ABSTRACT
Marx and his disciples have a special theory concerning the role of the individual in history. The gist of it is that the movement of history is governed by laws of a purely materialistic (economic) nature in which there is no room for man’s will. The whole history of the human race, from the time man lived by gathering the berries and roots that grew wild in the forest (before the invention of hunting implements in the Stone Age), moving on to the stages of hunting, animal husbandry, land cultivation and from there to the great stages in the progressive development of mankind, from the primitive communal system through the systems of slavery and of feudalism and serfdom, to the stage of early industry, on to the Industrial Revolution, the stage of capitalism and the socialist and communist stages to come, along with all events, political developments, religious and intellectual movements, etc., all this, according to Marxist theory, is governed by purely materialistic laws.
