Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History

Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History is by Antonio Labriola, Professor in the University of Rome, translated by Charles H. Kerr. The translator's preface says that on the tenth of March, 1896, an Italian scholar published in the city of Rome the remarkable work which is now for the first time offered to American readers. The preface says the American socialist movement was then hardly more than an association of immigrants who had brought their socialism with them from Europe.

The text says our aims are rational, not because they are founded on arguments drawn from the reasoning of reason, but because they are derived from the objective study of things. The text says that not one of the previous or subsequent works of the authors of the Manifesto themselves can replace the Manifesto or have the same specific efficacy. The text says that in Japan, by an acute and spontaneous phenomenon of imitation, there has developed, in less than thirty years, a certain assimilation of western civilization. The text says it depended on this fact, that it was Napoleon who directed the enterprise and not a pitiable Monk, or a ridiculous Boulanger.