previous history as a crude heap of irrationality and violence; modern materialism sees in it the process of evolution of humanity, and aims at discovering the laws thereof. With the French of the 18th century, and even with Hegel, the conception obtained of Nature as a whole — moving in narrow circles, and forever immutable, with its eternal celestial bodies, as Newton, and unalterable organic species, as Linnaeus, taught. Modern materialism embraces the more recent discoveries of natural science, according to which Nature also has its history in time, the celestial bodies, like the organic species that, under favorable conditions, people them, being born and perishing. And even if Nature, as a whole, must still be said to move in recurrent cycles, these cycles assume infinitely larger dimensions. In both aspects, modern materialism is essentially dialectic, and no longer requires the assistance of that sort of philosophy which, queen-like, pretended to rule the remaining mob of sciences. As soon as each special science is bound to make clear its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous or unnecessary. That which still survives of all earlier philosophy is the science of thought and its law — formal logic and dialectics. Everything else is subsumed in the positive science of Nature and history.

瞭解了以往的德國唯心主義的完全荒謬，這就必然導致唯物主義，但是要注意，並不是導致十八世紀的純形而上學的、完全機械的唯物主義。和那種以天真的革命精神籠統地拋棄以往的全部歷史的做法相反，現代唯物主義把歷史看做人類的發展過程，而它的任務就在於發現這個過程的運動規律。無論在十八世紀的法國人那裡，還是在黑格爾那裡，佔統治地位的自然觀都是：自然界是一個在狹小的循環中運動的、永遠不變的整體，其中有牛頓所說的永恆的天體和林奈所說的不變的有機物種。和這個自然觀相反，現代唯物主義概括了自然科學的最新成就，從這些成就看來，自然界也有自己的時間上的歷史，天體和在適宜條件下存在於天體上的有機物種一樣是有生有滅的；至於循環，即使它能夠存在，也具有無限加大的規模。在這兩種情況下，現代唯物主義都是本質上辯證的，而且不再需要任何凌駕於其他科學之上的哲學了。一旦對每一門科學都提出了要求，要它弄清它在事物以及關於事物的知識的總聯繫中的地位，關於總聯繫的任何特殊科學就是多餘的了。於是，在以往的全部哲學中還仍舊獨立存在的，就只有關於思維及其規律的學說——形式邏輯和辯證法。其他一切都歸到關於自然和歷史的實證科學中去了。

Whilst, however, the revolution in the conception of Nature could only be made in proportion to the corresponding positive materials furnished by research, already much earlier certain historical facts had occurred which led to a decisive change in the conception of history. In 1831, the first working-class rising took place in Lyons; between 1838 and 1842, the first national working-class movement, that of the English Chartists, reached its height. The class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie came to the front in the history of the most advanced countries in Europe, in proportion to the development, upon the one hand, of modern industry, upon the other, of the newly-acquired political supremacy of the bourgeoisie. Facts more and more strenuously gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeois economy as to the identity of the interests of capital and labor, as to the universal harmony and universal prosperity that would be the consequence of unbridled competition. All these things could no longer be ignored, any more than the French and English Socialism, which was their theoretical, though very imperfect, expression. But the old idealist conception of history, which was not yet dislodged, knew nothing of class struggles based upon economic interests, knew nothing of economic interests; production and all economic relations appeared in it only as incidental, subordinate elements in the "history of civilization".

但是，當自然觀的這種變革只能隨著研究工作提供相應的實證的認識材料而實現的時候，一些在歷史觀上引起決定性轉變的历史事實已經老早就發生了。1831年在里昂發生了第一次工人起義；在1838—1842年，第一次全國性的工人運動，即英國的憲章派運動，達到了自己的最高點。無產階級和資產階級間的階級鬥爭一方面隨著大工業的發展，另一方面隨著資產階級新近取得的政治統治的發展，在歐洲最發達的國家的歷史中升到了首要地位。事實日益令人信服地證明，資產階級經濟學關於資本和勞動的利益一致、關於自由競爭必將帶來普通協調和全民幸福的學說完全是撒謊。所有這些事實都再不能不加考慮了，正如作為這些事實的理論表現（雖然是極不完備的表現）的法國和英國的社會主義不能不加考慮一樣。但是，舊的、還沒有被排除掉的唯心主義歷史觀不知道任何基於物質利益的階級鬥爭，而且根本不知道任何物質利益；生產和一切經濟關係，在它那裡只是被當做「文化史」的從屬因素順便提到過。

The new facts made imperative a new examination of all past history. Then it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange — in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period. Hegel has freed history from metaphysics — he made it dialectic; but his conception of history was essentially idealistic. But now idealism was driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history; now a materialistic treatment of history was propounded, and a method found of explaining man's "knowing" by his "being", instead of, as heretofore, his "being" by his "knowing".

