SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION 



later historical periods the revolutionary elements 

 of society have always found in materialist 

 science their strongest weapons, while reaction 

 has ever relied upon idealist and metaphysical 

 philosophies. And be it said at this point: It 

 is not at all necessary that the individual idealist 

 or metaphysical philosopher should have con- 

 sciously aimed at reactionary political results by 

 means of his philosophy. The mere presence of 

 idealist and metaphysical ideas suffices to make 

 them useful in the interest of reaction, whether 

 the philosopher intends it or not. 



Socrates, for instance, who developed out of 

 the ranks of the sophists and opened the attack 

 on them when the aristocratic counter-revolution 

 in Athens grew apace, was not conscious of the 

 fact that he was attacking the intellectual props 

 of democracy by attacking the humanitarian and 

 natural philosophy of the sophists. And while in 

 his teachings, he ostensibly sought to reform the 

 moral life of his country-men by true science, he 

 was in reality, by means of his metaphysical 

 conception of science, furnishing the aristocratic 

 reaction with its intellectual weapons against the 

 empirical science of Athenian democracy. But 

 neither Socrates nor the sophists could get out of 

 the vicious circle of their ideas, because both 



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