ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Marx's sociological theory of social organization and its evolution roughly, the central principles of Marx's philosophy of history or, to use Engels' term, of his historical dialectics. Engels' starting point is the identity of nature and history, Marx's materialism, with its dialectic, cannot admit a substantive difference. An investigation of the real driving forces of history was, according to Engels, almost impossible earlier, because they were too hidden, too confused with their effects. Division of the entire society makes some sense at best for anyone who, like Marx, considers all human activity other than economic activity a negligible quantity. In sociology, in economics, in the political sciences, and even in historiography, collectivistic views appear dominant. Clarification of the relation of the individual and the social collective is the pressing task for sociological theory and social practice.
