Nowadays, we are familiar with the fact that scientists, like Richard Dawkins, point out that its not possible to put Creationism and Evolution together as explanations of biological development. The former falls apart on first contact with reality in explaining the creation and development of life on Earth. Only the latter explains biological development scientifically, on the basis of testable hypotheses, grounded in materialism, along with the application of natural laws to explain how life is created, how it develops, and becomes diversified. Similarly, the explanation of social development cannot be explained on the basis of subjectivism, but only on the basis of historical materialism. Just as Darwin's theory can be refined and developed, so too can historical materialism, as indeed Newton's Law of Gravity was refined and developed by Einstein, but this process of refinement and development is not, thereby, a refutation of the original theory, only an extension of it.
“... the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of some formation of society...until then the materialist conception of history will be a synonym for social science. Materialism is not “primarily a scientific conception of history,” as Mr. Mikhailovsky thinks, but the only scientific conception of it.” (p 142)
And, its not just in Capital that this materialist conception of history is utilised by Marx. Its application in The Poverty of Philosophy, in Marx's criticism of Proudhon, has already been mentioned, but it is central to Marx and Engels' method as far back as The Communist Manifesto.
Lenin notes that Mikhailovsky,
“... has read the Communist Manifesto and failed to notice that the explanation it gives of modern systems—legal, political, family, religious and philosophical—is a materialist one, and that even the criticism of the socialist and communist theories seeks and finds their roots in such and such production relations.” (p 143)
Mikhailovsky berates Marx for not having reviewed all other theories of social evolution. But, Lenin says there was no point reviewing all of these other theories precisely because they were metaphysical rather than scientific. Its like the Creationists demand that their “theory” be placed on an equal footing as Evolution.
“For, to begin by asking what is society and what is progress, is to begin at the end. Where will you get a conception of society and progress in general if you have not studied a single social formation in particular, if you have not even been able to establish this conception, if you have not even been able to approach a serious factual investigation, an objective analysis of social relations of any kind? This is a most obvious symptom of metaphysics, with which every science began: as long as people did not know how to set about studying the facts, they always invented a priori general theories, which were always sterile.” (p 143-4)
It was the application of materialism to chemistry that enabled it to proceed, on the basis of an application of natural laws, based upon the material composition of chemical elements, determined by the atomic structure, and their relation to other elements, that enables chemistry to proceed on the basis of hypothesis and experiment, rather than on the basis of alchemy. It is an understanding of the chemical composition of the brain, and its physical structure, that enables psychology and psychiatry to understand behaviour, without recourse to explanations rooted in mysticism, and the forces of good and evil.
“Therefore, Mr. Mikhailovsky’s accusation is exactly similar to that of a metaphysician-psychologist, who has spent all his life writing “investigations” into the nature of the soul (without knowing exactly how to explain a single psychical phenomenon, even the simplest), and then starts accusing a scientific psychologist of not having reviewed all the known theories of the soul. He, the scientific psychologist, has discarded philosophical theories of the soul and set about making a direct study of the material substratum of psychical phenomena—the nervous processes—and has produced, let us say, an analysis and explanation of some one or more psychological processes.” (p 144)
Mikhailovsky's approach, Lenin says, would be like a metaphysician-psychologist reading such a work, and praising it, but then asking where the materialist theory is expounded in it, when all it contains is facts, and has no review of all other psychological theories. Likewise, Mikhailovsky,
“... does not understand that such methods, instead of contributing to a study and elucidation of the problem, only serve to insinuate into the concept “society” either the bourgeois ideas of the British shopkeeper or the petty-bourgeois socialist ideals of the Russian democrat—and nothing more. That is why all these theories of the philosophy of history arose and burst like soap-bubbles, being at best a symptom of the social ideas and relations of their time, and not advancing one hairs breadth Man's understanding of even a few, but real, social relations (and not such as “harmonise with human nature”).” (p 145)
The distinction comes down to this. The metaphysician starts by asking questions in general, and, thereby, arrives at conclusions based on abstract philosophical speculation. The materialist starts at the actual end result, and studies it in detail, asking what leads to this conclusion, and thereby uncovers the natural laws that produce that result. As Marx says, it is not possible to understand the evolution of man and his society by studying apes, but it is possible to understand the evolution of apes, and their society, by studying Man.
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