Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/32

30 Poor in material possessions but rich in intellectual values, Marx and his young wife were compelled to leave Paris in search of a new exile. In Paris he definitely concluded his discourse with Hegelianism, i.e., with the Hegelian conception that proclaimed the absolute idea as the driving force in historic evolution. The great French Revolution served him as a mine of historic treasures from which he drew lesson after lesson of social significance. And the profound study of this gigantic epoch in the evolution of mankind, so ably laid down in "The Holy Family; or a Critical Critique against Bruno Bauer and his Followers," finally ripened his materialist conception of history. In the manifestations of this period of colossal upheavals, he found the real potential force that set the idea in motion, the force behind all ideological activity, and the force which was the generator of this as well as all previous historical dramas, namely: the struggle of classes. And the formulation of this conception also furnished him with an explanation of the passionate and turbulent life in Paris—a life which was but the forerunner of the February revolution. With the aid of the material gathered in Paris, he was able to estimate the value which the elements of production and exchange played in social evolution, and finally concluded that these were the ultimately determining forces, the so-called basic powers, in social development. In his book "The Holy Family," addressing his erstwhile Hegelian comrades on this subject, he scornfully hurls the following expressive questions at them: "Do these gentlemen think that they can understand the first word of history so long as they exclude the relations of man to nature, natural science and industry? Do they believe that they can actually comprehend any epoch without grasping the industry of the period, the immediate method of production in actual life?"

Equipped with this theoretical key, Marx was able to discern, dissect and explain the complicated and confused political atmosphere in France as well as in the other European countries. Everywhere the powerful rays shed by the searchlight of Histor-