SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION 



of its own commercial interests, to call in the 

 help of empirical science and materialist philos- 

 .ophy. But now that this same philosophy is be- 

 coming the weapon of the rising proletariat, cap- 

 italism once more allies itself with metaphysical 

 philosophy and mystic religion. Materialism is 

 the handmaid of revolution, and without it no 

 proletarian movement complies with the historical 

 requirements of its evolution. 



The reactionary character of the anti-sophist 

 philosophies became very plain in the further 

 evolution of the followers of Socrates. While 

 the Cynics and Cyreneans strayed into practical 

 ethics and neglected the speculative side of the 

 Socratic philosophy, Plato, and later on Aristotle, 

 gave to this philosophy its typical character of 

 speculative metaphysics. This philosophy marks 

 the complete downfall of Athenian democracy, 

 the failure of the early attempts at a materialist 

 monism, and the temporary victory of the meta- 

 physical conception of mind and of idealist dual- 

 ism over empirical science. And the reactionary 

 character of Plato's philosophy is stamped on 

 every page of his Utopian " Republic," which he 

 intended to realize by the help of foreign tyrants 

 without asking for the co-operation of his fel- 

 low-citizens. The political pupils of Socrates 



