ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that historical materialism, as a synthesis between idealism and materialism, is becoming an organic, mode of social consciousness. The socialist labour movement, as a movement of manual workers committed to overturning the rule of capital, certainly was Marxist in name and inspiration. Naturalistic materialism emerged when the emancipation of manual labour intersected with the transformation of contemplative philosophy into experimental natural science. The process of social emancipation of manual labour now becomes irreversible, and the world of work begins to be reflected on in a critique of the 'non-productive' idleness of the feudal upper classes. The class of manual labourers was formed in the industrial revolution developed a consciousness of itself on the terrain prepared by the Magna Carta and Locke - a tradition of native liberty, guild loyalty, and self-regulation against the encroaching state. Scientific endeavour became organically related to labour while its materialist assumptions were politically neutralised.
