Young Karl Marx in the Age of Progress: the Historical Materialism of the 1840s and Its Limits
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RIS BIB ENDNOTEPublication date: 28.11.2025
ORGANON, 2025, Volume 57, pp. 159-176
https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.009.22613Authors
Young Karl Marx in the Age of Progress: the Historical Materialism of the 1840s and Its Limits
The article discusses an early version of Karl Marx’s historical materialism. The young Marx was a child of his time—the era of rapid development of technology and science that accompanied the expansion of capitalism. In the 1840s his historical materialism was based on two premises: the Development Thesis (history is the continuous development of the productive forces) and the Primacy Thesis (the level of development of the productive forces determines social relations). On the basis of these assumptions, Marx had serious problems in theoretically grounding his growing enthusiasm for the workers’ class struggle.
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Information: ORGANON, 2025, Volume 57, pp. 159-176
Article type: Original article
Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences
Poland
Published at: 28.11.2025
Article status: Open
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND
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