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ESSAYS

on the

Materialistic Conception
of History

by

ANTONIO LABRIOLA

Professor in the University of Rome

translated by

CHARLES H. KERR

Chicago

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
CO-OPERATIVE

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Copyright 1908
By Charles H. Kerr & Company
Chicago

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TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

On the tenth of March, 1896, the same year that the last despairingrevolt of the small producer against capitalism in America was to end inthe overwhelming defeat of Bryan, an Italian scholar published in thecity of Rome the remarkable work which is now for the first time offeredto American readers.

To publish this book in America at that time would have been animpossibility. The American socialist movement was then hardly more thanan association of immigrants who had brought their socialism with themfrom Europe. Today it numbers at least half a million adherents, and itsplatform is an embodiment of the ideas first adequately stated in theCommunist Manifesto of 1848, and now first adequately explained andelaborated in this remarkable work of Labriola.

The central and fundamental proposition of socialism is not any schemefor reconstructing society, on a cut-and-dried programme, nor again isit any particular mathematical formula showing to what extent thelaborer is robbed by the present system of the fruits of his labor; itis precisely this Historical Materialism, which Labriola has soadmirably explained in the present work.

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Some idea of the place accorded to this book by European socialists maybe gathered from the preface to the French edition by G. Sorel, one ofthe most prominent socialists of France.

He says: “The publication of this book marks a date in the history ofsocialism. The work of Labriola has its place reserved in our librariesby the side of the classic works of Marx and Engels. It constitutes anillumination and a methodical development of a theory which the mastersof the new socialist thought have never yet treated in a didactic form.It is therefore an indispensable book for whoever wishes to understandsomething of proletarian ideas. More than the works of Marx and Engelsit is addressed to that public which is unacquainted with socialistpreconceptions. In these pages the historian will find substantial andvaluable suggestion for the study of the origin and transformation of institutions.”

The economic development of the United States has reached a point wherethe growth of the Socialist Party must henceforth go forward withstartling rapidity. That the publication of this volume may have someeffect in clarifying the ideas of those who discuss the principles ofthat party, whether with voice or pen, is the hope of the

TRANSLATOR.

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ESSAYS ON THE MATERIALISTIC
CONCEPTION OF HISTORY