ABSTRACT
I Marxism is a philosophy of history and philosophies of history are frowned on today. e trend of both historical thinking and philosophy is against compre hensive views that discover a purpose in existence, that find a rational order in the world. H. A. L. Fisher in his History of Europe says, ‘Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. ese harmonies are concealed from me. I can only see one emergency following upon another as wave follows wave.1 He goes on to say that there is ‘only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen’. Charles Beard, the American historian, feels it necessary ‘to dispel the illusion that there could be a science of history embracing the fulness of history or any large phase of past actuality’.
