PREFACE.
Like so many other of the principal Marxist publications, the present one owes its origin to a special occasion—it arose out of a controversy. The polemic in which I was involved last autumn with the editors of “Vorwaerts,” brought me to touch on the question of their ethical tendencies. What I said, however, on this point was so often misunderstood by one side, and on the other brought me so many requests to give a more thorough and systematic exposition of my ideas on Ethics, that I felt constrained to attempt to give at least a short sketch of the development of Ethics on the basis of the Materialist Conception of History. I take as my starting point, consequently, that materialist philosophy which was founded on one side by Marx and Engels, on the other, in the same spirit, by Joseph Dietzgen. For the results at which I have arrived, I alone am responsible.
My original intention was to write an article for the "Neue Zeit" on the subject. But never had I so miscalculated the plan of a work as this; and not only in respect of its scope. I had begun the work in
