ABSTRACT
Karl Marx and especially Frederick Engels often employed the word ‘materialist’ to describe their method of studying man, society and history. Hegel had severed reason from its natural-social roots in man, turning it into a disembodied, independent, creative historical subject. Today contemporary social science has yet to liberate itself from these extremes. In certain currents of social psychology, for example, there exists a powerful idealistic tendency. Marx’s approach was subsequently elaborated by several other classical theorists and then fully incorporated into contemporary social science. For Max Weber, there was still another dimension of social structure which had paramount importance for an understanding of twentieth-century industrial societies. The social evolutionists, far from having proved the validity of their theories, have merely given expression to the dominant intellectual and cultural ideas of their time. The major aim of Marx’s theoretical framework was to guide the exploration of the manifold and historically changing connections between the economy and all other facets of society.