新的事實迫使人們對以往的全部歷史作一番新的研究，結果發現：以往的全部歷史，除原始狀態外，都是階級鬥爭的歷史；這些互相鬥爭的社會階級在任何時候都是生產關係和交換關係的產物，一句話，都是自己時代的經濟關係的產物；因而每一時代的社會經濟結構形成現實基礎，每一個歷史時期由法律設施和政治設施以及宗教的、哲學的和其他的觀點所構成的全部上層建築，歸根到底都是應由這個基礎來說明的。黑格爾把歷史觀從形而上學中解放了出來，使它成為辯證的，可是他的歷史觀本質上是唯心主義的。現在，唯心主義從它的最後的避難所中，從歷史觀中被驅逐出來了，唯物主義歷史觀被提出來了，用人們的存在說明他們的意識而不是像以往那樣用人們的意識說明人們的存在這樣一條道路已經找到了。

From that time forward, Socialism was no longer an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes — the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict. But the Socialism of earlier days was as incompatible with this materialist conception as the conception of Nature of the French materialists was with dialectics and modern natural science. The Socialism of earlier days certainly criticized the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain them, and, therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It could only simply reject them as bad. The more strongly this earlier Socialism denounced the exploitations of the working-class, inevitable under Capitalism, the less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consisted and how it arose, but for this it was necessary — "to present the capitalistic mode of production in its historical connection and its inevitableness during a particular historical period, and therefore, also, to present its inevitable downfall; and to lay bare its essential character, which was still a secret. This was done by the discovery of surplus-value." It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labor is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; that even if the capitalist buys the labor power of his laborer at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis, this surplus-value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up constantly increasing masses of capital in the hands of the possessing classes. The genesis of capitalist production and the production of capital were both explained.

因此，社會主義現在已經不再被看做某個天才頭腦的偶然發現，而被看做兩個歷史地產生的階級無產階級和資產階級間鬥爭的必然產物。它的任務不再是想出一個盡可能完善的社會制度，而是研究必然產生這兩個階級及其相互鬥爭的那種歷史的經濟的過程；並在由此造成的經濟狀況中找出解決衝突的手段。可是以往的社會主義同這種唯物主義觀點是不相容的，正如法國唯物主義的自然觀同辯證法和現代自然科學不相容一樣。以往的社會主義固然批判過現存的資本主義生產方式及其後果，但是它不能說明這個生產方式，因而也就不能對付這個生產方式；它只能簡單地把它當做壞東西拋棄掉。它愈是義憤填膺地反對這種生產方式必然產生的對工人階級的剝削，就愈是不能明白指出這種剝削在哪裡和怎樣發生。但是，問題是在於： 「一方面說明資本主義生產方式的歷史聯繫和它對一定歷史時期的必然性，從而說明它滅亡的必然性，另一方面揭露這種生產方式內部的一直還隱蔽著的性質。這已經由於剩餘價值的發現而完成了。」 已經證明，無償勞動的佔有是資本主義生產方式和通過這種生產方式對工人進行的剝削的基本形式；即使資本家按照勞動力作為商品在市場上所具有的全部價值來購買他的工人的勞動力，他從這勞動力榨取的價值仍然比他為這勞動力付出的多；這種剩餘價值歸根到底構成了有產階級手中日益增加的資本量所由累積而成的價值總量。這樣就說明了資本主義生產和資本生產的過程。

These two great discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus-value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries, Socialism became a science. The next thing was to work out all its details and relations.

這兩個偉大的發現——唯物主義歷史觀和通過剩餘價值揭破資本主義生產的秘密，都應當歸功於馬克思。由於這些發現，社會主義已經變成了科學，現在的問題首先是對這門科學的一切細節和聯繫作進一步的探討。